The Engagement of Monsieur Hire (novel)

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The engagement of Monsieur Hire (French: Les Fiançailles de M. Hire ) is a novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It was written in Marsilly , Charente-Maritime , in the summer of 1932 and was published by Fayard in March 1933 as one of Simenon's first non- Maigret novels. In 1978, Diogenes Verlag published the first German translation by Linde Birk. The novel has been made into films several times, including in 1989 by Patrice Leconte as Monsieur Hire with Michel Blanc and Sandrine Bonnaire .

When a prostitute is murdered in Villejuif , the suspicion falls on Monsieur Hire, a loner and eccentric who is nobody, let alone sympathetic. The fact that he is also spying on a maid in the neighborhood only increases suspicion of the voyeur . Nevertheless, the young woman seeks contact with her observer.

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Villejuif Town Hall

In Paris suburb of Villejuif a prostitute was murdered and robbed. The suspicion quickly falls on Monsieur Hire, the son of a Russian-Jewish tailor named Hirovitch. The concierge let him in late that night, and he's bleeding from a fresh wound on his chin that he tries to explain by a shaving accident. Monsieur Hire is a loner who is not known to anyone. His corpulence gives him a soft, repulsive appearance and a hopping, almost prancing gait. He keeps apologizing for fear of bumping into other people. Hire earns his money through small scams, and he is already on the records of the moral police for distributing pornographic literature. In his lonely, dreary life he indulges only a few passions: he regularly visits a brothel, is the acclaimed master of a bowling club, in which he disguises himself as a high-ranking police officer, and he obsessively observes a young woman from the house next door: the maid Alice.

While Monsieur Hire is increasingly intimidated by the police surveillance and his arrest seems to be only a matter of time, Alice surprisingly takes the initiative and makes advances to her voyeur, the urgency of which he cannot escape. At their first rendezvous, the reason for their behavior becomes clear: the robbery they are looking for is actually their friend Emile. On the night of the crime, he broke into his girlfriend's house to wash off the traces and hide the victim's handbag in Alice's apartment. After Alice ascertains that Hire has been following this incident as well as everything else that is going on in her apartment, she desperately asks him to cover up her boyfriend, who has threatened to kill her if he is arrested. The amorous Hire assures her of this and only too willingly believes that she continues to go out with Emile simply out of fear of Emile. He makes plans how to save the girl and at the same time hand her boyfriend over to the police.

Gare de Lyon in Paris

On his own initiative, Hire presented to the Paris criminal police on the Quai des Orfèvres . But his hope of being able to speak honestly “from man to man” with Inspector Godet is quickly dashed. He has only contempt for Hire and his immigrant father and is not interested in the assurances of his visitor that he is not allowed to betray the murderer. Hire only sees the possibility of daring the biggest step of his life so far: fleeing abroad with Alice to hide with her until the trial is over. He hopes to convince the young woman with his saved fortune in the form of treasure notes and sends her a ticket to Geneva for the following morning. Relieved to leave his previous life behind, he does not return to his apartment and spends the night around in the Parisian streets, where he rejects a prostitute with reference to his "engagement". But he also writes an anonymous letter to the public prosecutor in which he mentions the name of the murderer Emile.

The next morning Hire waits in vain for Alice at the Gare de Lyon and returns home a beaten man. After the victim's handbag appeared in his apartment, the police were waiting for him there. The imminent arrest is driving the people together on the street, and when Hire strides through the trellis, one wrong movement, stooping for his hat, is enough and the mob pounces on the alleged killer to lynch him . Hire escapes, escapes onto the roof of the house, where he trips, slips and, gazed at by the crowd, clings to the zinc edging of the roof edge. Just as a rescuer is finally trying to rescue him, Hire dies of heart failure. After the death of his only witness, Emile ventures out of the shadows again. Now that she is no longer of any use to him, he cockily rejects Alice. Around them, the people of the city are busily resuming their interrupted lives.

background

When the first two Maigret novels appeared in February 1931 - Maigret and the late Monsieur Gallet and Maigret and the Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien - these were the first works that Georges Simenon published under his own name. Before that, he had written penny novels for years under numerous pseudonyms . Despite the success of the Maigret series, Simenon wanted to develop into serious literature and wrote non-Maigret novels on the side without his famous commissioner. According to Simenon's biographer Patrick Marnham, the first two attempts - Das Gasthaus im Alsace and The Passenger of the Polarlys - were still largely in the genre of the crime novel . The first real “romans durs” followed by June 1933: The engagement of Monsieur Hire , Tropenfieber and Das Haus am Kanal . Peter Nusser assigns Monsieur Hire's engagement to the "psychologically oriented crime novels", while a contemporary critic of the Ami du peuple recognizes no crime novel in the novel, "although the plot revolves around a crime" but "a remarkably well elaborated psychological study" .

