The Arkhangelsk bookseller

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The Archangelsk Bookseller (French: Le petit homme d'Arkhangelsk ) is a novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . The novel was written in Cannes from April 21 to 29, 1956, and was pre-published in August and September of the same year in the French monthly magazine Preuves . In October 1956 the book was published by Presses de la Cité in Paris . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1963 under the title Der kleine Mann von Arkhangelsk . In 1978 the Diogenes Verlag brought out a new translation by Alfred Kuoni. With the 2013 edition, the publisher changed the title to The Arkhangelsk Bookseller .

Jonas Milk, the bookseller in a small French town, is a Russian-born Jew from Arkhangelsk . But his home has been the few houses around the local marketplace throughout his life. When one day his wife disappears without a trace, he feels the growing suspicion of his neighbors, to whom he felt he belonged the day before. Out of fear and shame, he becomes entangled in more and more lies.

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Jonas Milk was the son of a Russian-Jewish family on 21 September 1916 at the Russian born Arkhangelsk, but came already with a year in the turmoil of the October Revolution out of the country and the detours Konstantin Opel and Paris in a small village in the Berry , where he grew up with his parents on the Place du Vieux-Marché . The boy had no memory of his five sisters who had stayed behind in Russia, and for the youngest he harbored tender feelings just because of her name, Dussa. In 1930 the father dared to return to the Soviet Union ; when he was missing, his wife followed him. Jonas never received any news of either fate. He grew up with friends in Paris, attended the Lycée Condorcet , but barely came of age, he took French citizenship and returned to the Vieux-Marché , the only place that was ever a home to him.

Monsieur Jonas, as everyone at the Vieux-Marché calls him, opened a second-hand bookshop , but he made his living primarily in the stamp trade , where he meticulously traced variations on some rare and valuable items. He remained a loner until he married his housekeeper, Gina, 16 years his junior, at the age of 38, a marriage that Gina's mother had really pushed him into, in order to finally place her nymphomaniac daughter in a respectable relationship. Jonas knew that his young wife did not love him, but she touched him, he offered her a quiet home and tactfully looked over her frequent affairs. The Jewish Jonas even accepted the Catholic faith for marriage.

When Gina does not return from an evening out two years later and Jonas discovers that his most valuable postage stamps have disappeared, he suspects that his wife had planned her escape for a long time. Out of a feeling of shame, he told the residents of the Vieux-Marché that they were visiting a friend in nearby Bourges . He becomes entangled in lies, through which he arouses the mistrust of others. Although he feels completely innocent, Jonas has to endure a growing suspicion of the neighbors over the next few days, who obviously suspect him of killing his wife out of jealousy because of her antics. Finally, he is even summoned to the local police station. During the interrogation, Inspector Devaux announced that Gina had confessed to several people that she was afraid of her husband because he was depraved because he never wanted to do her laundry like all the other men in the village. This revelation deals a heavy blow to Jonas and he faints. When he woke up again, two policemen accompanied him home to search his house.

As Jonas walks through the streets, secretly observed by the residents, he realizes that he has never really belonged to them, that it only took this occasion to make him into the stranger that they always thought he was . After the police leave, he wants to hang himself in his garden. At the last moment a blackbird awakens his zest for life, and when the maid of the Hôtel des Négociants visits him and reveals the name of Gina's lover, with whom she met on the day of her disappearance, he envisions with satisfaction how he is giving the information to the inspector presented and how all neighbors have to admit his innocence with shame. But on the way to the police station he remembers the feeling of powerlessness when suddenly everything became very easy for him and his last thoughts were for his sister Dussa, and he turns around. In the morning, the other residents of the Vieux-Marché find him hanged in his garden.

