Dramas

In Search of Lost Time (Marcel Proust)

KIM SAMSOON BOOK RECOMMENDATION I

In the drama My Lovely Samsoon, on the beautiful island of Jeju, Kim Samsoon (Kim Sun-a) tells Dr Henry Kim (Daniel Henney) about the famous French cake – the Madeleine. Samsoon is a patisserie by profession and was trained at the famous Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in France. She explains to Henry in faltering English (really cute), the association of the Madeleine and the French book In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust.

The drama stills illustrate.

Madeleine is most famous cookie in France

 

 

 

Samsoon continues to tell Henry about how the author
of the book writes about dipping the cookie in tea and discovers how
wonderful that is. She encourages Henry to try it.

 

 

Henry says…Hmmmm…delicious.
“I’ve heard about it (the book), but I haven’t read it yet.”

 

 

 

“This is sexy cookie”
(pronounce it the Kim Samsoon way – “sekshi cookie“)


Madeleines are perhaps most famous outside France for their association with involuntary memory in the Marcel Proust novel À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past in the first translation, more recently translated as In Search of Lost Time), in which the narrator experiences an awakening upon tasting a madeleine with limeflower tea:

“She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place…at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory…”
— Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1: Swann’s Way.

While Samsoon is having her little tea party with Henry, both their respective beaus are rekindling their old romance – bringing to remembrance things in the past.

I commend the writers for weaving the little tea party in the hotel lobby, madeleines and what’s happening upstairs via a passage in literature. It’s just so seamless and cleverly done.

In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (French: À la recherche du temps perdu) is a semi-autobiographical novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922). This book is pretty heavy reading though.

 

Front & back cover of In Search of Lost Time Volume 1:
The Way by Swann’s Penguin Literature

 

 

In Search of Lost Time Volume 1 (Marcel Proust)
The Way by Swann’s – Amazon Online Reader

Purchase the book on Amazon:
In Search of Lost Time: Proust 6-pack (Proust Complete)

Reference: Wikipedia

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3 thoughts on “In Search of Lost Time (Marcel Proust)

  • fraulein

    I didnt think of it that way – their respective beaus making up (or out ??!) upstairs as they discuss madeleines and literature. Good observation abt the script writing techniques.

    “sekshi cookie” bwahahahaha. that pronunciation made me laugh and still tickles me

  • Gail T.

    good post! i’ve heard of this book, but as henry says, i haven’t read it. maybe when i have more things in my past than in my future. hehe. 🙂

    love that scene. it’s funny because kim sun ah supposedly speaks good english and even helped daniel henney during shooting. 🙂

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