George Smiley

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Smiley is a literary figure of the British writer John le Carré . He is the main character of the five novels shadow of yesterday ( Call for the Dead , 1961) A murder first class ( A Murder of Quality , 1962), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ( Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , 1974), a kind hero ( the Honorable Schoolboy , 1977) and Smiley's People ( Smiley's People , 1979) as well as a minor character in the novels the Spy who came in from the cold ( the Spy who came in from the cold , 1963), glass war ( the Looking Glass War , 1965), the secret companion ( the Secret Pilgrim , 1990) and the legacy of the spies ( A Legacy of Spies , 2017). With the exception of A Murder First Class , a classic whodunit - crime , all the books are of espionage literature Act.

Smiley is an agent of the British foreign intelligence service MI6 , who is based in the novels at Cambridge Circus and is therefore nicknamed Circus (depending on the translation also Rondell ). In the course of the novels he rises to the head of the circus . Smiley is an antihero . He is short, fat, bespectacled, loves German baroque poetry and leads an unhappy marriage in which he is regularly betrayed by his wife Ann. On the other hand, he is characterized by the brilliant planning of his missions as well as his humanity, which repeatedly brings him into conflict with the intelligence work. In film adaptations, the figure was portrayed by five actors; best known was the interpretation of Alec Guinness in two television series of the BBC .

chronology

prehistory

Cambridge Circus , the fictional home of MI6 in the Smiley novels
Bywater Street in Chelsea , Smiley's home

The novel Yesterday's Shadows is preceded by Smiley's Curriculum Vitae . His date of birth remains anonymous, but can be set to around 1907; in The Secret Companion it is postponed to 1915. Smiley comes from a middle-class British family. He spent at least part of his childhood in the Black Forest in Germany . He attended a smaller public school and the Blackwells (in the 1982 BBC series Lincoln College , le Carrés actual college at Oxford), an obsolete college in Oxford with the goal of an academic career in German baroque literature. In 1928 (in Dame, König, As, Spion the date is changed to 1937 in order to make Smiley's appearances in the 1970s more plausible), on the recommendation of his teacher, he was recruited by the British secret service under the direction of Steed-Aspreys. On his behalf, as a lecturer at a small German university, he sighted potential British spies, while he developed growing contempt for the activities of the National Socialists and their book burnings . During the war years he spied under the guise of an arms dealer in Sweden, Switzerland and Germany until he returned to England in 1943 as a burnt-out spy.

After the end of the Second World War , Smiley married, to everyone's surprise, Lady Ann Sercomb (e), Steed-Asprey's beautiful secretary, who, unlike her husband, came from a socially respected family. The couple moved into a Georgian terraced house in Chelsea at 9 Bywater Street. He worked as a lecturer in Oxford for two years until his wife left him in 1947 in favor of the Cuban racing driver Juan Alvida. Smiley returned to the secret service; from 1951 he was in counterintelligence and recruited spies on trips around the world. The service had changed a lot in the meantime. Maston, a careerist and a foreign minister , had inherited the former academic leadership circle. Too old to be an agent, Smiley soon ended up on the sidelines.

Yesterday's shadow

In the novel Yesterday's Shadows ( Call for the Dead , 1961), Smiley quits his job at the circus to solve the alleged suicide of Samuel Fennan, an official at the British Foreign Office. He unmasked an East German agent ring under the direction of his former student Dieter Frey, whom he once led for espionage. During the investigation, Smiley is assisted by agent Peter Guillam and police inspector Mendel, who subsequently become his closest confidante.

First class murder

In a murder first class ( A Murder of Quality , 1962) is Smiley is still out of service. At the request of a former colleague, he is a private investigator into a murder case at the Carne School in Dorset . Smiley looks behind the facade of the British elite school, which his wife Ann once attended, and he convicts the murderer of a teacher's wife.

The spy who came in from the cold

In The Spy Who Came in from the Cold ( The Spy Who Came in from the Cold , 1963) Smiley the opaque stripping puller for the Circus and its director will appear for the first time in the role Control . He allegedly disapproves of the action in which a British agent named Alec Leamas is supposed to mark a defector in order to eliminate Hans-Dieter Mundt, the head of the GDR counter-espionage . Apparently he even endangers the plot against Mundt through his sympathy for Leamas' lover. However, it turns out that this behavior of Smileys was part of a much more complex plan, which in truth was not directed against Mundt, but against his internal competitor Josef Fiedler.

