Maigret and the Saint-Fiacre affair

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Maigret and the Saint-Fiacre Affair (French: L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It was written in January 1932 in Cap d'Antibes and belongs to the first season of 19 novels of a total of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was published by Fayard Verlag in 1932 . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau appeared in 1958 under the title Maigret and the secret in the castle by Kiepenheuer & Witsch . In 1986 Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Werner De Haas under the title Maigret and the Saint-Fiacre Affair .

The announcement of a crime leads Maigret back to his native Saint-Fiacre. The countess he once admired dies of a heart attack before his eyes. Maigret investigates the area around the castle that his father managed. He realizes that a lot has changed since his childhood: the magnificent castle has run down, the countess lets young men take over her, and her death seems to suit some.

content

View of Moulins

The municipal police in Moulins have received an anonymous letter announcing a crime on All Souls' Day during early mass in the church of Saint-Fiacre. Writing is not taken seriously either there or on the Quai des Orfèvres in Paris . But Commissioner Maigret, who was born in Saint-Fiacre 42 years ago, seizes the opportunity to return to his hometown, which he has not visited since the death of his father. Maigret's father, Évariste Maigret, was the steward of the Saint-Fiacre castle for thirty years, which filled little Jules with respect and awe. The countess who lived there was the embodiment of beauty and nobility for the boy. But the countess has now grown old, the castle fell into disrepair after the death of her husband, and the property is being sold piece by piece. While Maigret is familiar with the city and many of its inhabitants from his childhood, nobody seems to recognize little Jules from back then in the plump inspector.

Before Maigret's eyes, there is actually a death in early mass. The countess went into cardiac arrest, which was immediately confirmed by the doctor Bouchardon. In the Missal of the dead, a fake newspaper article is hidden, the reports that the son of the Countess of shame had killed over the scandalous way of life of his mother. This is the cause of the old woman's fatal attack. In fact, it has long been rumored in the town that the young secretaries who have occupied the countess since her husband's death are her lovers. Jean Métayer is the current representative of this genre gigolos, who are only interested in squandering the countess's fortune. But one person in particular seems to benefit from the Countess's death: her son Maurice, who is in dire financial straits and has come to ask for 40,000 francs for a bad check.

Although there is no official police investigation because of the natural cause of death, Maigret continues the investigation that leads him back to his childhood again and again. As then there is a manager and his son, Gautier and Émile, an ambitious bank clerk. The former home of the Maigrets has long been modernized. Just like then, there is a young choir boy named Ernest, whose greatest dream is his own missal, and in whose shrewdness and childlike longings Maigret recognizes himself. The cross-eyed girl from earlier is now Maigret's landlady and refuses to call the gentlemen from Paris. The pastor's successor, who performs his office much more conscientiously than his predecessor, also gets entangled in the case, advances the count's debts and invokes Maigret's secret of confession .

In the resolution of the case, Maigret is nothing more than a spectator. In a setting that reminds him of Walter Scott , Maurice de Saint-Fiacre invites everyone involved in the case to dinner in the castle, where he drapes a pistol on the table, takes turns examining each of the motifs and prophesies, the killer won't survive midnight. It is the young Émile Gautier who loses his nerve under the pressure, takes up the pistol and shoots the Count. But there are only blank cartridges in the pistol. The game between father and son Gautier is exposed. Émile was once Métayer's predecessor as the Countess' favorite. Together the Gautiers gradually appropriated their entire fortune. But they feared their rival Métayer and seized the opportunity to use the attack to get the countess out of the way and to direct suspicion to her secretary. The Count beats up Émile and chases him and his father out of the castle. At his mother's funeral, he exudes something of the former glory of the Saint-Fiacres.

