The Kingdom of the Dead: For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine
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Re: The Kingdom of the Dead: For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine
#2The first paragraph really spoke to me, because that is how I spent every summer for the first 14 years of my life. My family took a trip from Kiev to Yalta as a summer vacation. The joy and excitement mixed with hot, gross conditions of the train are spot on. I will forever hold onto those memories as some of my most precious.
This year I went back to Kiev for the first time in well over a decade since I moved to the US. To see my family, friends, as well as show my wife all of the places and the way that I grew up.
Due to the current political climate and overall conditions in Crimea going there was not even an option for us. A real disappointment as some of my most cherished memories were formed there.
Re: The Kingdom of the Dead: For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine
#3In terms of Kingdom of the Dead, what is interesting is that the Black Plague (which would kill about 1/3 of Europe) is speculated by some to have entered Europe from Crimea due to the siege of Caffa (also spelled Kaffa) by the Tatars. The Tatar army was devastated by the Plague, and before they left, they catapulted the infected bodies into the city. In the city were Genoese traders who left the city and took the Plague back to Europe.
Re: The Kingdom of the Dead: For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine
#4Why here? Does this hipster's travel diaries contain some valuable advice for startups?
Update: you might downvote this into oblivion, but objectively this text has nothing of value, but naive, oversimplified views and generalizations any traveler could produce. I honestly cannot see why it should be published here, on HN. There are specialized sites for narcissistic "writers" - medium.com etc.
Re: The Kingdom of the Dead: For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine
#5Well, it does make me want to go and see for myself. It could be more interesting if I knew some russian.
Re: The Kingdom of the Dead: For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine
#6Can someone explain what is the meaning of "madeleine" here? Is it referring to the famous incident of "let them eat cake"? I'm not familiar with it being used to refer to anything other than food.
Re: The Kingdom of the Dead: For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine
#7Can someone explain what is the meaning of "madeleine" here? Is it referring to the famous incident of "let them eat cake"? I'm not familiar with it being used to refer to anything other than food.
It's a reference to Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past." The taste brings forth memories involuntarily.
Re: The Kingdom of the Dead: For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine
#8Can someone explain what is the meaning of "madeleine" here? Is it referring to the famous incident of "let them eat cake"? I'm not familiar with it being used to refer to anything other than food.
It's a reference to Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, wherein he famously recounted how, upon eating a "dispiriting" madeline as an adult, he was abruptly and involuntarily taken back to the emotions of childhood, when he and an aunt shared madelines every Sunday. Since then, it's shorthand for "something that emotionally transports us back to happier times," more or less.
Re: The Kingdom of the Dead: For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine
#9Can someone explain what is the meaning of "madeleine" here? Is it referring to the famous incident of "let them eat cake"? I'm not familiar with it being used to refer to anything other than food.
I wasn't familiar with the term, but Wiktionary has some good hints:
n. A small gateau or sponge cake, often shaped like an elongated scallop shell.
n. Something which brings back a memory; a source of nostalgia or evocative memories (used with reference to its function in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time).
Re: The Kingdom of the Dead: For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine
#10Can someone explain what is the meaning of "madeleine" here? Is it referring to the famous incident of "let them eat cake"? I'm not familiar with it being used to refer to anything other than food.
I think it's "one that evokes a memory": http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/madeleine
That seems to be how it's used in the article and some of the comments here:
"Crimea was the ideal site for this post-Soviet reunion, since it was the place where so many children, now adults, had spent their happy summer vacations, flocking there from all over the Soviet Union. For post-Soviet people, Crimea was a gigantic madeleine."
I see others have beat me to a response. m-w also has a paragraph about it:
"The madeleine is said to have been named after a 19th-century French cook named Madeleine Paumier, but it was the French author Marcel Proust who immortalized the pastry in his 1913 book Swann's Way, the first volume of his seven-part novel Remembrance of Things Past. In that work, a taste of tea-soaked cake evokes a surge of memory and nostalgia. As more and more readers chewed on the profound mnemonic power attributed to a mere morsel of cake, the word madeleine itself became a designation for anything that evokes a memory."
I had never heard of it either.