The time with Anaïs

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The time with Anaïs (French: Le Temps d'Anaïs ) is a novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It was written from October 24 to November 1, 1950 in Lakeville , Connecticut and was pre-published under the title L'auberge d'Ingrannes from February 19 to April 4, 1951 in the newspaper Le Populaire des Paris . At the same time, the book edition was published in March of that year under the title Le Temps d'Anaïs by Presses de la Cité . The first German translation by Ursula Vogel was published by Diogenes Verlag in 1987 .

Albert Bauche murdered a film producer he worked for and who was also his wife's lover. Everyone wants to ascribe the act to his jealousy, and in countless interrogations Bauche does not succeed in making his actual motives understandable. It is only with a psychiatrist that he feels an interest in his life story that goes beyond the murder. And he tells of his youth and a girl named Anaïs.

content

The 27-year-old Albert Bauche murdered the charismatic film producer Serge Nicolas, for whom he worked as managing director , in Paris . He shot Nicolas' own revolver at him, struck him 22 times with a poker before killing his victim with a statue. Bauche turns himself in to the police and explains the apparently bloodthirsty act by saying that he panicked at the sight of the seriously injured man and tried desperately to relieve him from the suffering. In his opinion, there are also good reasons for the murder, which he intends to explain to the officers, but during the interrogation he lacks the previously arranged words. Bauche senses that all other people are no longer willing to recognize him as a fellow human being and that his assertions that he is a man of honor who therefore had to commit the deed just meet with incomprehension.

View of Le Grau-du-Roi

The investigating commissioner, the examining magistrate Bazin, even his lawyer Houard, an old friend of his father's, and the mother who came to see him are all unable to understand Bauche and his confused explanations. It is clear to everyone: It was a murder out of jealousy , because Nicolas was the lover of Belly's wife Fernande, and the only thing that allows Bauche to escape the death penalty is a plea for reduced sanity. Finally, Bauche is brought before a psychiatrist , and although the situation of the questioning is anything but pleasant - Bauche is sitting in a dark room illuminated by a bright lamp, and numerous students are present - Bauche reaches out to the psychiatrist, whose name Méchouard he only fully understands End experiences, trust. Here, for the first time, he does not just have to answer a set of questions that leaves no room for his explanations, but can report in detail about his life, in which his counterpart seems to be interested beyond all questions about the guilt of the murder.

Bauche grew up in Le Grau-du-Roi , a small fishing village that in his memory is always bathed in warm sunlight, while everything in Paris seems gray and dreary to him. Here life was largely without rules, and the focus of little Albert's interest was Anaïs, five years older than him, a girl who, driven by insatiable sexual desire, slept with all the men in the village, even with Albert's father and once with Albert himself. In later encounters with women, Bauche, who never felt himself to be a real man, always remained impotent; he could only associate with prostitutes and with Fernande, who was just as promiscuous as Anaïs was once. Bauche felt no jealousy of his wife's sexual adventures, knowing that she kept coming back to him, afflicted by regular bouts of depression .

It was Serge Nicolas who finally upset her loved ones. He took Fernande as his lover, and to do her a favor, he hired her husband, who was gradually working his way up as a casual journalist, to run his film company. From then on, Bauche and his wife lived a completely different life, interacting with film stars, moving to receptions and spending the money faster than it came in. It was secretly clear to Bauche that he was living beyond his means, incurring debts that he would never be able to pay off, and that he was in danger of falling at any time. But he only understood that he was only serving Nicolas as a straw man in his fraudulent dealings when he heard him one day talking about him as a "bloated fool" who didn't matter because you could do whatever you want with him. From that moment on, Bauche had resolved to kill Nicolas, which he did weeks later when he was called into his private apartment and saw Nicolas' revolver. When, at the end of his sessions with Méchouard, when Bauche is admitted to his psychiatric clinic for observation, he desperately asks the psychiatrist whether he is really crazy. But he just shakes his head with a smile, and Bauche stays in the clinic for years to speak out.

interpretation

For Helmut Eikermann , Die Zeit with Anaïs is not a “real thriller ”. There is a murder, a victim and an investigation, but the perpetrator is known from the start. Instead it is “the story of the almost helpless Albert Bauches, who once in his vain life pulled himself up to an act and is now just as helpless at the mercy of the police, the judiciary and ultimately the psychologist.” CV Terry sees three light conditions in Albert's life Determine your stomach: the sunlight in the coastal city of his youth, the wet and cold blackness of his Parisian years full of failures and the brilliant neon light of the short time in the film business. Belly's fate, however, was personified from the start in Anaïs, that small town Lilith , who at the same time embodies Mother Earth and the temptation that Belly has never been able to satisfy.