War in the mirror

Smiley is only marginally involved in Krieg im Spiegel ( The Looking Glass War , 1965), but he is once again a permanent member of the Circus. With growing skepticism he observed the attempts of the competing domestic secret service to smuggle a British spy into the GDR in order to obtain clarification about the suspected stationing of missile weapons . Although he sees through the double play of his superior Control, in the end he puts himself in the service of the cause.

Queen, King, Ace, Spy

Dame, König, As, Spion ( Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , 1974) is the prelude to the so-called Karla trilogy (English: The Quest for Karla ), which revolves around Smiley's fight against the Soviet chief of intelligence with the code name Karla . After Control's death, Smiley also leaves the circus, which is now led by a shamrock led by Percy Allelines. But when the rumors grew that a Soviet mole had taken root in the inner circle of the circus, Smiley took over the secret investigation at the Ministry's request. In the end, he exposes a double traitor who not only sabotages the circus activities on behalf of Karla, but also has an affair with Smiley's wife Ann.

Kind of a hero

After the mole has been exposed, Smiley himself takes over the management of the broken circus in Eine Art Held ( The Honorable Schoolboy , 1977), which he has to rebuild from scratch. The first successful counter-attack against the Soviet head of the secret service Karla succeeds in Hong Kong . Nevertheless, at the moment of his triumph, Smiley had to hand over the management of the Circus to Saul Enderby, who had better contacts with the ministry and American allies. With Smiley, all his companions are also put aside. He finally separates from his unfaithful wife.

Agent on his own behalf

In Agent on his own behalf ( Smiley's People , 1979), the retired Smiley comes across a trail of Karla after the murder of an Estonian agent. For the first time, the aloof Soviet intelligence chief shows feelings and thus a weakness when he creates a camouflage identity for a young Russian woman in western countries without the knowledge of the Kremlin . Without the support of the circus, Smiley investigates on her own. The downfall of the adversary turns into his personal triumph, but in the course of the conflict the means of the two adversaries have increasingly converged.

The secret companion

The novel The secret companion ( The Secret Pilgrim , 1990) continues after the end of the Cold War one. Smiley, now a legend, heads the Committee for Fishing Rights , an informal working group between Soviet and British intelligence. He gives a speech to recruits from the agent school in Sarratt , in which he prophesies that the British secret service will face new challenges in a changed world order.

The legacy of the spies

In the novel The Legacy of Spies ( A Legacy of Spies , 2017), Smiley, who settled in Freiburg im Breisgau after his retirement , is once again confronted with his past by his former friend and colleague Peter Guillam, in particular with the unsuccessful "Operation Windfall ”from The Spy Who Came Out of the Cold . Smiley defends himself that he did not commit any of his deeds in the name of world peace, capitalism or Christianity, not even for England, but always for Europe, for which he hopes a new age of reason.

description

Theodor W. Adorno (1964), with whom Rudi Kost Smiley illustrated in his biography

In the introductory description of Yesterday's Shadows, Smiley said: "Small, fat and of a calm disposition, he seemed to be spending a lot of money on really miserable suits that on his square frame looked like the skin of a shriveled toad." His wife Ann attests her "breathtakingly ordinary" husband nicknamed "Frog". In the circus he earned the nickname “Mole” because of his crooked gait and his blinking short-sightedness , his secretary calls him “Teddy Bear”, other colleagues “Owl”. His movements seem awkward, he turns slightly red and shows various tics , such as a nervous twitching of the eyelid and the frequent cleaning of his thick glasses with his tie.

Smiley's demeanor is calm, serious and formal and is overlaid by great shyness. He is rational and tries to keep his emotions under control. A cautious outburst of emotion is only noticeable in extreme situations, when he begins to tremble and is no longer able to express himself clearly. At the center of his emotional life is his wife Ann, next to whom there seems to have been no other woman in Smiley's life. This cannot be said of Ann, who repeatedly cheats on her husband and leaves for longer periods. After all, she admits "that it would be Smiley if there was only one man in her life". Only when she cheats with a colleague who turns out to be a Russian spy can Smiley no longer forgive her and henceforth lives alone in the shared house on Bywater Street in the Chelsea district of London . Besides Ann, Smiley's passion is German literature of the seventeenth century and especially poets such as Gryphius , Grimmelshausen , Lohenstein and Olearius . He attends an English club that was once founded by Steed-Asprey and is not accepting new members.

