Maigret has scruples

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Maigret has scruples (French: Les Scrupules de Maigret ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 52nd novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . Written from 9 to 16 December 1957 in Echandens , the novel was pre- published in 22 episodes from 23 May to 17 June 1958 in the daily Le Figaro before the book was published in June of that year by Presses de la Cité . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published in 1959 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch . In 1986, Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Ingrid Altrichter in the anthology Christmas with Maigret .

It is a story that Commissioner Maigret has heard many times before. A man suspects his wife of trying to poison him. The woman, in turn, thinks her husband is insane. The chief prosecutor sees no reason to intervene. But after both spouses have presented to him one after the other, the inspector feels the responsibility for their well-being weighs on them. He's putting his inspectors on the case that isn't yet. When they discover that the couple has taken out high-level mutual insurance, that doesn't help to allay Maigret's scruples.

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The Grands Magasins du Louvre in Paris

It's January 10th. After the holidays, the Quai des Orfèvres is calm. Maigret is sleepy and not quite on the ball when Xavier Marton comes to see him. The man in his early 40s is a toy seller at the Grands Magasins du Louvre , but no ordinary seller, but the uncrowned king of model railways . He suspects his wife is planning to kill him and shows the inspector a bottle of zinc phosphide that he has found as evidence . But when Maigret is called from his office and returns, the man has disappeared. For this, his wife Gisèle appears on the same day, who in turn reports to the inspector about her husband's neurasthenia , who feels that she is being persecuted for no reason. The rat poison discovered is simply intended to be used to combat pests.

Maigret has nothing in hand, no concrete clues or suspicions, but he has scruples because he fears that something will happen. So he sends out his inspectors to watch the couple from the Avenue de Châtillon. Jenny, Gisèle's widowed younger sister, also lives in the Martons 'apartment, a woman whose gentle, loving charisma arouses the protective instinct in both of the inspectors' young inspectors, Janvier and Lapointe. And Marton also seems to have an intimate relationship with his sister-in-law, which he takes out over lunch during his lunch break. Gisèle, on the other hand, herself a former saleswoman at the Grands Magasins du Louvre, has been a partner in the Harris lingerie store for several years , with which her former colleague Maurice Schwob started his own business after he made money by marrying an older actress. She also seems to not only share the ambition and business acumen with her partner.

The next day Marton visits the inspector again to tell him his life story. Raised as an orphan by a farming family, he patiently worked his way up the department store until he became a department head. With the marriage he hoped to get the community he longed for a lifetime. But that Gisèle never really loved him, he only realized when Jenny came into the household, and was capable of completely different feelings than his cold and callous wife. It was only her ambition to marry her boss that had spurred her on, and after her husband could no longer offer her any further social advancement, the same ambition drove her into Maurice Schwob's arms. Marton confirms his suspicion that Gisèle is planning to poison him in order to collect a high insurance sum. And he reveals his countermeasure to the inspector: he has bought a revolver with which, as soon as he feels the slightest sign of poisoning, he will take revenge on his wife before he dies.

The alarmed commissioner posts the inspectors Lucas and Lapointe in the avenue de Châtillon, but they cannot prevent Marton from actually being found poisoned that morning. His demise triggers very different reactions in the two women in his household: Gisèle remains cold and unmoved, the broken up Jenny is in shock. It turns out that Marton wanted to use the inspector's knowledge to attack his wife. He poured a small amount of poison into his own cup over tea in the evening to have an excuse to shoot Gisèle that night. But then both women got in his way: Jenny, who was suffering with her brother-in-law from his wife's numbness, poured a deadly amount of zinc phosphide into the cup. And Gisèle, who for her part had long since taken precautions against her mentally unstable husband, habitually exchanged the cups. So it was she who only felt discomfort at night due to the small amount of phosphide intended for Marton and vomited, but Xavier, who ingested the fatal dose, died in front of his wife and could no longer use the revolver laid out to use. When Maigret has to let the unmoved Gisèle go and arrests the desperate Jenny for the murder of her lover, he wishes that the roles of the two women had been reversed.

interpretation

Gavin Lambert sees Maigret has scruples as the forerunner of a non-Maigret novel written a short time later by Simenon: Sonntag . Both are characterized by the duplicity of events in terms of sexuality and the climate of domestic hatred, with the second novel concentrating these set pieces even more. As in this case, Simenon often used a Maigret novel as the first draft for later processing of the same subject in a non-Maigret novel. For Murielle Wenger, Maigret has scruples at the beginning of a series of Maigret novels that hardly resemble classic detective novels , but rather revolve around general questions of justice and responsibility, with Simenon making the commissioner the mouthpiece of his own views. This series includes, for example, Maigret before the jury , Maigret and the knife setter or Maigret hesitates .

With the latter, Maigret also has scruples that the investigation precedes the actual crime. Maigret himself describes at one point in the novel: “It's almost like an investigation in the opposite direction. A crime usually happens, and only when it has been committed do we need to look into the motives. This time we have motifs, but no crime yet. ”Wenger notes that Maigret has changed over the course of the series: Although he always remains the 45-year-old commissioner of the first novels, he is aging with his author, and more and more doubts about his job and thoughts about the approaching retirement come to the center of the action. For Tilman Spreckelsen it is also “a touch of transience that pervades the novel”, from the cast-iron stove in his office, which the inspector has to say goodbye to, to the first signs of age in the Maigret couple, Madame Maigrets' secret diet and her husband's increasingly difficult gait.