For Stanley G. Eskin, “the real hero of the book” is the psychiatrist Méchouard, who is the only one who offers the murderer, who is desperately searching for himself, the chance to be understood. The New Yorker describes Méchouard as “partly detective, partly priest and partly doctor”, who, however, does not fulfill the functions of all three professions and is satisfied to hear the confession, “apparently without any feeling of obligation to enlighten, comfort or heal. “For Marie-Paule Boutry, the figure stands in a series of similar heroes in Simenon's novels , including the examining magistrate Ernest Coméliau in a letter to my judge , but above all the detective Maigret .

Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White see the novel as an example of the fact that Simenon's novels always go into the depths of the unconscious and that, like the psychiatrist in the novel, he never judges. Man in himself is not bad, just human, and being human is a difficult task. According to Fenton Bresler, the novel has "strong autobiographical traits". The descriptions of Bauches arrival in strange Paris reminds him of Simenon's own relocation from Brussels to the French metropolis. The medical journal Concours médical even put the novel on the formula that Simenon could exclaim: "Bauche, c'est moi" ("Bauche, that's me").

reception

The novel, written in America, also proved to be a bestseller there. It had already sold 430,000 times in 1958 under the title The Girl in His Past . CV Terry issued the warning in the New York Times : "Readers who are indignant about Gallic openness should avoid this case story at all costs. Anyone who believes that every life is worth exploring, if this exploration is true and thorough, will stick with it to the last bitter comma. ”The conclusion was, in a nutshell:“ Class 1 Simenon ”. Margaret Hickey also wrote in The News and Courier : “Not written for the squeamish. [...] Large parts of the book are of questionable taste, but the description of the prisoner's loneliness and confusion is effective. "The New Yorker , on the other hand, saw the novel as" bumbling and indecisive, as if Simenon was not entirely interested in what he was doing, despite the intensity of his writing. "

In 1987 Didier Cohen and Jacques Ertaud filmed the novel as a French TV production in the TV series L'heure Simenon . It played Roger Souza , Juliet Berto and Stephan Meldegg .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Le Temps d'Anaïs . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1951 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: The time with Anaïs . Translation: Ursula Vogel. Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-21329-8 .
  • Georges Simenon: The time with Anaïs . Selected novels in 50 volumes, volume 30. Translation: Ursula Vogel. Diogenes, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-257-24130-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Le Temps d'Anaïs 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. 120.
  4. ↑ Helmut Eikermann : Simenon, Georges: The time with Anaïs . In: Berlin Reading Signs issue 08/01.
  5. ↑ CV Terry: Background for Murder . In: The New York Times, February 24, 1952.
  6. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , S: 319.
  7. ↑ "Professor Méchouard, the inscrutable psychiatrist, who is part detective, part priest, and part doctor, and who evades the functions of all three, being content to sit back and have confessions offered to him, apparently without feeling any obligation to decipher, to comfort, or to cure. "In: The New Yorker Volume 28, Issues 1-10, p. 113.
  8. ^ Marie-Paule Boutry: Les 300 vies de Simenon . Editions de l'Arsenal, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-910470-08-3 , p. 310.
  9. ^ Bernard Rosenberg, David Manning White: Mass culture. The popular arts in America . Free Press, Glencoe 1959, p. 173.
  10. ^ Fenton Bresler: Georges Simenon. In search of the "naked" person . Ernst Kabel, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-921909-93-7 , p. 75.
  11. Jump up ↑ J. Delahousse, J. Messerschmitt, G. Oudin: Un roman de G. Simenon: le Temps d'Anaïs. Tentative d'approche psychanalytigue . In: Concours médical issues 1–7 Paris 1977, p. 568.
  12. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 316.
  13. ^ "Readers who are upset by Gallic frankness should back away from that case history at all costs. Those who believe that any life is worth exploring if it is explored truthfully and in depth will stay to the last bitter comma. […] Grade-A Simenon. ”Quote from: CV Terry: Background for Murder . In: The New York Times, February 24, 1952.
  14. ^ "Not written for the squeemish. […] Much of the book is in questionable taste but the description of the lonliness and bewilderment of the prisoner is effective. ”Quotation from: Margaret Hickey: Case History . In: The News and Courier, May 4, 1952.
  15. ↑ "Still, the story seems ragged and inconclusive, as though if Simenon were not entirely interested in what he was doing, in spite of the intensity of his writing." In: The New Yorker Volume 28, issues 1–10, pp. 113.
  16. ↑ L'heure Simenon: Le temps d'Anaïs in the Internet Movie Database (English)