Maigret and the maid

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Maigret and the Maid (French: Félicie est là ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 25th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written in May 1942 in La Faute-sur-Mer and was published in 1944 together with the novels Maigret contra Picpus and Maigret and his rival in the anthology Signé Picpus at the Éditions Gallimard . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1967 . In 1984, Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Hainer Kober .

An old accountant, called "Holzbein", was shot in his little house. But more than the victim, Maigret's interest is soon in his maid, whose mixture of self-indulgence, fraud and unruliness first angered him, then amused him and finally moved him. The inspector delegates large parts of the investigation to his inspectors so that he can stay at the scene of the crime and thus in the vicinity of the maid.

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Orgeval Town Hall

Not far from Paris , near Poissy and Orgeval lying allotments Jeanne Ville , the Maigret at first glance to a collection of doll's houses recalls. Jules Lapie, known as "Holzbein", lives here, a pedantic, avaricious loner and former accountant for a ship chandler in Fécamp , who stumbled into an adventure once in his life when he involuntarily got on board a ship and promptly lost a leg near Cape Horn . Since then he has lived on his retirement with no one around him but his maid, until he is found shot dead in his little house.

Maigret's investigations in the first mild spring days soon revolve primarily around the maid, the 24-year-old Félicie, who is derided as a “princess” because of her pretentious demeanor and as a “cockatoo” because of her inappropriately colorful clothes. The girl seems to live more in the world of her dime novels than in reality, at any rate Maigret does not manage to coax a single true sentence from her. As the sole heir, she is supposedly the only one who benefits from Holzbein's death. Maigret quartered himself in Jeanneville in order to engage in a duel of nerves with his stubborn opponent .

Gradually, the inspector's feelings change from anger and annoyance to a form of emotion and affection for Félicie. And he is indignant that the traces of the fall point back to Paris. Only on the day of the funeral does Félicie manage to shake off the police surveillance and go into hiding in the metropolis. Then there is Jacques Pétillon, the dead man's nephew and saxophonist in the Pélican nightclub , who searches the red light district of Montmartre and becomes increasingly desperate. When Maigret confronts the young man, he announces a confession, but is critically injured by a shot in the chest in front of Maigret. The course of events and the weapon - a Smith & Wesson - point more and more clearly to a professional from the circles of organized crime .

Back in Holzbein's house, Maigret discovers a package with 229,000 francs in a cupboard, which obviously does not come from Holzbein and must be connected with the crime. And he finds out about Félica's whispers, who wanted to protect the murderer and even got rid of his murder weapon in Paris because after the crime she saw Jacques Pétillon, Holzbein's nephew, whom she is secretly and unrequitedly in love with, running away. In fact, all that the nephew was guilty of was that he gave shelter to his friend Albert Babeau, alias the "musician", who was wanted by the police, in his uncle's house. He hid the booty of a robbery there, was then caught and released again after a year, whereupon the path immediately led him back to Jeanneville . While the unsuspecting pétillon was distracting the uncle at his behest, Babeau was looking for the prey and shot the uncle when he surprised him. Pétillon then looked across town for the "musician" to confront him, and was finally ready to confide in Maigret when Babeau knocked him out with a shot.

While the entire Paris police are carrying out a major raid in Pigalle . In order to get hold of Babeaus, Maigret spends this night again in Jeanneville with Félicie. And in fact, Babeau shows up to look for the money again. When Félicie wakes up in the morning, Maigret is able to present her the tied up killer. The maid is relieved that it is not her crush on pétillon, but at the same time she is disappointed by the lack of a dramatic final battle, as she is familiar from dime novels. Years after the case was closed, Maigret was raised by his colleagues and his wife with the memory of the maid and the exclamation “Félicie is here!”.

interpretation

For Steve Trussel, Maigret and the Maid is less of a detective novel than a romance novel , which he himself describes as a blasphemy within the Maigret series. Indeed, in the course of the novel, the inspector's turning towards the maid can be observed, and at the end of the sixth chapter he even exclaims: “Félicie, I find her adorable.” Peter Foord also sees a “duet” between the inspector in the novel and the maid who reminds him of another eponymous heroine from Simenon's romance novel: Marie Le Flem from Die Marie vom Hafen .

