Madeleines From … Reading Alexander Hamilton
The Madeleine Notion
In Remembrance of Things Past, Proust’s – well, Proust’s remembrance of things past is triggered by a madeleine cake (a small, rich cookie-like pastry) or as Proust writes,
Proust thus transcends time barriers to experience the past simultaneously with the present.
On occasion, I find nuggets in books, music, videos, TV, or theater that perform a comparable kind of magic, revealing something beyond their own content. On that slender and admittedly precarious link to Proust and his cookie, I offer these morsels: quotations, pertinent points, overviews, images, themes, and other tidbits that seem similarly catalytic.
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From Reading: Alexander Hamilton1 By Ron Chernow
In one of Hamilton’s letters, he described the ideal wife for whom he was searching (think of it as an early version of an online personal ad):
She must be young, handsome (I lay most stress upon a good shape), sensible (a little learning will do), well-bred (but she must have an aversion to the word ton, chaste and tender (I am an enthusiast in my notions of fidelity and fondness), of some good nature, a great deal of generosity (she must neither love money nor scolding, for I dislike equally a termagant and an economist). In politics, I am indifferent what side she may be of (I think I have arguments that will easily convert her to mine. As to religion, a moderate streak will satisfy me. She must believe in god and hate a saint. But as to fortune, the larger stock of that the better. You know my temper and circumstances and will therefore pay special attention to this article in the treaty. Though I run no risk of going to purgatory for my avarice, yet as money is an essential ingredient to happiness in this world–as I have not much of my own and as I am very little calculated to get more either by my address or industry–it must needs be that my wife, if I get one, bring at least a sufficiency to administer to her own extravagancies.
Footnotes
- Penguin, New York. 2004 ~back~
Question is, for what purpose does this catalytic arrest your attention? Is its function reviving the remembrance of things past, or is it that and something beyond that? By such means as these our hearts try to command the attention of our heads.
Comment by MindSpin — March 22, 2006 @ 4:11 am
And teachers (Mindspinner is a member of that tribe), wonder why they get a bad rap. Just a moment, let me check, … Yep, it was only two days ago that I lauded teachers in pretty darn approbative terms. And what response do I get from a grateful profession? I get what looks suspiciously like a pop test, and an essay question at that. (OK, I realize one could interpret this comment differently, but surely one doesn’t indulge in rhetorical questions during 4 AM comment writing, does
one?) ;->
So be it. While I’m a loss as a teacher, I was quite the wunderkind when it came to bluffing my way through exams.
My paperback edition of Remembrance Of Things Past is a six volume set weighing in at bit over seven pounds with some 3500 pages. I have carefully read, at least four times, the first 100 pages or so of this monster, apparently in the conviction that once I have those first 100 pages down solid (there must be more to the initial section than Marcel missing his mommy’s night-night kiss, right?), the final 3400 should be a piece of (madeleine) cake. I have also read loads of allusions to and comments about Proust and his work, if one counts New Yorker cartoons. I deduce from this corpus that Proust’s act of recalling his coming of age within these volumes and that metamorphosis itself were intimately melded into a single transformative process. So, the correct answer is (B) More than that.
Comment by DrGuy — March 22, 2006 @ 7:50 am
I don’t think I made any mention of this being a hopelessly reductive question of the multiple choice variety ;->.
Comment by MindSpin — March 22, 2006 @ 9:20 pm