Smiley's technical brilliance is undisputed. Even during the war, he was known in the circus as “the smartest and perhaps the strangest of them all.” In the course of his career, he earned the respect of his colleagues and subordinates and, after retiring, gained the reputation of a legend. In his job, Smiley loves the possibility of "academic excursions into the mystery of human behavior that resulted from the practical application of his own conclusions." However, the secret service also leads to a withdrawal from interpersonal contacts and a fear of falsehood, which Smiley compensates, by endeavoring to "observe the rules of humanity with the most painful objectivity". In doing so, he repeatedly demonstrates virtues such as decency, kindness, compassion and integrity.

analysis

George Smiley is an antihero , non-hero, or the modern 20th century hero type. Although he has certain traits of the classic hero , in his constant struggle for a lost cause, according to Helen S. Garson, he looks more like a prince who is forever trapped in a frog. Smiley forms a complete contrast to the classic protagonists of espionage literature like James Bond . Although le Carré denied the intention of an alternative to Ian Fleming's agents, he saw in his novels an "absolute caricature of reality", an "absurdity" and "obscenity". The figure Bonds is “the ultimate prostitute” with its hardened cynicism towards any form of moral obligation. He replaces love with technology. ”Although Smiley is drawn in a more differentiated manner and reveals numerous weaknesses in his private life, he also proves the superhuman abilities of a mastermind in professional work; his adversary Karla is elevated to a mythical level, as is her argument, which not only evokes echoes of the search for the Holy Grail in terms of its title.

According to Myron J. Aronoff, Smiley's heroism lies in his balancing act between reluctant loyalties, especially between conflicting ethical and political imperatives. He is an intellectual who is forced to act by his profession, a humanist whose actions cause harm and result in the death of bystanders. Even though he's a spy, he's still human. David Caute calls him a professional who has remained an amateur at heart, both a player and a gentleman . In A Kind of Hero , Smiley himself expresses his central dilemma: “To be inhuman to defend our humanity, to be brutal to defend our mercy, to be one-sided in order to defend our diversity”. For Aronoff, such paradoxes are the fundamental problem of democracies in dealing with espionage and politics. Le Carré does not offer a solution, but he sharpens the perception of his readers and offers a role model for coping with the figure of smileys.

From an ideological point of view, Smiley is far removed from any form of “ -ism ”, since - as le Carré justifies - any political ideology only tempts to deny the humanitarian instincts. His credo formulated smiley at the end of his career in the secret companion : "I was always the person interested have never interested me in the least [...] ideologies, unless they were insane or malignant. Institutions have never been as important to me as the people working in them, and tactics have always been just an excuse for me not to have feelings. Our job belongs to people , not to the masses. ”According to Lynn Beene, Smiley is a“ liberal humanist ”who constantly has to question his humanism. According to David Monaghan, his individualism is formative for his engagement against National Socialism and Communism . For Adam Rothberg, Smiley embodies traditional British values, and his résumé reflects the decline of the British Empire. In the end, Smiley is disaffected; his previous patriotism and loyalty to institutions have dissolved. He refuses to accept personal and political betrayal any longer and only believes in his own norms and ideals.

role models

John le Carré (2008)

In a television interview with Charlie Rose in 1993, le Carré stated that his character George Smiley was based on two models: Vivian Greene, his tutor at Lincoln College , Oxford, and John Bingham, a former employee of the British domestic secret service MI5 and later a writer. In a foreword to a new edition of a crime novel by John Bingham, he wrote: "Nobody who knew John and his work could not have recognized the description of Smiley in my first novel." In addition, however, le Carrés himself had also served as a model. In the 1992 preface to Call for the Dead , he went on to say that he wanted to share Smiley Greene's great cleverness and Bingham's ingenuity and patriotism. Nevertheless, every literary figure is an amalgam from different sources, which are worked on in the imagination of the writer until they are more reminiscent of his own being than anyone else. Elsewhere he stated that he shared Smiley’s shyness, the pronounced desire for anonymity and the joint activity as an intelligence officer and German teacher. Smiley is also a father figure for him, but one that is in complete contrast to his biological father.