The final scene with Monsieur Hire fleeing over the rooftops goes back to Simenon's experience in Liège in 1919, when the young reporter eyed a dispute in a hotel that led to a man fleeing over the rooftops. The hunt was watched by an increasing number of good citizens on the street who, after rumors that it was a German spy, fanatically asked for his head. It was only through the deployment of the police and fire brigade that the human hunt was ended. The incident followed Simenon for a long time and, according to Pierre Assouline , led to the author's phobia of excited crowds. Simenon also took up the subject of lynching again in later novels such as Chez Krull or Schwarzer Regen .

interpretation

According to Thomas Narcejac , The Engagement of Monsieur Hire is a novel with a rudimentarily described main character who consists entirely of "atmosphere". Patrick Marnham sums up the simple plot in one sentence: Monsieur Hires' obsession with a young maid allows the maid to accuse him of murder. Beyond that, however, the novel contains many themes that are typical of Simenon: the people on the streets of Paris, the crowded living together in a tenement, the hardship of the common people, the mixture of excitement and hope that reigns in a train station, the routine of a brothel and the investigative methods of the police. The latter differ significantly from Maigret's methods: the inspectors drink, flirt with the maid, sleep on Hire's bed and are only too happy to believe the false denunciation and to interpret any evidence against the suspect. The image of the police is both darker and more realistic than in the Maigret series.

Stanley G. Eskin sees the novel in the tradition of Gogol , but without his predilection for purring . Monsieur Hire is "perhaps the most enslaved, estranged and miserable" fictional character that Simenon created in his early work. He leads a miserable life among the little people to whom he would like to belong and to whom he nevertheless fearfully keeps his distance. With Hire's love for the maid, a surge of pathos breaks into the loner's life. But the dream of a family bond turns out to be impossible and only sounds ironic in the title of the novel. Finally, the beaten Hire accepted his role as a victim with Christ- like devotion. After Hire was unable to “justify his existence and find his dignity” in the closed society of his fellow men, according to Peter Kaiser, living with Alice means the last chance for him, on which he is betting everything. Andreas Kilb translates the cause of death cardiac arrest as: Monsieur Hire dies "of a broken heart". In the end, when he is hanging on the roof of the house, the omens for the voyeur are reversed for Tilman Spreckelsen: "Now it is he who is being watched by all the neighbors without there being any hiding place for him."

Pierre Assouline examines Simenon's contradicting view of the Jews . As a young journalist, he wrote a series of anti-Semitic articles for the right-wing Gazette de Liège under the title The Jewish Danger . Although these articles were atypical for his other journalistic work, stereotypical drawings of Jewish figures can also be found in his early literary work . Which have shown the engagement of Monsieur Hire a negative image of the Jewish-born Hire, for which the reader hesitant could muster sympathy. On the other hand, Simenon's image of the Jews underwent a change twenty years later in Der Buchhandler von Arkhangelsk , a novel that was also highly praised by the Jewish press and which draws a much warmer portrait of its Jewish protagonist Jonas Milk. Lucille F. Becker sees two variations on the same theme in the two novels. Both title characters are outsiders who watch the world go by from a distance. Both are charged with a crime they did not commit. Both get involved with an immoral and unscrupulous woman. However, the people differ in their responsibility for their own outsider role: While the bookseller Milk suffers existentially from being outcast, Monsieur Hire is ultimately responsible for his status as an eccentric and loner.

reception

According to Carolin Riemer in the Ostsee-Zeitung , Monsieur Hire's engagement is “a story that pretends to be a thriller and captures the French charm of the early 20th century.” It was “[e] elegantly and calmly written. So entertaining, gloomy, full of guilt and pain that it takes the reader's breath away after reading it. ”For Manfred Orlick on literaturkritik.de , Simenon in the novel“ proves to be a masterful portrayal of human loneliness, as an advocate for the failures, the humiliated and offended ". And for the Tages-Anzeiger , the author feels “the primal instincts and motivations of human action, rather: behavior,” while he “has reached the height of his literary endeavors”.

