The memory of man is astonishing and mysterious. How can one account for the fact that my old Aunt Anna, at the age of 92, could not recall what she had been told an hour before yet could delight one with a most joyfully and meticulously remembered account of a dance she had attended 76 years before, when she was 16, describing exactly the dress she wore that whirled around her ankles as she waltzed and the sip of wine she had from a glass embossed with cupids and the naval officer she danced with whose beard curled precisely so?
And how can one account for the tears or joy that come at just a snatch of music that in a split second brings back a thousand memories? A visit to a childhood scene, the glimpse of an old and fading photograph or flower-scent drifting through a window can each touch something in the mind that miraculously releases an overwhelming flood of memories. Marcel Proust, the great French writer, tasted a madeleine dipped in aromatic tea and wrote one of the greatest novels ever written, Remembrance of Things Past, around the memories that the taste of the tea-dipped cake brought back to him.