Maigret and the madman from Bergerac

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maigret and the madman of Bergerac (French: Le Fou de Bergerac ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 16th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written in La Rochelle in March 1932 and was published the following month, in April 1932, by the Paris publisher Fayard . The first German translation Maigret und der Verrückte by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1963. In 1986, Diogenes Verlag brought out a new translation by Hainer Kober under the title Maigret und der Verrückte von Bergerac .

Commissioner Maigret travels to the Dordogne at the invitation of a friend . A mysterious fellow passenger causes the inspector to follow him and jump off the moving train. Barely in the open air, Maigret is shot down and loses consciousness. When he regains consciousness, he is in the Bergerac hospital , where local residents believe him to be a serial killer who has already killed two women: the “Bergerac madmen”.

content

View from the Dordogne to Bergerac
Houses on Place de la Madeleine in Bergerac

It is March and the first signs of spring are luring Commissioner Maigret out of Paris into the countryside. He accepted an invitation from his retired colleague Leduc on his estate in Villefranche-en-Dordogne. A passenger in the sleeping compartment keeps the inspector awake on the journey by sobbing continuously. When he jumps out of the moving train on an embankment, Maigret follows him without thinking. The stranger shoots him, and the superintendent can just get to the next farm before he faints.

Maigret wakes up in the Bergerac hospital, where the doctor, the local inspector, the prosecutor and the examining magistrate have gathered around his bed. He is believed to be the “Bergerac Crazy”, a serial killer who has already killed two young women by sticking a needle in their hearts. In a third attack, he failed due to the resistance of the victim. Although the false suspicion can be quickly dispelled by Leduc who has traveled here, the injured commissioner has to stay at the local Hôtel d'Angleterre to recover , where Madame Maigret, who has traveled there, takes care of him. And because he is bored in his sick bed, he begins to look for the “madman” he suspects among the good citizens of Bergerac.

Above all, two of the regular visitors to his sickbed will soon be in the focus of the inspector. The public prosecutor Duhourceau secretly collects so-called "book editions for bibliophiles", i.e. pornography. And the village gossip has to report that the surgeon Jacques Rivaud has a parallel relationship with his wife Germaine and his sister-in-law Françoise. More like an allegation of protection for one of the suspects seems to the inspector, in any case, their statement that they have escaped a fourth attack by the madman. Maigret does not even exclude his friend Leduc from the group of possible perpetrators, which is just as indignant as Madame Maigret, who is hardly able to recognize her husband in his zeal for hunting.

Finally, the "crazy one" is found. He was shot dead the same day he and Maigret jumped off the train. It's about Samuel Meyer, who hired himself out as a passport forger under the guise of a stamp dealer. He was sentenced to death in Algiers after killing two employees in an argument. Before the execution he was allegedly killed in a hospital fire, but the dead man's fingerprints show that a different body than his was passed on at the time. After the serial killer seems to have been identified, the Bergerac dignitaries want to close the case as quickly as possible. Only Maigret suspects that there must be other hidden abysses. Last but not least, he considers Meyer's suicide, without the murder weapon being found, to be implausible. He lures Joséphine Beausoleil, the mother of Germaine and Françoise, to Bergerac with an advertisement pretending to be looking for an heiress. Rivaud feels cornered by her appearance, he tries to escape with Françoise, is caught by Leduc and commits suicide together with his lover.

As Maigret has suspected for a while, Rivaud lived under a false identity in Bergerac. His real name was Meyer and was the son of Samuel Meyer, whom he helped to escape in Algiers through the fictitious fire. After that, all his efforts were directed towards his own advancement, although his partner had long since ceased to be the honest wife, but her sophisticated sister Françoise, who was also expecting a child from him. When the prosecutor discovered Duhourceau Rivaud's double life, Françoise seduced him into believing it was his child, after which she and Rivaud had him in their hands. Samuel Meyer had meanwhile gone mad in America, had already committed murders there with his typical modus operandi - the deadly needle. He fled to Bergerac and continued the series of murders there, which his son was unable to uncover for fear of his own exposure. After all attempts to persuade the father to leave the country with money were unsuccessful, the surgeon waited for Samuel Meyer to kill him on the evening of Maigret's arrival. Since father and son have already been judged, Maigret sees no reason to make the background of the case public. Recovered, he treats himself and his wife to an opulent farewell meal before they leave for Paris.