It was publicly speculated that the surname could have been borrowed from British intelligence officer Colonel David Smiley. And in particular the former head of the secret service, Maurice Oldfield, who headed MI6 from 1973 to 1978, was repeatedly associated with Smiley. Le Carré has repeatedly denied this rumor. However, he and Alec Guinness had met Oldfield in preparation for the BBC adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , and the actor adopted some of his behavior in the adaptation. For le Carré, Guinness' game remained an "unbeatable embodiment" of smileys. The appropriation of his creation by Guinness and the television audience, however, also blocked the author's own access to the character and contributed to le Carré's conclusion in Agent on his own with a smiley face.

Film adaptations

The role of George Smiley was played by a total of five actors in British film and television productions. The first smiley face performer was Rupert Davies, known as Maigret , in The Spy Who Came Out of the Cold (1965). He only played a supporting role alongside Richard Burton as Alec Leamas. A year later, Call for a Dead , the film adaptation of Yesterday's Shadows with James Mason in the lead role, but renamed Charles Dobbs. In 1979 and 1982, Alec Guinness played George Smiley in two BBC television series based on the novels Lady, King, As, Spy and Agent on his own behalf . In 1991 Denholm Elliott joined the cast in the TV production The Murderer with the Silver Wings, based on the crime thriller A First Class Murder . In 2011, Gary Oldman took on the role of Smileys in the remake Lady, King, Ace, Spy .

reception

When David C. Jewitt and Jane Luu discovered the first trans-Neptunian object with the provisional designation (15760) QB 1 in 1992 in the Kuiper Belt , they wanted to name it after le Carré's hero Smiley . However, there was already an asteroid 1613 Smiley named after an American astronomer , which is why (15760) Albion remained unnamed for a long time.

