THINKER'S ALMANAC - May 30

What food item’s taste sparked such a vivid memory that it resulted in a seven-volume memoir?

Subject: Memory - Proust’s Madeleine

Event:  First Memorial Day, 1868

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. –Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 

Today is the anniversary of the celebration of the first Memorial Day in 1868.  

                                                            Image by Keturah Moller from Pixabay

After the Civil War ended in 1865, many communities in the North and the South began holding tributes to fallen soldiers.  These commemorations, which were originally called Decoration Day, were held in the spring when flowers were readily available for the decoration of graves.

On May 5, 1868, American General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veterans group, issued General Order Number 11, which said:

The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land.

Decoration Day gradually evolved to be called Memorial Day. And after World War I, it became a day to honor not just fallen Civil War soldiers, but all war dead. Not until 1971 did Memorial Day become an official federal holiday.  In that year, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May, which created a three-day weekend for federal workers (1).

While Memorial Day is a day to remember those who gave their lives in past wars, it can also be a day to remember the power we all have to revisit the past through the genre of memoir.  In memoir, we are given the ability to time travel and vicariously take part in the intimate experiences and thoughts of writers who have documented the significant moments of their lives.

There is no greater example of this than in Marcel Proust’s The Remembrance of Things Past, a seven-volume memoir published over a period of fourteen years (1913-1927). Proust’s flood of memories is launched in a single remarkable moment, as he is sitting drinking a cup of herbal tea with a madeleine, a small shell-shaped cake:  

And as soon as I had recognised the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated segment which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine.

Through his sense of taste, Proust’s memory is magically unlocked, and he is involuntarily and instantly transported in an instant to a vivid remembrance of his past. We often view memory as a conscious process, where we actively try to recall information, such as our Social Security Number.  Psychologists call this type of memory voluntary explicit memory.  A different type of memory is called the Proust phenomenon, or involuntary explicit memory.  This is the type of memory that came to Proust as he tasted the madeleine, instantly triggering powerful emotions and memories from his childhood (3).

Proust’s work is just one example of many brilliant memoirs that allow us to see, smell, taste, feel, and hear what others have experienced in their past.

Here are a few examples:

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

Boy by Roald Dahl

Confessions by Augustine

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

My Left Foot by Christy Brown

Stop Time by Frank Conroy

The Story of My Life  by Hellen Keller

Reading Lolita in Tehran:  A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

This Boy’s Life: A Memoir by Tobias Wolff

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the Proust phenomenon? What specific experience triggered Proust's vivid memory?

Challenge:  Proust Phenomenon:  What is a sight, smell, taste, feeling, or sound that triggers your involuntary explicit memory?  Explain what the specific trigger is and what specifically you remember.  What images and emotions flood your mind?

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

May 30, 1868:  Today is the anniversary of the celebration of the first Decoration Day, a holiday known today as Memorial Day.  After the Civil War ended in 1865, many communities in the North and the South began holding tributes to fallen soldiers.  These commemorations were held in the spring when flowers were readily available for the decoration of graves.

May 30, 1431::  Joan of Arc burned at the stake

-May 30, 1975:  Marissa Ann Mayer, who helped develop the Google Search engine and who later became president of Yahoo is born

Sources:

1-History.com. “Memorial Day.” 24 May 2021.

2-Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time Volume I: Swann’s Way. Trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. New York: The Modern Library, 2003.

3-”What is the "Proust phenomenon"?” brainstuff.org 31 Dec. 2018.