Maigret in the Liberty Bar

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Maigret in the Liberty Bar (French: Liberty Bar ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 17th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written in Marsilly , Charente-Maritime , in May 1932 , and was published by Fayard in Paris in July of that year . The first German translation of Liberty Bar by Leo Uher was brought out by the Wiesbaden Detective Club in 1952 . Further translations under the title Maigret in the Liberty Bar appeared in 1961 by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau at Kiepenheuer & Witsch in Cologne and in 1986 by Angela von Hagen at Diogenes Verlag in Zurich .

The murder of an Australian takes Commissioner Maigret to the Côte d'Azur , where he feels like being on vacation in the mild Mediterranean climate . Only after seeing the dead man, who looks astonishingly similar to him, does Maigret become interested in the man who worked for the French secret service, lived with two women and had connections in a strange bar: the Liberty Bar .

content

Aerial view of Cap d'Antibes , the peninsula off Antibes

In March, the Parisian commissioner Maigret was summoned to Antibes on the Côte d'Azur. An Australian named William Brown was murdered by a knife stab in the back. Brown is not only the descendant of a wealthy dynasty of Australian sheep farmers, he also worked for military intelligence during World War I , and Maigret is ordered to deal with the case without a stir. In the warm climate of the Mediterranean, the Commissioner is in a lazy holiday mood and soon loses all interest in investigating the investigation. Only when he sees a photo of the dead man and thinks he is looking at his reflection does Maigret become interested in Brown and the circumstances surrounding his death.

The Australian lived with two women in a run-down villa in Cap d'Antibes, his lover Gina Martini and her mother. Their real interest was revealed when they left the dead man in their villa for two days while they discussed how to move as much of his property as possible. However, their escape ended miserably when they drove the car against a rock. The two women get on Maigret's nerves so much that he is happy when he learns that even the deceased could not stay with them all the time. Once a month he went to a so-called “ novena ”, raised money in Cannes and stayed away for days until he returned to his home completely drunk. He was in this state on the day of his death, but he died after the stabbed man had been able to flee to his villa from his serious injuries.

In Cannes, Maigret soon discovers the Liberty Bar , a pub with a peculiar atmosphere, in which the same stranded existences come together every day and which apparently also became Brown's second home. The bar belongs to Jaja, a corpulent widow with an engaging demeanor. Out of pity, she grants care to the young prostitute Sylvie, behind whose displayed indifference hides subliminal anger. Sylvie's pimp Joseph Ambrosini is a waiter at the Casino in Cannes and gambled away all of his money in horse racing. Silent Jan, a Swedish sailor on a yacht lying in the harbor, is in the background. The first trace opens up when Maigret tracks down Sylvie in an hour hotel , where she is in tête-à-tête with Brown's son Harry, the European representative of the Australian sheep clan.

Juan-les-Pins beach

Harry Brown, who stayed at the Hotel Provençal in Juan-les-pins , tells Maigret about his father's past life. He was an ambitious Protestant businessman all his life , until he traveled to Europe on business, succumbed to the temptation of being able to afford anything there with his fortune, and never returned to Australia. His family incapacitated him and withheld his money. Since then, William has lived on a modest monthly pension and took revenge on those who stayed behind in distant Australia with lengthy lawsuits for his wealth. In order to continue the trials after his death, he appointed his four wives, the Martinis, Jaja and Sylvie, as heirs. Joseph, who had secretly stolen the will, offered it to Harry Brown for a sum of 20,000 francs, which he gave to Sylvie in the hour hotel.