Levin Houston succinctly describes the maid as “skinny, ugly, ignorant and 24.” For Michel Lemoine, too, she makes an unruly and unpleasant impression at the beginning. She creates her own truth, which is fed from dreams and dime novels. But behind the extravagant facade Maigret discovers an extraordinary sensitivity that the inspector has for her. Ultimately, it is his empathy for the world of the maid that leads him to the solution of the case, whereby, as is often the case in the Maigret series, the question of the perpetrator is less important than the psychological entanglements. In order to empathize with the victim's life, Maigret sets up a comfortable place in his house and takes on the role of the accountant himself. His method of investigation is characterized in the novel as follows: "He makes himself comfortable in an investigation like in slippers."

Peter Foord describes the novel as lighter in tone and less complex in the criminal plot than its two predecessors Maigret contra Picpus and Maigret and his rival . The exclamation “Félicie is there”, which gave the novel its original title, is found again with a changed name in another novel from this creative period, which is based on a comparable starting point: Maigret loses an admirer . Stanley G. Eskin also finds the novel “considerably more enjoyable” than its predecessors, with the penultimate chapter, The Night of the Lobster in particular, containing some “hilariously funny” scenes that revolve around the acquisition and preparation of a lobster while half of Paris is chasing the murderer. Dominique Meyer-Bolzinger even reminds of Marcel Proust of the way in which at the beginning of the novel a carillon, a key stimulus, evokes Maigret's memory of his childhood .

reception

In 1967, Spiegel found in the anthology by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, which also contained the novels Maigret has patience and Maigret loses an admirer , “the best crime fiction, a touch of sex, but above all an assortment of concierges and petty bourgeoisie, of coffee and rum smells impressionistic summer days that hardly any contemporary work of 'high literature' can really do. "

Levin Houston called the American translation Maigret and the Toy Village 1979 from the plot a "08/15 Simenon, which of course means that it is better than the best attempts of most of its competitors". With the maid Felicie, Simenon created "one of his most memorable characters", because of which the reading alone is worthwhile. For Dan Herr, the book was simply “a pleasure to read,” which cannot be said about many of today's novels.

Tilman Spreckelsen asked: “Can an allotment garden develop something like poetry?” One would like to give him credit for the fact that Simenon “remains completely insensitive to the negative aspects of such a microcosm and its social structures. And that he falls for his decidedly unattractive heroine, too. Seldom has the clarification of the case been so banal and unimportant as in this volume. "

The novel was filmed six times as part of TV series about Commissioner Maigret. Rupert Davies (1962), Jan Teulings (1968), Jean Richard (1968), Kinya Aikawa (1978), Michael Gambon (1993) and Bruno Cremer (2002) played the title role .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Félicie est là . In: Signé Picpus . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1944 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret is patient . Maigret and the maid. Maigret loses an admirer . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1967.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the maid . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1967.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the maid . Translation: Hainer Kober . Diogenes, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-257-21220-8 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the maid . All Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 25. Translation: Hainer Kober. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23825-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1924 à 1945 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of the Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ^ Félicie est là in the bibliography by 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. 54.
  4. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret and the maid . Diogenes, Zurich 2008, p. 134.
  5. ↑ a b Maigret of the Month: Félicie est là (Maigret and the Toy Village) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  6. ↑ "skinny, ugly, ignorant and 24." In: Levin Houston: Another Simenon . In: The Free Lance Star from October 6, 1979.
  7. ↑ Michel Lemoine: Félicie est là . In: Robert Frickx, Raymond Trousson (eds.): Lettres françaises de Belgique. Dictionnaire of the oeuvre. I. Le roman . Duclout Paris 1988, ISBN 2-8011-0755-7 , p. 190.
  8. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret and the maid . Diogenes, Zurich 2008, p. 28.
  9. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , pp. 251-252.
  10. ↑ Dominique Meyer-Bolzinger: Une méthode clinique dans l'enquête policière: Holmes, Poirot, Maigret . Éditions du Céfal, Brussels 2003, ISBN 2-87130-131-X , p. 114.
  11. ↑ criticism . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1967, p. 167 ( online ).
  12. ↑ "Plotwise it is run-of-the-mill Simenon, Which, of course, bedeutet, dass it is better than the best efforts of most of his comepetitors. […] In Felicie, Simenon has created one of his most memorable characters […] One should read this one if only for this creation. ”In: Levin Houston: Another Simenon . In: The Free Lance Star from October 6, 1979.
  13. ↑ "a joy to read - and you (or rather, I) can't say that about many novels these days." In: The Critic 37-39. Thomas More Association. Chicago 1978, p. 178.
  14. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret-Marathon 25: The maid . On FAZ.net from October 5, 2008.
  15. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.