About

Lime Blossom Tea is the personal blog of Brett Hagberg.

The name Lime Blossom Tea comes from the famous "madeleine episode" in Marcel Proust's masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. The narrator bites a madeleine that was soaked in lime blossom tea and the taste brings him back to childhood afternoons spent in his Aunt Leonie's house. It is ironic that this episode is called the "madeleine episode", for it is the lime blossom tea that the narrator more strongly associates with his aunt and he remarks how his memory unfolds from his cup of tea.

When I started this blog, I wanted to take advantage of my freedom from the constraints of academia and the pressure to publish in journals to post my essays about books. Now, all I want is to publish as much as I can.

One other aim is to combat the effects of aging and lost time. As I grow older, I gradually become alienated from my past self. I can't remember basic plot details of books that I loved reading. As more time passes, I forget why I responded to the work at all. Eventually, the work becomes foreign to me, until I decide to revisit it at some point in the future, spurred by some vague notion of long lost pleasure. This forgetfulness is profoundly disturbing because sitting with art is a large part of what gives my life meaning. Involuntary recall triggered by serendipity is not enough: these are just fragments from the subconscious, a temporary glitch. Memory is so fragile, and recall is so prone to error, that I need to create a physical artifact that embodies my response to the work if I want to have any hope of preserving it and building upon it in the future. This is that artifact.