interpretation

According to Stanley G. Eskin, The Arkhangelsk Bookseller shows a process of alienation . Jonas Milk is a "gentle and sensitive Jewish refugee" who is partly reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin's tramp figure. The tenderness and forbearance with which Milk disguises his young wife's affair is completely misunderstood by those around him and the authorities, who only recognize him as a "sleazy old man". After losing his place in the social community, he commits suicide, "a noble, failed attempt at spiritual survival." According to Lucille F. Becker, the figure of a shy loner, uncertain of his masculinity, is an uneventful one even after marriage Leading a life that is only interrupted by the affairs of his promiscuous partner, a common theme in Simenon's work. The motif of a man who is abandoned by his wife from one day to the next can also be found in many novels, for example in The Watchmaker of Everton or The Flight of Monsieur Monde . For Patricia MacManus, Milks' involvement in his well-intentioned lies takes on almost Kafkaesque features until the bookseller draws a conclusion that leaves it to the world to unravel his lies.

According to Michel Lemoine, the novel is in a minor key determined by depression and resignation. The action, which is interrupted by some flashbacks in Milk's past, takes place in the narrow frame of a few houses around a market square, whereby Simenon uses a technique comparable to pointillism to capture the atmosphere of a provincial town with its mediocre, adjusted and narrow-minded residents. Sebastian Hammelehle sees the novel "quite casually shaped by the colors, the mood of the French hinterland towards Bourgogne - and by the sadness of those who don't belong there." In his loneliness and exclusion, Milk has always led his life through his neighbors, which he observed daily. In it he reminds Lucille F. Becker of the protagonists from The Engagement of Monsieur Hire and The Man Who Was Watching the Trains .

In the foreword to a story by Arthur Omre , Simenon described that man's drama consists in being alone and feeling an ever more urgent need for a place among other people, whatever place it may be. But the bookseller Jonas Milk does not manage to find this place in the novel. He is polite and inconspicuous, has a respectable job and an ordinary hobby. In dealing with others he is patient, modest, even humble. But in the end nothing can erase the stigma of the stranger, an experience that, according to Becker, Simenon himself had in his life. In the end, Milk realizes that his supposed friends never saw him as anything but the stranger and loner who came from the other end of the world to settle like a parasite in the Vieux-Marché . In other novels, too, the drama of an outsider in a hostile environment leads to a fatal outcome, for example with Monsieur Hire, who is chased to death, and with old Krull in Chez Krull , who, like Milk, commits suicide.

According to Pierre Assouline , it is often Jewish figures in which Simenon depicts nomads without homeland or roots who try in vain to integrate into a community. A particularly poignant example is the tailor Kachoudas in The Hatter's Fantome , who continually apologizes for his presence. In this respect, Milks' tragic end goes beyond his personal failure and becomes a reflection of a general Jewish fate. The novel was also received very positively by Jewish critics. Chaim Raphael points out, for example, that Simenon in Der Buchhandler von Arkhangelsk misrepresents the social details, but that he succeeded in getting to the essence of the Jewish experience. The novel is an astute analysis of the position of the Jew in the Western world. Ultimately, however, the Jewish theme in the novel is only one aspect of the general human condition , which is about the human being as eternal wanderer.

reception

According to Fenton Bresler, the Arkhangelsk bookseller is considered by many critics to be one of Simenon's best works. Le Figaro saw a "great" Simenon in the novel. Manfred Papst described it in Bücher am Sonntag , the supplement to the NZZ am Sonntag , as a “little masterpiece of milieu portrayal and psychology” and judged: “You can't tell more succinctly, more precisely, more cryptically.” Peter Kaiser called the “gripping study about the Impossibility of finding a new home and the viciousness of a community sworn in injustice ”“ a melancholy masterpiece ”. For Pierre Assouline in Le Monde it is "one of the most beautiful Simenon novels that I read at least once a year."

According to Sebastian Hammelehle on Spiegel Online , The Archangelsk Bookseller is a "tender novel, even if it rarely contains tenderness." The New York Times Book Review spoke of a "poignant story of a man whose shameful attempts to hide his wife's runaway make him a prime suspect for their murder. ” Publishers Weekly saw in Archangelsk Booksellers as well as in the jointly published novel Sonntag an“ artful, merciless exposure of the characters' feelings and intentions ”. Kirkus Reviews spoke of both novels as "Studies in Disappointment and Anxiety," which are both engaging and revealing.

