“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. ”

— Marcel Proust, A Remembrance of Things Past

 
​Proustian Moments

The Grace of Unbidden, Nurturant Memories
​

In Adventures of Ideas Whitehead writes that "the teleology of the universe is toward the production of Beauty."  Proustian moments are occasions when we experience this beauty as woven into the grace of unbidden, pleasant memories evoked by tastes, smells, and sounds.

The name comes from Marcel Proust (1871-1922) whose monumental novel, À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past, Search for Lost Time), is the longest novel ever written: more than a million words. In one of its scenes the narrator describes having a cup of herbal tea and a French pastry, a madeleine:

Early on in the novel the narrator tells us that he'd been feeling depressed and sad for a long while, when one day he had a cup of herbal tea and a madeleine, and suddenly the taste carried him powerfully back, in the way that flavors sometimes can, to years in his childhood when as a small boy he spent his summers at his aunt's house in the French countryside. A stream of memories comes back to him and fills him with hope and gratitude. Thanks to the madeleine, Proust's narrator has what has since become known as a Proustian moment. A moment of sudden involuntary and intense remembering, when the past promptly emerges unbidden from smell, a taste, or a texture. (From the School of Life video below).

A Proustian moment is not willed into existence. It arrives unbidden, like divine grace. It happens when a smell or a taste unexpectedly unlocks a past, pleasant recollection.

Often it brings with it an intuitive sense that, no matter what tragedies befall us or the world, there is something beautiful.

Such a moment illustrates what Patricia Adams Farmer, in her slideshow Beauty and Process Theology, calls tragic beauty. Tragic beauty is not the only kind of beauty important in life. Farmer speaks of moral beauty, natural beauty, artistic beauty, and soul beauty. In the house of beauty there are many rooms.

Nevertheless, a Proustian moment is often a small taste of tragic beauty. It can be a memory of a pleasant childhood experience, or of a beloved parent or friend, or of a first romantic love. In the words of the song "These Foolish Things," it can be the memory of a cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces, an airline ticket to romantic places, gardenia perfume lingering on a pillow, or the image two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers. There can be a sense of melancholy in the moment, a sense of something lost; but there remains the beauty of what was, and this beauty can be a source of nourishment for what can be. And even if not nourishing in this way, the moment still has its potency and poignance.

A Proustian moment is one way that we experience God, understood as the deep memory of the universe who loves each with, in Whitehead’s words, “a tender care that nothing be lost.” The Proustian moment is not all-powerful. It is not the imposition of will upon will. It is too deep for that. It is the tender care: a remembrance of things past.

​- Jay McDaniel, 11/7/22

These Foolish Things
Remind me of You
​

​A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you
A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant
A fair ground's painted swings
These foolish things remind me of you
You came you saw you conquer'd me
When you did that to me
I knew somehow this had to be
The winds of March that make my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings but who's to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings!
These foolish things remind me of you

First daffodils and long excited cables
And candle lights on little corner tables
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you
The park at evening when the bell has sounded
The "Ile de France" with all the gulls around it
The beauty that is Spring's
These foolish things remind me of you
How strange how sweet to find you still
These things are dear to me
They seem to bring you near to me
The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations
Silk stockings thrown aside dance invitations
Oh, how the ghost of you clings!
These foolish things remind me of you

Gardenia perfume ling'ring on a pillow
Wild strawb'ries only seven francs a kilo
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you
The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses
The waiters whistling as the last bar closes
The song that Crosby sings
These foolish things remind me of you
How strange how sweet to find you still
These things are dear to me
They seem to bring you near to me
The scent of smould'ring leaves, the wail of steamers
Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers
Oh, how the ghost of you clings!
These foolish things remind me of you

A Girl with Flowers on the Grass. Creator: Maris. Creation Date: 1878