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Quotation from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
“The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect.”
Swann's Way, Overture, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1922)
Just before the madeleine episode, the narrator explains why deliberate efforts to recall the past fail.
Citation: "The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect." — Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, Overture, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1922). (id proust-swanns-way-q2)
Portrait: Marcel Proust 1895, Otto Wegener, Public domain.
