# Dans le Restaurant explained — Poetry

> Chapter companion for Poetry by T. S. Eliot.

## What happens

The speaker recounts a sordid encounter with a decrepit waiter who reminisces about a childhood sexual experience. The narrative shifts to Phlebas the Phoenician, drowned and forgetting his former life, suggesting a parallel between the waiter's squalid memory and the universal erasure of death.

## Themes in this chapter

### Memory and the Past

The waiter's recollection of a childhood encounter and Phlebas's forgetting of his former life both explore the persistence and erasure of memory.

### Time and Mortality

Phlebas's drowning and the waiter's aged, decrepit state underscore the inescapable passage of time and the approach of death.

## Character check-ins

### Unknown Narrator

The speaker who rebukes the waiter and reflects on Phlebas.

### Phlebas the Phoenician

Drowned Phoenician, forgetting his past life and cargo.

## Key lines

> Phlébas, le Phénicien, pendant quinze jours noyé, Oubliait les cris des mouettes et la houle de Cornouaille, Et les profits et les pertes, et la cargaison d'etain: Un courant de sous-mer l'emporta tres loin, Le repassant aux étapes de sa vie antérieure.

Phlebas the Phoenician, drowned for fifteen days, forgot the seagulls' cries and the Cornish swell, along with his profits, losses, and tin cargo; an underwater current carried him far, passing him through the stages of his former life.

_The drowned Phoenician's memory dissolves, erasing both worldly concerns and sensory experiences._

> J'avais septtans, elle était plus petite. Elle etait toute mouillée, je lui ai donné des primavères. ... Je la chatouillais, pour la faire rire. J'éprouvais un instant de puissance et de délire.

I was seven years old, she was smaller. She was all wet, I gave her primroses. ... I tickled her to make her laugh. I felt a moment of power and delirium.

_The waiter recalls a childhood sexual encounter, marked by a fleeting sense of power._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_21_se/chapters/dans-le-restaurant
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_21_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_21_se/chapters