Maigret and the Providence haulier

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Canal latéral à la Marne near Condé-sur-Marne
The canal system in the French region of Champagne-Ardenne
The Canal latéral à la Marne near Épernay

Maigret und der Treidler der Providence (French: Le Charretier de la Providence ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon , which Simenon had written in Morsang-sur-Seine in the summer of 1930 and which was the fourth novel in the series about the detective in March 1931 Maigret was published by Fayard . The first German translation Die Nacht an der Schleuse by Harold Effberg was published by the Schlesische Verlagsanstalt in Berlin as early as 1934. This was followed by the Hammer Verlag in Vienna with the title renaming Der Schiffsfuhrmann1948 and the translation by M. Konrad. Finally, in 1966 Heyne Verlag published the work under the title Maigret tappt im Dunkeln in the translation by Jutta Sonnenberg. In 1991 the Diogenes Verlag in Zurich published a new translation by Claus Sprick under the title Maigret und der Treidler der "Providence" . The quotation marks in the title were omitted in the new translation by Rainer Moritz , which was published by Kampa Verlag in 2019 .

content

The detective novel is the Canal latéral à la Marne in northeastern France in the Marne department near Epernay , where at the gate of Dizy old Treidelkahn "Providence" next to the luxurious ship "Southern Cross" of the wealthy elderly Englishman and former Colonel Sir Walter Lampson is temporarily at anchor. On board the "Providence" is the older but strong Jean Liberge, who looks after the horses there as a groom . The crew of the yacht “Southern Cross” includes the liberal owner and his pleasure-addicted younger wife Mary, his friend Willy Marco, his Russian “girl for everything” Vladimir and a prostitute who has seen better days. After the "Providence" cast off, Mary Lampson, clad in a silk dress, is found strangled in the hay of the stable near the lock keeper. Shortly afterwards, Marco, after quarreling with Sir Lampson, is discovered murdered in the same way.

Thereupon, Commissioner Jules Maigret is called by the 1. Criminal Police Department, where he takes up quarters and observes the environment in his usual “search for subtle discrepancies” until his suspicions are confirmed. At first it was difficult for him to find his way around in the world of inland navigation and in relation to the buttoned-up English aristocrat. The bad weather also affects Maigret's mood to some extent. First he finds a hat that apparently belonged to the Russian factotum Vladimir. Then it is noticeable that the groom Jean Liberge apparently rode the lock keeper's bike around several times . As a result, Maigret's main occupation is cycling back and forth on the towpath between the "Southern Cross" and "Providence", which have since been abandoned, in order to maintain contact and continue the investigation.

Liberge remains closed and monosyllabic until he later sustains life-threatening injuries if he falls between the lock and the ship's side. Thanks to the fingerprints he has taken , he surprisingly turns out to be the former doctor Jean Evariste Derachambaux, who was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in a convict colony and to forced labor in a purely circumstantial trial for the alleged murder of his wealthy aunt . The evidence at that time was well-founded, but Derachambaux was probably also hidden for other reasons. Because his wife at the time, Celine Mornet, had not followed him into exile despite her promise - perhaps she herself had something to do with the murder of his heir-aunt out of greed . Instead, she went into hiding, taking the name of a distant relative, Marie Dupon, and later marrying Sir Walter Lampson.

Thus both former spouses met by chance and surprisingly at lock No. 14, whereupon Jean Liberge kidnapped them unnoticed for two nights in the stable of the "Providence" because of the always drunk English nobleman . Marie had previously left the home ship for a long time without specifying her destination. Since she refused to face Jean, he strangled her and hid her body in the lock keeper's stable. After cycling back and forth between the two ships, he stole Vladimir's cap and interpreted it as a false lead. However, Willy Marco had tracked him down and demanded an explanation from him. In the ensuing quarrel, the Liberge, who was physically superior in spite of his age, was able to strangle him. Commissioner Maigret presents the doomed Liberge with the results of his investigation, which he can only confirm through eye contact. Otherwise Maigret lets the murderer die in peace with his horses, while Sir Walter Lampson is heavily drunk, but outwardly drives along the Marne Canal with his factotum Wladimir without any emotion. In contrast, there is the grief of the wife of the captain of the "Providence", who has downright mothered the groom and, despite her emotion, thanks to Maigret's tact, is reconciled with the situation.

background

Georges Simenon, 1963, photo by Erling Mandelmann

After Simenon had developed his detective Maigret in the winter of 1929/1930 and wrote the first novel Pietr-le-Letton , the following three Maigret novels, Monsieur Gallet, décédé , Le Charretier de la "Providence" and Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien in quick succession in the summer of 1930 in Morsang-sur-Seine, where he was anchored with his boat. In autumn, the fifth Maigret novel, La Tête d'un homme, followed. Maigret's in-house publishing house Fayard , in which he had previously mainly written dime novels under a pseudonym, promised to publish the series as soon as Simenon had completed ten novels in advance, in order to be able to publish a new book every month in quick succession. Although only five novels were available at the time, Fayard finally brought out the first two novels in February 1931, which were to appear in a double pack immediately in order to increase the impact. Monsieur Gallet, décédé and Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien were selected to start the series .