In 2007 Olivier Langlois filmed the novel as the Franco-Belgian television film Monsieur Joseph . In it, the Russian-born Jew Jonas Milk is transformed into an Algerian immigrant named Youssef Hamoudi, known as Monsieur Joseph. The main roles were played by Daniel Prévost , Julie-Marie Parmentier and Serge Riaboukine .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Le petit homme d'Arkhangelsk . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1956 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: The Little Man of Arkhangelsk . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1963.
  • Georges Simenon: The Little Man of Arkhangelsk . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1970.
  • Georges Simenon: The Little Man of Arkhangelsk . Translation: Alfred Kuoni. Diogenes, Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-257-20584-8 .
  • Georges Simenon: The Bookseller of Arkhangelsk . Selected novels in 50 volumes, volume 38. Translation: Alfred Kuoni. Diogenes, Zurich 2013, ISBN 978-3-257-24138-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Le petit homme d'Arkhangelsk in the Simenon bibliography by Yves Martina.
  3. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 102.
  4. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , pp. 347-348.
  5. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , pp. 77, 81.
  6. ↑ Patricia MacManus: The Irony of Murder . In: The Saturday Review, November 5, 1966, p. 42.
  7. ↑ Michel Lemoine: Le petit homme d'Arkhangelsk . In: Robert Frickx, Raymond Trousson (eds.): Lettres françaises de Belgique. Dictionnaire of the oeuvre. I. Le roman . Duclout Paris 1988, ISBN 2-8011-0755-7 , p. 396.
  8. ↑ a b Sebastian Hammelehle: Simenon novels: Sex is just another word for despair . On Spiegel Online from February 13, 2013.
  9. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 84.
  10. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , pp. 77-79.
  11. ↑ Michel Lemoine: Le petit homme d'Arkhangelsk . In: Robert Frickx, Raymond Trousson (eds.): Lettres françaises de Belgique. Dictionnaire of the oeuvre. I. Le roman . Duclout Paris 1988, ISBN 2-8011-0755-7 , p. 397.
  12. ^ Pierre Assouline : Simenon. A biography . Chatto & Windus, London 1997, ISBN 0-7011-3727-4 , pp. 31-32.
  13. ↑ Chaim Raphael: Simenon on the Jews . In: Midstream . Theodor Herzl Foundation, New York 1981, pp. 51-52.
  14. ^ Fenton Bresler: Georges Simenon. In search of the "naked" person . Ernst Kabel, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-921909-93-7 , pp. 300-301.
  15. ↑ Le Figaro of January 30, 1957. Quoted from: Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 350.
  16. ↑ Manfred Papst: Georges Simenon: The bookseller from Arkhangelsk . In: Bücher am Sonntag of January 27, 2013, p. 11.
  17. ↑ Peter Kaiser: From the impossibility of arriving ( memento of the original from January 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.litges.at archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on litges.at.
  18. ↑ Quoted from: Georges Simenon: The bookseller from Arkhangelsk on the side of Diogenes Verlag .
  19. ↑ "a poignant story of a man whose shamefaced efforts to conceal his wife's running away make him a prime suspect for her murder." Quoted from: The New York Times Book Review Volume 71 1966, p. 52.
  20. ↑ "skilful, merciless exposure of the emotions and ambitions of the characters". Quoted from: Publishers Weekly Volume 190, Issues 5-9 1966, p. 101.
  21. ↑ “Studies in frustration and fear, both absorbing, revealing.” Quoted from: Sunday: And The Little Man From Archangel . In Kirkus Reviews of September 14, 1966.
  22. ↑ See Monsieur Joseph in the French Wikipedia .
  23. ^ Monsieur Joseph in the Internet Movie Database (English).