background

Paray-le-Frésil town center

From May 1923 on, the young Georges Simenon worked for almost a year as private secretary to the Marquis Raymond d'Estutt de Tracy, until he had enough contacts with the Parisian literary scene to live exclusively as a writer in the future. The marquis owned five castles and other goods that were scattered all over France, but his main residence was Paray-le-Frésil near Moulins in the Allier department . This castle transferred Simenon in the novel Maigret Goes Home - and later in Maigret's memoirs - in the Castle Saint-Fiacre . As a model for Maigret's father, he took the actual castle manager Pierre Tardivon, whom Simenon had come to know and appreciate during his work. Later, some Simenon researchers explored the site and uncovered parallels between the novel and reality.

interpretation

Action on two levels

The novel L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre plays on two levels: the present, in which the Countess's death is cleared up, and the past, which Maigret remembers. According to Wolfgang Spreckelsen, the two levels constantly come into contact with one another, the present quotes the past. The mixing of the two time levels causes problems for Maigret throughout the novel, but ultimately also leads to the solution of the case. It is only against the background of his memory that the decline of the castle becomes tangible in the present and the simultaneous upswing in the administrator's house catches the eye. This shift in the balance of power, in which the administrator's son wants to take the place of the count, is reversed at the end of the novel and the old order is restored.

The two time levels find their correspondence in a conspicuous accumulation of duplication motifs: from the cross-eyed (double-faced) landlady to the signal whistle with two tones - the two motifs form the first and last chapter headings. In addition to two-tone bells and bilingual liturgical texts, treacherously, even the central indicator, the forged newspaper clipping, is printed on both sides with the same text. The plot, too, is often determined by the parallelism of events. Again and again two different groups of people come together at the same time, between whom Maigret's attention is split.

The novel's staff also obey this duplication, with most characters in the present taking the place of other characters in the past. As in Maigret's childhood, there is a steward and his son, as well as an acolyte who is interested in the prayer book. People who have no counterpart in the past, such as Marie Vassilew, the count's lover, do not find their way around Saint-Fiacre and soon leave the plot. The count only overcomes his passivity and becomes an active designer when he takes the place of his father. Tim Morris sees Émile Gautier in particular as a doppelganger of the young Jules Maigret. Both grew up in the shadow of the castle and felt envy of the count's family, which only led to deeds with Émile. Nevertheless, Maigret - in the form of his doppelganger - is responsible for the act.

Position in the series and in the genre

Walter Scott , portrait by Henry Raeburn

L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre is regarded by many critics as not a very typical Maigret novel. For Charles Shibuk, the novel is “more conventional in tone and clarity”, Simenon moves plot and description more to the fore than its “usual brooding atmosphere”. The literary reference, which can even be found in a chapter heading: “Under the sign of Walter Scott ”, is also atypical for Simenon . For example, Josef Quack sees the gathering of suspects in the castle as a veritable “ parody of Walter Scott”. Tim Morris draws the comparison to a scene by Agatha Christie , an author with whom Simenon is otherwise difficult to compare, since his novels did not contain her criminalistic puzzles.

However, according to Wolfgang Spreckelsen , L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre is not an “ideal detective novel”. At a certain point in time, the detective's investigation is taken out of the hands of a suspect, the guilty are not called to account, and finally - atypical for Simenon - one central question remains completely open, that of the author of the anonymous letter. Tim Morris recognizes neither suspense nor a specific detective plot in the novel and points out that strictly speaking there is not even a crime. Alain Bertrand speaks of L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre at the same time as an “œuvre-synthèse”, a tightly interwoven synthesis of literary traces, like an “œuvre-limite”, since literary quality contradicts the boundaries of the genre.