Simenon, who published under his real name for the first time, used the publisher's advertising budget and parts of his own author's fee for a big ball with which he wanted to advertise his books.

The figure of Jean Liberge, in his stature ("bear strength"), his advanced age and his criminal history (probably wrongly convicted) reminds of another literary figure: that of Jean Valjean from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables . Since Simeon wrote all of his first novels on board his moored mini-yacht “Ostrogoth”, the choice of his subject on the Marne was not far off in this case. The Marne Canal and its many locks in Aigny , Bisseuil , Condé-sur-Marne , Mareuil-sur-Ay and Tours-sur-Marne , are essential to the differences in altitude of the plateau of Langres, behind which the Saône takes its course and the cities of Chalon-sur-Saône , Mâcon and Layon are located.

review

  • “Maigret and the Providence haulier” is a wonderfully atmospheric story, the tension of which arises from the confrontation of worlds: that of the ›demi-monde‹ on a yacht excursion and that of the hauliers, boatmen, lock keepers on rivers and canals in north-east France. "( Westdeutscher Rundfunk )
  • “A beautiful woman in a silk dress is the victim in 'Maigret and the Providence haulier'. She is found dead in an environment that does not match her appearance, namely between tugs and barges. You can literally smell diesel oil, the smell of horse stables, see the sedate boats with their wordless owners or think that you have windy yacht owners in front of you. Simenon is a master of the atmosphere ”. ( Berliner Morgenpost )
  • "Four novels, zero arrests, so the balance sheet after one month Maigret: Can I, as a crime-fiction reader, not ask to hear the sentence at least once:" You are under arrest! "? What does this commissioner actually do with those whom he arrives personally? In the first case he watches how he judges himself, in the second case there is no serious crime at all (but Maigret still helps with insurance fraud), in the third case he gives the collective gang of murderers their punishment because the matter is almost time-barred , and here - well, read for yourself. (...) Everything is very puzzling here, and also quite unpleasant: with the filthy rich (...) Englishman who is sailing through France's canals with his sleek factotum on a yacht you don't get warm so quickly, the other figures are sometimes a little forced - a product of their hard life as boatmen or hauliers; the animals, after all, carry it all with dignity. That does not speak against the book, especially because in this great gray of rain and dirt that lies over the novel, the author of the crime remains hidden for so long. "

reception

Trawling with horses on the Finow Canal , around 1885

Crime stories that take place in the vicinity of locks or on inland canals have always enjoyed great popularity in European crime literature. In addition to the detective novel at hand, Maj Sjöwalls and Per Wahlöös Die Tote im Götakanal (original title: Roseanna , 1965; translation: Johannes Carstensen, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1968) and Colin Dexter's murder on the Oxford Canal (original title: The Wench Is Dead. Macmillan, London 1989; Rowohlt, Reinbek 1990), whereby the coincidental and planned encounter between perpetrator and victim while being away from the scene of the crime also play a major role in these stories.

The translation by Heyne Verlag, Maigret , which has long been available on the German-language book market , is in the dark , although the title here was more due to its difficulties in getting to know the unknown world of inland navigation, and it was in contrast to the original and today's German title did not want to reveal the perpetrator, suggested some puns: “Georges Simenon, for example, embarrassed his hero with the title Maigret gropes in the dark , but as we know the brave inspector, he will have solved the case in time before the last line of the book. "

Adaptations

expenditure

  • Le Charretier de la Providence. Fayard, Paris 1931.
  • The night at the lock . Translated by Harold Effberg. Schlesische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin 1934.
  • The ship's driver . Translated by M. Konrad. Hammer, Vienna 1948.
  • Maigret gropes in the dark. Translation by Jutta Sonnenberg, Heyne, Munich 1966, ISBN 3-453-12067-1 .
  • Maigret and the “Providence” haulier. Translation by Claus Sprick, Diogenes Verlag (detebe 21029), Zurich 1981, ISBN 3-257-21029-9 .
  • All Maigret novels in 75 volumes. Vol. 4, Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23804-4 .
  • Maigret and the Treidler der Providence , translation by Rainer Moritz, Kampa, Zurich 2019, ISBN 3311130049 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus-Peter Walter: Reclams Krimi-Lexikon . Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2002, p. 388.
  2. ↑ Hendrik Werner : Strange Maigret. Out of weariness, Georges Simenon created the most important investigator of the 20th century. In: The world . January 26, 2008. Retrieved April 3, 2012.
  3. ↑ Both cited from www.diogenes.ch ( Memento of the original from September 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diogenes.ch
  4. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen : Maigret Marathon 4. The towman of the "Providence" . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . May 2, 2008. Retrieved April 3, 2012.
  5. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Baron and Sibylle Mulot: Ferienlektüre, Part 3. We energize them. In: Der Spiegel . August 6, 2010. Retrieved April 3, 2012.
  6. ↑ Thomas Martin / NDR: Built on sand? Bible quotes in everyday life . Schlütersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Hanover 2003, p. 90.
  7. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0853882/
  8. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306636/
  9. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276312/