The Dining Room as Celestial Vault in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time

Deborah Garwood

In an entertaining yet provocative passage from Volume II, published in 1919, protagonist Marcel gradually perceives the tabletops in a bustling seaside restaurant as "planets" such as those depicted in "old allegorical prints", with "forces of attraction" between them in the form of conversing diners.

He contrasts their "harmony" with the waiters' "incessant revolution"; he muses that the dining room is like a "celestial vault fashioned according to the scientific conceptions of the Middle Ages."

This scene's puns and analogies play with readers' awareness of advances in astronomy and longitude through the early 20th century. My presentation will explore an array of possible references underlying the narrator's wry humor.