With L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre , Maigret created a multi-layered literary structure for Wolfgang Spreckelsen by linking two literary genres: the detective novel and the fairy tale . The atmosphere of the castle and the clear hierarchical division into people and nobility, locals and foreigners as well as good and bad have a mythical character. Central plot elements are reminiscent of set pieces of a fairy tale, such as the initial prophecy out of nowhere, the spell that the Count casts the assembled group into at the end, the paralyzing powerlessness in which Maigret lets the action taken from his hands roll through to the end with the expulsion of the false suitor and a reinstatement of the rightful ruler.

reception

Maigret and the Saint-Fiacre Affair is considered one of the most famous Maigret novels. Charles Shibuk counted him among the better of the early Maigret novels. Klaus N. Frick read the “realistic representation of a provincial cafe in decline. A strong novel. ” Frank Böhmert recommended the novel as“ a portrayal of morals, the fine psychological drawing of a reluctant returnee and the great variant of a classic detective story. ” Tilman Spreckelsen also spoke of“ a powerful finale in which there is no arrest at the end , but at least a lot of slaps. "

The novel was filmed a total of six times: in 1959 as a feature film with Jean Gabin directed by Jean Delannoy (German title: Maigret knows no mercy ), in 1963 as a Yugoslav television film with Ljuba Tadic directed by Sava Mrmak and in the TV series with Rupert Davies (1962), Jean Richard (1980), Michael Gambon (1992) and Bruno Cremer (1994). In 1994 SDR and SWF produced a radio play directed by Patrick Blank . Joachim Nottke spoke to Maigret .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre . Fayard, Paris 1932 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the secret in the castle . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1958.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the secret in the castle . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1967.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Saint-Fiacre affair . Translation: Werner De Haas. Diogenes, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-257-21373-5 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Saint-Fiacre affair . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 13. Translation: Werner De Haas. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23813-6 .

literature

  • Jean Forest: Notre-Dame de Saint-Fiacre or L'affaire Maigret . Presses de l'Université de Montréal, Montreal 1994, ISBN 2-7606-1611-8
  • Wolfgang Spreckelsen: The double course in Simenon's L'Affaire Saint Fiacre. Creative use of a narrowly defined genre . In: Perry Reisewitz (Ed.): Creativity. Contributions to the 12th Colloquium of Romance Studies . Romanistischer Verlag, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-86143-067-3 , pp. 145–156.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 49.
  2. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The life of Georges Simenon . Knaus, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-8135-2208-3 , pp. 155-156.
  3. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 28.
  4. ↑ The real Saint-Fiacre on maigret.de.
  5. ^ L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre… à Paray-le-Frésil. Sur les traces de Simenon et de Maigret . On terresdecrivains.com.
  6. ↑ See the section: Wolfgang Spreckelsen: The double course in Simenon's L'Affaire Saint Fiacre , pp. 150–152.
  7. ^ A b c Tim Morris: lection: l'affaire saint-fiacre on the website of the University of Texas at Arlington .
  8. ↑ “In this one Simenon stresses plot and characterizations (and firm ones they are) over his usual brooding atmosphere. More conventional in tone and clarity than the average Maigret [...] ". Charles Shibuk in: The Armchair Detective 1 . Brownstone, Madison 1981, ISBN 0-941028-00-3 , p. 43.
  9. ↑ 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. 34.
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Spreckelsen: The double course in Simenon's L'Affaire Saint Fiacre , p. 149.
  11. ↑ Alain Bertrand: Maigret . Éd Labor, Brussels 1994, ISBN 2-8040-0964-5 , p. 106.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Spreckelsen: The double course in Simenon's L'Affaire Saint Fiacre , pp. 153–154.
  13. ↑ In "Possibly the most famous, Maigret 'of all." British Books band 179. The publisher's Circular, London 1966, p.66.
  14. ^ The Armchair Detective 1 , p. 43.
  15. ^ Klaus N. Frick : The Saint-Fiacre affair .
  16. ^ Frank Böhmert : Read: Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Saint-Fiacre affair (1932) ( Memento of January 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) .
  17. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 13: The Saint-Fiacre Affair . On FAZ.net from July 6, 2008.
  18. ↑ Maigret and the Saint-Fiacre affair on maigret.de.
  19. ↑ Maigret and the Saint-Fiacre affair in the HörDat audio play database .