literature

  • Myron J. Aronoff: George Smiley. Liberal Sentiment and Skeptical Balance. In: Myron J. Aronoff: The Spy Novels of John le Carré. Balancing Ethics and Politics . St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-312-21482-0 , pp. 15-38.
  • Helen S. Garson: Enter George Smiley. Le Carré's Call for the Dead . In: Harold Bloom (ed.): John le Carré . Chelsea House, New York 1987, ISBN 0-87754-703-3 , pp. 73-80.
  • Gerhard Henschel : The melancholy hero. George Smiley - Review of a Master Spy . In: du No. 3/1998, pp. 56–60.
  • Rudi Kost : About George Smiley . Poller, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-87959-227-6 .
  • David Monaghan: Smiley's Circus. The secret world of John le Carré . Heyne, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-05629-9 .
  • Davin Monaghan: The Recurring George Smiley. In: David Monaghan: The Novels of John le Carré. The Art of Survival . Basil Blackwell, New York 1985, ISBN 0-631-14283-5 , pp. 123-171.
  • Abraham Rothberg: The Decline and Fall of George Smiley. John le Carré and English Decency. In: Harold Bloom (ed.): John le Carré . Chelsea House, New York 1987, ISBN 0-87754-703-3 , pp. 49-63.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Monaghan: Smiley's Circus. The secret world of John le Carré . Heyne, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-05629-9 , p. 243.
  2. ↑ Davin Monaghan: The Novels of John le Carré. The Art of Survival . Basil Blackwell, New York 1985, ISBN 0-631-14283-5 , p. 127.
  3. ↑ Rudi Kost: About George Smiley . Poller, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-87959-227-6 , p. 68. See also: Gerhard Henschel: Der melancholische Held. George Smiley - Review of a Master Spy . In: du No. 3/1998, p. 56.
  4. ↑ a b c All quotations from: John le Carré: Shadows from yesterday . Ullstein, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8437-0857-9 , chapter 1.
  5. ^ A b Myron J. Aronoff: The Spy Novels of John le Carré. Balancing Ethics and Politics . St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-312-21482-0 , p. 16.
  6. ^ David Monaghan: Smiley's Circus. The secret world of John le Carré . Heyne, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-05629-9 , p. 253.
  7. ^ David Monaghan: Smiley's Circus. The secret world of John le Carré . Heyne, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-05629-9 , pp. 251-254.
  8. ^ David Monaghan: Smiley's Circus. The secret world of John le Carré . Heyne, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-05629-9 , pp. 251-252.
  9. ↑ John le Carré: A First Class Murder . Ullstein, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8437-0844-9 , chapter 2.
  10. ↑ Rudi Kost: About George Smiley . Poller, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-87959-227-6 , p. 31.
  11. ^ A b Myron J. Aronoff: The Spy Novels of John le Carré. Balancing Ethics and Politics . St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-312-21482-0 , pp. 15-16.
  12. ^ Helen S. Garson: Enter George Smiley. Le Carré's Call for the Dead . In: Harold Bloom (ed.): John le Carré . Chelsea House, New York 1987, ISBN 0-87754-703-3 , pp. 73-74.
  13. ↑ Christoph Schöneich: Edmund Talbot and his brothers. English Bildungsromane after 1945 . Narr, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-8233-5197-4 , p. 193.
  14. ^ Myron J. Aronoff: The Spy Novels of John le Carré. Balancing Ethics and Politics . St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-312-21482-0 , pp. 21-22.
  15. ↑ David Caute: It Was a Man . In: New Statesman of February 8, 1980. Based on: Myron J. Aronoff: The Spy Novels of John le Carré. Balancing Ethics and Politics . St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-312-21482-0 , p. 18.
  16. ^ "To be inhuman in defense of our humanity, he had said, harsh in defense of compassion. To be single-minded in defense of our disparity. ”Quoted from: John le Carré: The Honorable Schoolboy . First Pocket Books, New York 2002, ISBN 0-7434-5791-9 , p. 508.
  17. ^ Myron J. Aronoff: The Spy Novels of John le Carré. Balancing Ethics and Politics . St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-312-21482-0 , pp. 36-38.
  18. ^ Myron J. Aronoff: The Spy Novels of John le Carré. Balancing Ethics and Politics . St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-312-21482-0 , pp. 32-33.
  19. ↑ John le Carré: The secret companion. List, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-471-78089-0 , p. 383.
  20. ↑ Lynn Beene: John le Carré . Twayne, New York 1992, ISBN 0-8057-7013-5 , p. 8.
  21. ^ David Monaghan: Smiley's Circus. The secret world of John le Carré . Heyne, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-05629-9 , p. 256.
  22. ^ Abraham Rothberg: The Decline and Fall of George Smiley. John le Carré and English Decency. In: Harold Bloom (ed.): John le Carré . Chelsea House, New York 1987, ISBN 0-87754-703-3 , pp. 49-51.
  23. ↑ See the article Vivian HH Green in the English Wikipedia .
  24. ↑ See the article John Bingham, 7th Baron Clanmorris in the English Wikipedia .
  25. ^ "Nobody who knew John and the work he was doing could have missed the description of Smiley in my first novel." John le Carré: Introduction . In: John Bingham: My Name is Michael Sibley , London: Pan Classic Crime (2000).
  26. ^ John L. Cobbs: Understanding John le Carré . University of South Caroline Press, Columbia 1998, ISBN 1-57003-168-1 , p. 257.
  27. ^ John le Carré: Introduction (March 1992). In: Call for the Dead. Walker & Company, New York 2004, ISBN 0-8027-1443-9 , pp. Xv.
  28. ^ Myron J. Aronoff: The Spy Novels of John le Carré. Balancing Ethics and Politics. St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-312-21482-0 , p. 15.
  29. ↑ See the article David Smiley in the English Wikipedia .
  30. ^ Colonel David Smiley . In: The Daily Telegraph, January 9, 2009.
  31. ↑ See the article Maurice Oldfield in the English Wikipedia .
  32. ^ Sir Maurice Oldfield Dead at 65; Famed Ex-Chier of Britain's MI6 . In: The New York Times of March 12, 1981. Died: Sir Maurice Oldfield . In: Der Spiegel from March 16, 1981.
  33. ↑ Miriam Gross: The Secret World of John le Carré. In: Matthew J. Bruccoli, Judith S. Baughman (Eds.): Conversations with John Le Carré . University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2004, ISBN 1-57806-668-9 , p. 70.
  34. ↑ John le Carré: Over lunch, he turned himself into a spy . In: The Guardian of October 11, 2002.
  35. ↑ John le Carré: Foreword. In: Agent on his own behalf. Zeitverlag, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8419-0162-0 , p. 9.
  36. ^ Govert Schilling: The Hunt for Planet X. New Worlds and the Fate of Pluto . Copernicus, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-387-77804-4 , pp. 152-153.