Up to the this point we've floated through time and space, the focus narrowing as we went and finally landing on the evening in Combray when the narrator was sent to bed without the kiss, waited for his mother, and suffered a loss of innocence when she gave in to his nervous tendencies.
Proust calls this "voluntary memory" (on p.59), an attempt to use the mind to recall the past, an attempt that he says will be incomplete and leaves the past as a "residue", as "dead".
Next he tackles "involuntary memory", which he equates to the beliefs of the Celts that "the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object" from which we can set them free by recognizing and naming them. I could find no evidence of Celtic belief matching this to the letter, but I did read a bit about their beliefs regarding animation/reincarnation/transmigration and there's enough similarity to go with.
So after this, his illustration of reclaiming lost time, of being transported, by recognition of the past via a petite madeleine cake, only the memory of the past is in himself, not in the cake. The cake only triggers the memory. And where before he remembered nothing but the staircase, he now remembers everything about Combray.
End chapter, Combray I (Overture, in the older translation)
Vocabulary:
vicissitude (noun, p.60), change or variation in the course of something
tisane (noun, p.63), aromatic or herb-flavored tea
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