interpretation

After starting with Maigret's train ride, which, according to Stanley G. Eskin, is “written admirably quickly”, the inspector shows himself the rest of the novel in “the role of an armchair detective”, who conducts his investigations from the hotel bed. He is supported by Madame Maigret, who has her first major appearance in the series. Her husband uncovered abysses that slumber beneath the seemingly intact surface of a small town, with the plot, with its changing suspicions, reminiscent of a classic Whodunit . As is often the case in the early Maigret novels, the key to the puzzle lies in the distant past. For Maurice Piron, a special feature of the novel is the second-hand investigation, in which the inspector is completely dependent on the information given to him and his visual imagination. The fact that he is taking action against local dignitaries , like in Maigret and the Yellow Dog , does not make his task any easier. For Franz Schuh , Maigret “has to stay in bed, solve a pretty desolate case, mess up a village in the Dordogne and go on vacation there at the same time.” Patrick Marnham sees the investigation in the room above the hotel's dining room mainly determined by the smell and taste of French cuisine .

According to Julian Symons, Maigret and the madman from Bergerac is a typical Maigret novel, whose implausible plot is balanced out by the precise description of the milieu, the atmospheric weather and the coherent characters, so that overall it leaves an interesting, convincing impression. Even Reinhold Wolff recognizes a typical novel of the first Maigret phase whose hallmark atmospheric density and personal or milieu descriptions are in the style of the psychological novel, dealing with both modern literary agents such style indirect libre and stream of consciousness and with echoes of light fiction connect. Set pieces from psychoanalysis are often used boldly, for example in Maigret's dream at the time of his greatest depression. The animal, half seal, half whale, into which the inspector transforms, is a symbol of impotence with its inability to act. For Tilman Spreckelsen , in any case, this novel is “somewhat woodcut-like, not to mention the stereotypes ”, and the murderer also becomes unexplained “insane, just like that”.

According to Lucille F. Becker, anti-Semitic stereotypes in particular are taken to extremes in Maigret and the madman from Bergerac . The Jew Samuel Meyer is not only a forger, murderer and crazy serial offender, but is also associated with kidnapping young French women in South American brothels. At one point Maigret argues: “He had met hundreds of people like Samuel in Paris and elsewhere, and he had always studied them with a certain curiosity that was not exactly disgusted but mixed with unease, as if they formed a world of their own . ”According to Bill Alder, almost the entire seventh chapter of the novel is an uninterrupted anti-Semitic inflammatory speech that the author of his character Maigret puts in the mouth. The passages are also unedited in current editions of the novel. Such anti-Semitic stereotypes can, according to Pierre Assouline, often be found in Simenon's early work, for example in the first Maigret novel Maigret and Pietr the Lette and in the early non-Maigret novel The Engagement of Monsieur Hire . Later works such as The Archangelsk Bookseller , on the other hand, paint a much more nuanced picture of Jewish characters.

background

From April 1932 on, Georges Simenon leased the La Richardière estate in Marsilly , Charente-Maritime for the next two years . He spent the previous month at the Hôtel de France et d'Angleterre in nearby La Rochelle , where Maigret and the Mad from Bergerac was created. In the novel, he split the name of the hotel into the Hôtel d'Angleterre and the Hôtel de France , which are described as the most important houses on Bergerac's market square. In fact, the two hotels have no real role models in the city. In general, Maigret and the madman by Bergerac is the only one of the first 19 Maigret novels that were published between 1931 and 1934 by the Parisian publisher Fayard, whose setting Simenon was not known from his own travels. This explains the narrative trick that Maigret, tied to his sickbed, is forced to get to know the city of Bergerac through observations from his wife as well as travel guides and postcards. It remains unclear which village Simenon called Villefranche-en-Dordogne, as there are two places of the name in the Dordogne : Villefranche-du-Périgord and Villefranche-de-Lonchat , the latter being in the Bergerac arrondissement .

reception

Charles Poore in the New York Times described the double volume Maigret Travels South , which includes Maigret and the Mad from Bergerac as well as Maigret in the Liberty Bar , as "even better than the last," and he quoted Elliot Paul after which Simenon found it easy manage to create atmosphere. Kirkus Review found "good yarn" in both novels. For Time Magazine there were all kinds of local murders and scandals for a small provincial town: “Refreshing stories, very French.” According to Punch , Inspector Maigret gives an impressive performance in the novel by not allowing the Bergerac officials to rest: “ The recording of his heroic deeds makes reading particularly appealing. ” The New Yorker made a general recommendation for all readers and stated:“ Simenon writes astutely and cautiously ”. For Book Review Digest , Maigret and the madman from Bergerac was simply “excellent”.