The New York Review of Books named the 2007 American New Edition novel "one of the iciest and most compassionate of Simenon's extraordinary psychological novels," which explores "the secret of a pure heart in a compromised soul." Publishers Weekly judged: "This is a quiet, suspenseful story with no heroes, villains and justice, only with the inevitability of fate." Benjamin Strong recommended the novel on Time Out New York as "gripping beach reading" that is more complex than most existentialist ones Thriller. She draws a Paris between the wars as a “moral vortex in which truth is less important than survival”.

Oliver Hahn from maigret.de saw The Engagement of Monsieur Hire “told very fluently and excitingly”, with even “action” being offered at the end. For him, the novel was "one of Simenon's books that you have to read" and the five best "Non-Maigrets". Marco Roth also recommended The Engagement of Monsieur Hire in The Nation Simenon newcomers as a starting point. He went further, however, in suggesting the novel, which "creptly predicted the psychological mechanisms of fascism", as "must read for any American intelligence officer" who "trusts 'informants' to select suspected terrorists".

The novel was filmed a total of three times. In 1946, Julien Duvivier implemented the template with Michel Simon and Viviane Romance under the title Panique (German: Panik ). A year later, the Portuguese film Barrio by Ladislao Vajda followed . Patrice Leconte took up the subject again in 1989 in the feature film Monsieur Hire (German: The engagement of Monsieur Hire ). The main roles were played by Michel Blanc and Sandrine Bonnaire . In 1999 the Audiobuch Verlag published an audio book version of the novel, which Hans-Peter Bögel read.

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Les Fiançailles de Mr. Hire . Fayard, Paris 1933 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: The Engagement of Monsieur Hire . Translation: Linde Birk. Diogenes, Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-257-01561-5 .
  • Georges Simenon: The Engagement of Monsieur Hire . Selected novels in 50 volumes, volume 1. Translation: Linde Birk. Diogenes, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-257-24101-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1924 à 1945 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of the Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ^ Les Fiançailles de Mr. (sic) Hire in the bibliography of 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. 118.
  4. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The life of Georges Simenon . Knaus, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-8135-2208-3 , p. 216.
  5. ↑ Peter Nusser: The crime novel . Metzler, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-14191-0 , p. 163.
  6. ↑ Ami du peuple , May 2, 1933. Quoted from: Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 190.
  7. ^ Pierre Assouline : Simenon. A biography . Chatto & Windus, London 1997, ISBN 0-7011-3727-4 , p. 20.
  8. ^ Thomas Narcejac : The Art of Simenon . Routledge & Kegan, London 1952, pp. 103, 110.
  9. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The Life of Georges Simenon , pp. 235–236.
  10. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography , pp. 187-188.
  11. ↑ Peter Kaiser: Window to the Courtyard ( Memento of the original from December 12, 2015 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.
  12. ↑ Andreas Kilb : The man at the window . In: Die Zeit of September 29, 1989.
  13. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: The engagement of Monsieur Hire . On: FAZ.net from October 30, 2010.
  14. ^ Pierre Assouline: Simenon. A Biography , pp. 31-32.
  15. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , pp. 77-78.
  16. ↑ Carolin Riemer: Outsider in spy position  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.ostsee-zeitung.de   . In: Ostsee-Zeitung of December 23, 2010.
  17. ↑ Manfred Orlick: evil mind game . On: literaturkritik.de .
  18. ↑ Quoted from: The engagement of Monsieur Hire ( memento of the original from January 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Diogenes Verlag .  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diogenes.ch
  19. ^ "One of the most chilling and compassionate of Simenon's extraordinary psychological novels, The Engagement explores the mystery of a blameless heart in a compromised soul." In: The Engagement at New York Review Books .
  20. ↑ "This is a quietly compelling story with no hero, no villain and no justice — just the inevitability of fate." Quoted from: The Engagement at New York Review Books .
  21. ↑ "Gripping, too [...] engrossing beach read", "as a moral vortex where truth isn't as highly valued as survival". In: Benjamin Strong: The Engagement . In: Time Out New York, May 24, 2007.
  22. ↑ The engagement of Monsieur Hire on maigret.de.
  23. ↑ The five best on maigret.de.
  24. ^ "A novel that eerily predicted the psychological mechanics of fascism", " The Engagement should be required reading for every American intelligence officer who relies on" informers "to pick out suspected terrorists." Marco Roth: It's Doom Alone That Counts . In: The Nation, May 7, 2007.
  25. ^ Panic (1946). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  26. ^ Barrio (1947). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  27. ^ Monsieur Hire (1989). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .