Clochard
Clochard [ klɔˈʃaːɐ̯ ] is a French term for homeless people , especially in large French cities. Associated with the term is often the romanticizing image of a person who has given up his bourgeois existence for an independent life under the Seine bridges .
etymology
According to a common hypothesis, Clochard is derived from the French clocher (German: limp ), which in turn derives from the Latin cloppus (German: lame ). Another hypothesis, represented by the Romanist Christian Schmitt , on the other hand , leads Clochard back to the French word cloche (German: bell ): According to an old French legal principle, poor people in the markets were allowed to take the remains on the floor after a bell rang without being punished.
Clochards in Film and Literature
Clochard is occasionally used when a mental allusion to romantic, idealizing notions of homelessness is desired. Jean Gabin , for example, embodied such a happy clochard in the 1958 film Im Kittchen is no room free (Original: Archimède le clochard ) by Gilles Grangier , whose heroine tries to spend the cold season in prison. However, this fails and he finally moves south to still escape the cold Paris winter.
A more realistic representation can be found in Éric Rohmer's first work Imzeichen des Löwen (1959), one of the most important works of the French Nouvelle Vague . The drama of a two-month clochard life, narrated like a diary, does not convey any cheerful optimism in life, despite the happy ending, but provides the cool analytical record of social decline.
Another attempt to win both the cheerful and the tragic moments from the life of a clochard is made by the German feature film Found Fressen from 1977 with Heinz Rühmann in the leading role.
The 1991 feature film The Lovers of Pont-Neuf by the French director Leos Carax contains character studies about the life of variously motivated clochards.
Clochards also appear again and again in literature, especially from France. Léo Malet , who himself was imprisoned in his youth for “vagabonding” under the Pont de Sully , wrote the detective novel A Clochard with Bad Cards . In Georges Simenon's life - one of his uncles was Clochard - and work - for example in Maigret and the Clochard and Maigret and the lonely man - the figure of the Clochard played an essential, mythically transfigured role. In Simenon on the couch , the author wrote, “That I still feel that the state of the clochard is almost an ideal state. The real Clochard is undoubtedly a much more perfect person than we are. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Clochard in the online dictionary.
- ↑ Jochen Steinhilber: Slim Marianne? In: Hans-Jürgen Bieling, Frank Deppe (Ed.): Unemployment and the welfare state in Western Europe. Nine countries in comparison . Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1997, ISBN 3-8100-1653-5 , p. 109.
- ↑ Johannes Seiler: The kiss under the nut is taboo for winemakers . In: General-Anzeiger of February 24, 2009.
- ↑ Dankwart Dittrich: Brouillard au pont de Tolbiac or on foot through Paris with Leo Malet . In: Isabelle Chopin (ed.): Views of Paris in the 1930s: Colloquium of the Franco-German Society in Kiel, November 21-22, 1997 . Kovač, Hamburg, ISBN 3-86064-648-6 , p. 36.
- ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , pp. 38, 82, 440.
- ^ Georges Simenon: Simenon on the couch . Diogenes, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-257-21658-0 , p. 17.