A Sordid Moment

There is a passage in the second volume of A la recherche du temps perdu in which Proust's narrator pauses to reflect on 'that sordid moment when the knives are left littering the tablecloth among crumpled napkins' at the end of lunch.

This in turn echoes an earlier essay which Proust begins by asking his readers to picture a young man 'at that dreary, daily moment when the midday meal has been eaten but is still not completely cleared away... [H]e eyes with discomfort and boredom, with a sensation approaching nausea, feelings bordering on despair, the pushed-back table-cloth dangling on the floor and a knife still lying beside the remains of an unappetising cutlet.'

Revolted by his surroundings, the young man flees to the Louvre, where Proust recommends he studies the still lives of Chardin, whose domestic scenes miraculously draw out the beauty in the kinds of ordinary objects which so repulsed him previously.

And, sure enough, this metamorphosis has its counterpart in the novel too, for, after an encounter with the watercolors of the fictional painter Elstir, the narrator finds he can 'now happily remain at the table while it was being cleared' engrossed in the 'poetic beauty' of the abandoned knives, discarded napkins, and half-empty glasses.