Don’t get me wrong: Marcel Proust was a genius. His works are terribly important in the context of literary history. But what the Dickens is he on about here..?
But, when nothing of an old past endures, after the death of the people, after the destruction of the things, alone, more frail but more alive, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on top of the remains of everything else, bearing unfaltering, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.
To be fair, once you work out what he’s talking about, it’s quite a beautiful sentiment about the power of taste and smell to bring back long-forgotten memories. But seriously: 17 commas in 65 words? That’s overkill. “Their almost impalpable droplet”? Huh?