In Joseph Malègue’s novel Augustine or the Master is Here, published in 1933, synaesthesia has a crucial role in the functioning of memory and in the shaping of human being’s situation in time. The synaesthetic memory, built upon synaesthetic experiences, is understood as a global memory determined by unified senses of vision, smell, taste, hearing and touch, inextricably connected to involuntary memory. As Malègue’s treatment of memory bears a strong resemblance to that of Marcel Proust in his cycle In Search of Lost Time, the synaesthetic memory in the novel is constituted by three main elements: the eternity of the main protagonist’s childhood memories, unified by the memorable smell of hay; the search of the absolute by the characters; and finally, the mystical experiences called “ecstasies of memory”. The latter determine moments comparable to an illumination, when the involuntary memory turns up out of an unexpected event or a stimulation of a particular sense. The article offers a close reading of three main experiences constituting the “ecstasies of memory” in the novel Augustine or the Master is Here: the phenomena of roses and Liszt’s rhapsody, linked with the protagonist’s love to his almost-fiancée Anne de Préfailles; the Font-Sainte chapel, which marks his first religious experience ; and finally, the pilgrimage to a place called also Font-Sainte, which reappears in the novel, becoming its leitmotiv and the buckle of the protagonist’s identity.
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