Maigret at the Newfoundland Drivers' Meeting

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Maigret at the Newfoundland Drivers' Meeting (French: Au Rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas ) is a detective novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It belongs to the first season of 19 novels of a total of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective inspector Maigret . The novel was written on board Simenon's boat Ostrogoth in Morsang-sur-Seine in July 1931 and was published by Fayard just a month later . The first German translation Maigret and the crime on board by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1966 in an anthology with Maigret and the mysterious captain and Maigret defends himself . In 1980 Diogenes Verlag brought out a new translation by Annerose Melter under the title Maigret at the Newfoundland Drivers ' Meeting .

A letter from an old school friend prompts Commissioner Maigret to move his vacation from Alsace to Normandy . Here he meets a crew of Newfoundland sailors whose captain was murdered. His death marks the end of a whole series of mysterious accidents that overshadowed the last voyage of the fish liner. While the local police suspect the young radio operator, the superstitious sailors speak of the evil eye behind their hand .

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Historic fishing boat in the port of Fécamp

It's June The Maigrets pack their bags for an eight-day holiday in Alsace with Madame Maigret's sister. At the last moment, the inspector receives a letter from his school friend Jorissen, who has meanwhile become a teacher in Quimper . His former student Pierre Le Clinche, who was hired as a radio operator on the fishing steamer Océan , was arrested on suspicion of the murder of his captain. Maigret changes his vacation plans without further ado and travels with his wife to Fécamp , where the Océan is anchored, after fishing cod in the Newfoundland Bank for three months . Among the team that is squandering their wages in the Norman port city, Maigret meets an old friend again: the petty criminal P'tit Louis. And he learns that the Océan's voyage has been plagued by mysterious accidents ranging from the death of the cabin boy to the spoiled cargo of cod.

For Maigret, the case is marked by anger. All of the people he comes into contact with show unusual irritability. The allegedly so sympathetic Pierre Le Clinche rejects his fiancée Marie Léonnec who has traveled, just as brusquely as he is obstinate to the interrogations of the inspector. Octave Fallut, the captain of the Océan , wrote a desperate suicide note before he was murdered. Finally, Maigret finds out that there was a woman on board on the unlucky voyage: Adèle Noirhomme, who was already on record as a prostitute and had been turning the head of the serious captain for several months to such an extent that he believed he could no longer be without her Beloved secretly smuggled into his cabin.

It was the nosy cabin boy Jean-Marie Canut who first discovered the stowaway and threatened to betray him. The captain saw his integrity as a skipper in question and knew nothing other than to use force to help. His thrust brought down the boy, who hit the ground unhappily and broke his skull. Le Clinche was the only witness to the crime. From this point on, the captain and radio operator watched each other suspiciously, and their tension spread to the entire crew. After the captain, Adèle also knitted the young radio operator who, after spending a night with her, dreamed of a future together. Although he did not kill his rival Fallut himself, after landing he revealed the murder of the cabin boy to Canut's father and watched as he strangled the captain. However, he realizes that Adèle does not share his romantic love and returns to the arms of her pimp Gaston Buzier. When she makes a scene to the boy and his fiancée in the presence of Maigret, Le Clinche tries to commit suicide , which he survives seriously injured.

Out of consideration for those involved, Maigret does not bring the truth to light. There is old Canut, who has lost his son and who still shakes his fists at the sight of the Océan . There is Marie Léonnec, who does not want to give up her fiancé even though she suspects his misstep. There is her father, the middle-class businessman from Quimper, who has already planned his future son-in-law as his successor in the shop. There is Le Clinche, who has to pay for his unique passion with a lame leg and a predetermined future as a businessman and father of a family, which Maigret can see for himself five years later on a visit to Quimper.

background

The Normandy is the background for many novels Georges Simenon. He knew the region from his own travels, for example from a vacation in Étretat in 1925 , during which Simenon and his wife met the fisherman's daughter Henriette Liberge, who was to stay at Simenon's side as a maid for life. In 1929 he had his boat Ostrogoth built in Fécamp , with which he traveled the canals of France, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea in the following years, and on whose board he also wrote the novel Au Rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas in July 1931 . Lucille F. Becker recognizes in the novel that atmosphere of a seafarer's bar that must have prevailed in Delfzijl when Simenon thought up the character of Maigret in a café on the harbor.