A central theme of the novel is Maigret's exploration of psychology . In order to clarify the question of whether the model railroad enthusiast who comes to see him suffers from mental disorders, Maigret consults a textbook on neuroses , psychoses and paranoia , but when confronted with the reality of his case, he has to state: “The textbooks about Psychology, psychoanalysis or psychiatry do not help him at all. "Maigret's rebellion against the specialist literature is expressed in throwing away the book and turning to a sloe schnapps:" It was like a protest of common sense against all this learned ramblings, like the attempt to to stand with both feet firmly on the ground. "it is true that to be in the novels again on Maigret's medical background and his desire doctor alluded to, but according to Josef Quack it was Maigret while never about the theoretical basis of medicine to do but about the practical exercise of a profession which he rather considered an art or a vocation than ai ne science understood.

Dominique Meyer-Bolzinger also emphasizes that Maigret's method of approaching a case is not based on theoretical foundations, but requires contact with reality, the confrontation with a person face to face. The difference between the modes of thinking can already be seen in the language in which entire passages from the textbook are quoted in the novel: While the discourse is systematic but rambling and difficult to understand, let alone explain, Maigret expresses himself in a disorganized, simple and laconic way to the ellipse . Unlike his fictional character, Simenon himself had a strong interest in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. For example, in 1961 he had himself "interrogated" by five psychiatrists for seven hours on behalf of the journal Médicine et Hygiène and later published the analytical interview under the title Simenon sur le gril (German: Simenon on the couch ).

reception

The Simenon biographer Stanley. G. Eskin classified Maigret has scruples under "a handful of first-class novels" from the third period of the Maigret series. In contrast, The Illustrated London News feared that “the great Simenon” would dry up “like certain rivers in summer”. She found the novel "clearly tired in its treatise" and concluded with the verdict: "Good material, no doubt, but something is missing from the old fire."

The magazine Punch described: “Ordinary plot that is obscured by details and figures with compelling persuasive power.” Tilman Spreckelsen was also pleased with “extremely suggestive figures […] that you think you understand until the abysses appear.” His The conclusion was: “Great characters, all of them. If they lived in the neighboring house, one would be a little afraid. "

The novel was filmed a total of four times: as part of the television series with Rupert Davies (1960), Jean Richard (1976), Kinya Aikawa (1978) and Bruno Cremer (2003). In 1959, Südwestfunk produced a radio play under the title Maigret and his scruples . Directed by Gert Westphal , the Maigret spoke Leonard Steckel . Two years later followed a production of the same name by Bayerischer Rundfunk with Paul Dahlke and Traute Rose , directed by Heinz-Günter Stamm . Les Scrupules de Maigret was also adapted as a play. The German adaptation under the title Maigret hat Zweifel came from Charles Regnier and was premiered in the opening season 1960/1961 of the Theater am Hechtplatz in Zurich. A production at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus premiered on May 14, 1960.

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Les Scrupules de Maigret . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1958 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret has scruples . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1959.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret has scruples . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret has scruples . In: Christmas with Maigret . Translation: Ingrid Altrichter. Diogenes, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-257-01729-4 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret has scruples . All Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 52. Translation: Ingrid Altrichter. Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-23852-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Les Scrupules de Maigret on the page of Yves Martina.
  3. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . In: Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 59.
  4. ^ Gavin Lambert: The Dangerous Edge . Grossmann, New York 1976, ISBN 0-670-25581-5 , p. 178. (also online )
  5. ↑ a b c Maigret of the Month: Les scrupules de Maigret (Maigret Has Scruples) on the Maigret page by Steve Trussel.
  6. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret has scruples . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, p. 73.
  7. ^ A b Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret-Marathon 52: Maigret has scruples . On FAZ.net from April 24, 2009.
  8. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret has scruples . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, p. 134.
  9. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret has scruples . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, p. 71.
  10. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-2014-6 , pp. 42–43.
  11. ↑ Dominique Meyer-Bolzinger: Une méthode clinique dans l'enquête policière: Holmes, Poirot, Maigret . Éditions du Céfal, Brussels 2003, ISBN 2-87130-131-X , pp. 79, 104.
  12. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography , p. 414.
  13. ^ "The great M. Simenon is beginning, I note with sorrow, to dry up like certain streams in summer. His latest thriller, Maigret Has Scruples, seemed to me to be distinctly tired in treatment. […] Good stuff, no doubt, but lacking some of the old fire. "In: The Illustrated London News . Volume 235 (1959), issues 6263-6269, p. 40.
  14. ^ "Ordinary plot concealed by obsessively convincing details and characters." In: Punch Volume 236 (1959), p. 755.
  15. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  16. ↑ Maigret and his scruples in the HörDat audio play database .
  17. ^ Peter Bissegger, Martin Hauzenberger, Manfred Veraguth: Grosse Schweizer Kleinkunst . Rüffer & Rub, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-907625-50-7 , p. 49. See also reading sample (pdf; 388 kB).
  18. ↑ Maigret has doubts in the database of the city of Düsseldorf.