ABSTRACT
Proust's massive novel In Search of Lost Time has occasionally been compared to a cathedral in terms of its scope and beauty. Proust operated very much as an inspired and original bricoleur when he encoded a cryptic liturgical subtext in his evocation of the narrator's private experience of transformation and life renewal. The reader familiar with the Roman Catholic Mass will have sensed by now that something important is lacking in the series of hermetic symbolic references to the Mass in Proust's text. Like Mallarme and the symbolist poets of the previous generation, Proust was forced to create his own private set of signs and symbols. One might wonder at first whether Proust is simply being parodic in the cryptic equation of madeleine and Host. Furthermore, Proust's madeleine is at the center of a regenerative ritual that the narrator takes quite seriously.