There are some parallels between the novel and Simenon's early works. The first chapter with Maigret's arrival at the seafarer 's bar Rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas is reminiscent of the novel L'homme à la cigarette , the failed suicide attempt by the young Pierre Le Clinche of the hero of the novel La Maison de l'inquiétude . Simenon wrote both novels under his former pseudonym Georges Sim . The topic of a woman who causes quarrels in the lives of men can already be found in a similar form in the immediately preceding Maigret novels Maigret's Night at the Crossing and Maigret and the Crime in Holland . Tilman Spreckelsen felt compelled to sigh: "It's getting annoying: Again, it's the bad women who destroy good men with their sensuality".

interpretation

Stanley G. Eskin called Adèle Noirhomme a “ femme fatale ” to which the weak-willed young radio operator fell as much as his obsessive captain, a “ siren who lures respectable people to perdition.” Spreckelsen adds that both men stand between two women: one good woman and a "slut", and both would leave the former for the latter at once. It is Le Clinche's fiancée Marie, who in Chapter 4, in a central scene, takes the investigation out of Maigret's hands and finds out that a woman must have been on board. It is typical of Maigret that in the end he puts understanding of the act above judgment. He does not add any further damage to the lives destroyed by the prehistory and leaves the events unresolved while he leaves head over heels with his wife.

According to Uwe Nettelbeck , “it's always school friends who take Maigret into the provinces and into strange adventures.” Eskin sees the “small-town, maritime atmosphere” in Maigret at the meeting of the Newfoundland drivers as successfully captured as in Maigret and the mysterious captain or Maigret and the yellow dog . According to Frank Böhmert , Maigret's night on board the Océan is “goose bumps” , in which he empathizes with the events of the past which ultimately led to the murder.

reception

The Book Review Digest by HW Wilson described Maigret at the Newfoundland Drivers' meeting as "an almost flawless narrative." For Frank Böhmert it is “one of the best Maigret novels ever. Everything is right here. ”Written with“ reliable urgency and conciseness ”, the novel could serve as a litmus test as to whether a reader would like Commissioner Maigret or not. André Gide , on the other hand, rated the novel, as did Maigret and the Mad from Bergerac , as "undoubtedly less good" compared to later works by Simenon such as Zum Weißen Ross .

The novel was filmed three times as part of television series about Commissioner Maigret. The title role was played by Rupert Davies (1963), Jan Teulings (1968) and Jean Richard (1977).

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Au Rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas. Fayard, Paris 1931 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the crime on board. Maigret and the mysterious captain . Maigret defends himself . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the crime on board. Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1967.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret at the meeting of the Newfoundland drivers. Translation: Annerose Melter. Diogenes, Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-257-20717-4 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret at the meeting of the Newfoundland drivers. Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 9. Translation: Annerose Melter. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23809-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Notice bibliographique on Au Rendez-Vous des Terre-Neuvas on the Maigret page by Yves Martina.
  2. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions. In: Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 51.
  3. ↑ a b c Maigret of the Month: Au Rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas (The Sailors' Rendez-vous) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  4. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon. House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 100.
  5. ^ Bernard Alavoine: Simenon: l'homme, l'univers, la création. Complexe, Brussels 1993, ISBN 2-87027-491-2 , p. 61.
  6. ^ A b Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret-Marathon 9: The meeting of the Newfoundland riders . On FAZ.net from June 6, 2008.
  7. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 164.
  8. ↑ Uwe Nettelbeck : The murderer lives next door. Georges Simenon and his friend Maigret . In: Die Zeit of May 13, 1966.
  9. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography , p. 165.
  10. ↑ a b Frank Böhmert : Read: Georges Simenon, Maigret at the Newfoundland Drivers' Meeting (1931)  ( 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 / frankboehmert.blogspot.de   .
  11. ^ "The Sailor's Rendezvous is a nearly flawless tale". In: Book Review Digest . HW Wilson, 1937, p. 821.
  12. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography , p. 239.
  13. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's website.