In literatures, Franz Schuh particularly praised the introductory chapter of the novel as a “masterpiece of symbolizing a train ride at night”. The reader feels Maigret's tension and sleepiness, its bad taste in the mouth. “The traditional art of writing is hypnotic; it gives the reader imaginations and dreams. ” After an unusual structure and exciting investigative work, Klaus N. Frick drew the conclusion:“ The Maigret novels captivate me every time ”, for which he even forgives the inspector for the unforgivable clichés about Jews spread in the book . In addition to these clichés, Tilman Spreckelsen criticized differing statements about the commissioner's wounding. Nevertheless, he was happy to see how "children, desired as well as unwanted or failed, very quietly connect the suspects, the guilty and the investigators."

The novel was filmed a total of four times as part of TV series about Commissioner Maigret. The main roles were played by Rupert Davies (Great Britain, 1962), Gino Cervi (Italy, 1972), Jean Richard (France, 1979) and Bruno Cremer (France, 2002).

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Le Fou de Bergerac. Fayard, Paris 1932 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the madman. Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1963.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the madman. Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1971.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the madman from Bergerac. Translation: Hainer Kober . Diogenes, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-257-21429-4 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the madman from Bergerac. Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 16. Translation: Hainer Kober. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23816-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Le fou de Bergerac 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. 77.
  3. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 164.
  4. ↑ Michel Lemoine: Le chien jaune . 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. 81.
  5. ↑ Maurice Piron: L'Univers de Simenon . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1983, ISBN 2-258-01152-3 , pp. 284-285.
  6. ^ Bernard Alavoine: Les enquêtes de Maigret de Georges Simenon . Encrage, Amiens 1999, ISBN 2-911576-15-2 , pp. 81-82.
  7. ^ A b Franz Schuh : Das Kriminal: When the crime thriller was still in order . In: Literatures January / February 2007, p. 36.
  8. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The life of Georges Simenon . Knaus, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-8135-2208-3 , pp. 194-195.
  9. ↑ Julian Symons : Simenon and his Maigret . In: Claudia Schmölders, Christian Strich (Ed.): About Simenon . Diogenes, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-257-20499-X , pp. 124-126.
  10. ↑ Reinhold Wolff : Georges Simenon, Le fou de Bergerac . In: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon , pp. 10659-10660 (pdf; 11 kB).
  11. ↑ a b Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 16: The Crazy from Bergerac . On FAZ.net from July 26, 2008.
  12. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret and the madman from Bergerac. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23816-7 , p. 76.
  13. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 6.
  14. ^ Bill Alder: Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories . McFarland, Jefferson 2013, ISBN 978-0-7864-7054-9 , p. 96.
  15. ↑ a b The commissioner as an anti-Semite in Klaus N. Frick's blog , November 30, 2011.
  16. ^ Pierre Assouline : Simenon. A biography . Chatto & Windus, London 1997, ISBN 0-7011-3727-4 , pp. 30-32.
  17. ↑ Maigret of the Month: Le Fou de Bergerac (The Madman of Bergerac) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  18. ^ Bill Alder: Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories . McFarland, Jefferson 2013, ISBN 978-0-7864-7054-9 , p. 110.
  19. ^ Paul Mercier: Partir et finir, un jour, par revenir, en chemin de fer. Le retour en train comme moment de la crise identitaire. In: Situations ferroviaires. Cahiers Simenon 21 . Les Amis de Georges Simenon, Brussels 2007, p. 74.
  20. ^ "Even better than the last". Quoted from: Charles Poore: Maigret Rides Again . In: The New York Times, May 18, 1940.
  21. ↑ "Good yarns, both of them." Quoted from: Maigret Travels South By Simenon . In: Kirkus Reviews of May 16, 1940.
  22. ↑ “Refreshing stories, very French.” Quoted from: Books: Murders in May . In: Time Magazine, June 4, 1940.
  23. ↑ "he gives a more impressive display in 'The Madman of Bergerac.' Glued to his bed on account of a wound, Maigret gave no rest to the officials of Bergerac, and the record of his exploits makes most attractive reading. "Quoted from: Punch , Volume 198, 1940, p. 140.
  24. ↑ "Simenon writes shrewdly and with restraint [...]. Recommended for everyone in this country who has sense enough to spell out words. "Quoted from: The New Yorker , Volume 16, 1940, p. 75.
  25. ^ "The second story in this latest volume, 'The Madman of Bergerac' is excellent." Quoted from: Book Review Digest , Volume 36. HW Wilson, 1941, p. 839.
  26. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's website.