The Rediscovered Culinary of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”

Abstract

Beyond the classic image of the tea with madeleines, in Proustian literature it is possible to talk of a culinary that is drawn from another aesthetic, which escapes the patterns of docility and symmetry. Thus, the aim of this article is to elucidate such culinary, presented in Proust’s “In search of lost time”. Here the concept of cuisine is thought from a perspective that understands it as a cultural food system. To achieve the objective of this investigation, readings of the work were carried out, as well as a later documentation, which subsidized the analysis. Proust suggests that his novel does not represent a systematization into a single, intelligible body. Then, the idea of an indocile culinary emerges, which can be described by four characteristics: it understands the kitchen as destruction and creation; the market as a poetic space of food; undertakes writing of war as means to combat scarcity regimes; and produces heterotopias through alcoholic accesses. From the reading of the author, who advocates a pathos for the construction of his novel, it is confirmed that the cuisine presented by him could not be systematized into a logos. Just as in “In Search of lost time”, such cuisine could be thought as the study of great laws and dietary generalities, as an indocile culinary.