To act like Guermantes. Verb formed from the name of one of Proust’s most important characters, the Duke of Guermantes, an affected, aristocratic member of the old regime. Translator’s note.
The two volumes of Albertine disparue (The Sweet Cheat Gone) that we possess to-day weaken this judgment. From the romantic point of view alone, they are admirable, perhaps because they were not touched up during the author’s last illness.
Impossible, for the beloved being is not one but multiple. How possess what continues? One personality, in the beloved being, succeeds another indefinitely You might as well want to immobilize a river, stop its flow. In that lies the vanity of every conquest. It is with his conception of human personality that a profound criticism of Proust should deal.
There is a play on words here impossible to render in English. Chapeau, a hat, is contrasted with éteignoir, a snuffer (dunce-cap). There is also the idea of the preface as similar to the lifting of the hat, in that both are acts of courtesy. (Translator’s note.)