However, the murder has its origins in a love story. The old, unattractive Jaja believed she had finally found the love of her life in Brown. During his regular visits, they drank, talked and slept together. But Brown had long since kept an eye on young Sylvie, and when Jaja caught them both at a rendezvous at the hour hotel, she stabbed her unfaithful lover full of anger. After the facts are on the table, Jaja makes a desperate suicide attempt, which Maigret just manages to thwart. But the Parisian commissioner does not hold the unhappy landlady responsible, but leaves after he knows Sylvie at her side, with whom the old woman has long been reconciled. Since he is supposed to deal with the case without attracting attention, he reports robbery with an unknown perpetrator as the cause of death. He leaves the will to Brown, who wants to pay off the four women. But Maigret knows in advance that the terminally ill Jaja will die within months and that Joseph will gamble away Sylvie's money.

interpretation

According to Tilman Spreckelsen , Commissioner Maigret “threatens to lose himself as thoroughly as others before him, not least the murder victim, in the luxury and holiday world of the Côte d'Azur.” But it is precisely his fate that warns him and ultimately leaves him under the spell of idleness break through. When he sees a photo of the deceased, Maigret realizes that he “had the insolence to look like him”, which arouses his characteristic empathy. The sympathy that the inspector develops for the Australian means that he not only researches his life, but actually relives it. He repeats Brown's experiences in different social milieus, be it living together with his two wives in the villa in Cap d'Antibes or the regular trips to the Liberty Bar in Cannes.

While the French Riviera setting is popular with ideas of sun and sand, glamor and festivities, Maigret is drawn to the shabby neighborhoods and a gloomy, shabby bar that is becoming the center of the investigation. Klaus N. Frick emphasizes the contrast between the dark cellar bar with its lethargic mood and the radiant white of the houses and clothes in Cannes and Antibes. Stanley G. Eskin sees just such a contrast between the stranded livelihoods that populate the bar and the Australian millionaire clan of the Browns. As is typical of the “early, rugged Maigret” and his “uncouth brusque”, Maigret rejects the bourgeoisie and feels connected to the common people, whose direct manners he shares.

Eskin sees the murder victim Brown as a volunteer clochard who preferred the lowlands of the Liberty Bar to the cramped and uptight life of the upper class. Maigret uses the image of the bitter gentian as a metaphor for the way of life which, according to Spreckelsen, “craves the ordinary because it can no longer bear luxury” , with which an alcoholic ends up because he has long been bored with all other forms of alcohol. For Josef Quack, Simenon's escape into alcohol always stands for an “existential hopelessness”. In the end, Simenon intervenes in his characteristic role of a self-imposing "man of fate", withholding the will and distributing the bribe. The murder, however, goes unpunished, not for the first time in a row.

background

Maigret in the Liberty Bar was the first novel to be written after Simenon leased the La Richardière estate near Marsilly in Charente-Maritime in the spring of 1932 , the place where he would spend the next three years and write a dozen novels. The location of the French Riviera was known to Simenon from personal experience. He had lived in the Villa Les Roches Grises in Cap d'Antibes from November 1931 to February 1932 . Some of the scenes in the novel can be traced back to real locations, such as the now vacant Provençal luxury hotel in Juan-les-pins .

The novel marks a turning point in Simenon's work. Since he came up with his commissioner Maigret in autumn / winter 1929/1930, Maigret in the Liberty Bar was already the 17th novel in the Maigret series, which was only interrupted by two other detective novels. Subsequently, however, Simenon felt ripe for the step to the psychological novel, which he completed in the fall of that year with The Engagement of Monsieur Hire . The following publications included only two Maigret novels until the beginning of the Second World War , both of which were intended to conclude the series: Maigret in need and Maigret and his nephew .

reception

For Charles Champlin in the Los Angeles Times , Maigret in the Liberty Bar was "only a thriller in the broadest sense", since the focus is actually on uncovering the personality of the murder victim and his life story. “Maigret, who drinks a lot and sweats in his Parisian clothes, is at the height of his acumen as he sighs at the Comédie humaine .” For the New Yorker , the novel “epitomized the cinematic visions of crime and passion that gave rise to founded by Monsieur Simenon and his inimitable Jules Maigret ”. The contrast between the glamorous Côte d'Azur in the 1930s and Maigret in his dark suit and bowler hat, who strolled through the novel "almost dazed by the luxury of sand, sea and sun" was emphasized. Kirkus Reviews saw the commissioner "even more subdued than usual thanks to the infectious Riviera laziness", but the novel was "quite satisfying and densely atmospheric".

Nicolas Freeling said: “Simenon wrote a beautiful book. After seventy years, the shimmer on him is still unspoilt. ”Fat Jaja even reminded him of the character of Mistress Quickly in William Shakespeare . According to Julian Symons , the novel conveys "the feeling of happy holidays". Tilman Spreckelsen spoke of a "fabulous novel" with a "great finale". Klaus N. Frick left Maigret “speechless” in the Liberty Bar . The roughly 160 pages read in a flash, despite the lame-lethargic mood conveyed by the author. He does it so masterfully and at the same time so exciting that I can only watch in disbelief. Brilliant!"

The novel was filmed a total of four times. In addition to a French television film with Louis Arbessier from 1960, the Commissioner played Maigret Rupert Davies (Great Britain, 1960), Jean Richard (France, 1979) and Bruno Cremer (France, 1997) in TV series. In 1955, Frédéric Valmain turned the novel into a play. The premiere, directed by Jean Dejoux, took place on October 17, 1955 in the Parisian Théâtre Charles-de-Rochefort . Jean Morel played the role of Maigret.

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Liberty Bar. Fayard, Paris 1932 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Liberty Bar. Translation: Leo Uher. Detective Club, Wiesbaden 1952.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in the Liberty Bar. Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1961.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in the Liberty Bar. Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in the Liberty Bar. Translation: Angela von Hagen. Diogenes, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-257-21376-X .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in the Liberty Bar. Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 17. Translation: Angela von Hagen. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23817-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Liberty Bar in the Simenon Bibliography 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. 61.
  3. ↑ a b c d Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret-Marathon 17: In the Liberty Bar . On FAZ.net from August 1, 2008.
  4. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret in the Liberty Bar. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23817-4 , p. 21.
  5. ↑ 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 , p. 46.
  6. ↑ Michel Lemoine: The method of investigation according to Maigret: A methodical absence of method? on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  7. ^ Bill Alder: Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories . McFarland, Jefferson 2013, ISBN 978-0-7864-7054-9 , p. 123.
  8. ↑ Maigret on the Riviera on Kirkus Reviews of April 11, 1988.
  9. ↑ a b Lethargic mood in Cannes in Klaus N. Frick's blog from March 25, 2012.
  10. ^ A b Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 166.
  11. ↑ 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 , p. 65.
  12. ↑ 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 , p. 45.
  13. ^ A b Maigret of the Month: Liberty-Bar (Liberty Bar / Maigret on the Riviera) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  14. ^ "It is a mystery only in the broadest sense. [...] Maigret, drinking a lot himself and perspiring in his Paris clothes, is at his perceptive best, sighing at the comedie humaine. "Quoted from: Charles Champlin: Robicheaux on the Bayou, Maigret on the Riviera . In: Los Angeles Times, April 10, 1988.
  15. ↑ “that is the epitome of the cinematic visions of crime and passion which made the reputation of both M. Simenon and the inimitable Jules Maigret. [...] moving, nearly dazed by the luxury of sand and sea and sunlight ”. Quoted from: The New Yorker Volume 64, Issues 20-28, 1988, p. 86.
  16. ^ "Even more low-key than usual, thanks to the infectious Riviera laziness [...] but quietly satisfying and thickly atmospheric." Quoted from: Maigret on the Riviera on Kirkus Reviews of April 11, 1988.
  17. ^ "Simenon has built a beautiful book. After seventy years the glow upon it is unspoiled. ”Quoted from: Nicolas Freeling : Criminal Convictions. Errant Essays on Perpetrators of Literary License . Peter Owen, London 1993, ISBN 0-7206-0873-2 , p. 135.
  18. ↑ Julian Symons : Simenon and his Maigret . In: Claudia Schmölders , Christian Strich (Ed.): About Simenon . Diogenes, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-257-20499-X , p. 126.
  19. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's website.