Maigret and the small country pub

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Maigret and the small country pub (French: La Guinguette à deux sous ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is part of the first season of 19 novels in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written in Ouistreham in October 1931 and was published by Fayard in Paris in December of that year . The first German translation Maigret und die Groschenschenke by Bernhard Jolles was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1955. The Diogenes Verlag published an adaptation of this translation by Heide Bideau in 1986 under the title Maigret und die kleine Landkneipe .

When Inspector Maigret visits a young death row inmate in prison, he reveals the murder a year ago. The perpetrator, a regular at the country pub for the last sou , deserved to accompany him to the scaffold . But Maigret's search for the guinguette with the unusual name is in vain for a long time, and when he finally tracks down the small country bar, he bursts into the middle of a wet and happy country wedding.

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Mairie from Seine-Port

It's June 27th in Paris . Inspector Maigret visits one last time the prison cell of Jean Lenoir, a convicted murderer who almost shot the inspector when he was arrested. Lenoir's petition for clemency has been rejected. With his eyes on the execution the following day, the 24-year-old professional criminal confesses to the commissioner that he and his friend Victor Gaillard once witnessed a man throwing a corpse into the Canal Saint-Martin . The blackmail of the murderer, who was a regular at the country pub at the last sou , marked the beginning of the then 16-year-old Lenoir in his criminal career.

Less than a month later, on July 23, Commissioner Maigret is in the middle of the investigation into a check forger affair. His wife is spending her summer vacation with her sister in Alsace and is impatiently waiting for her husband to come. He still has no trace of the ominous country pub when he happens to meet a man in a hat shop who is looking for a well-worn top hat to stage a farmer's wedding in that same pub. On the spur of the moment, Maigret pursues the man who turns out to be the wealthy coal trader Marcel Basso and who actually leads the inspector to the country inn he is looking for, which is between Morsang-sur-Seine and Seine-Port .

An Englishman by the name of James is the center of the society, which meets regularly in the country pub for the last sou and whose gathering this weekend is under the motto of a country wedding. James also invites Maigret to join the group of hilarious and drunkards, whose exuberant celebration only ends with a death the following day: The dead man is a Parisian lingerie merchant named Feinstein, whose wife Mado is obviously the lover of the coal merchant Basso for everyone, and of all people, Basso holds the murder weapon in his hand. Maigret has the alleged gunman arrested, but he manages to escape, and with James' energetic support, he and his family go into hiding.

Rue Royale in the 8th arrondissement of Paris

Maigret sticks to James, who works for an English bank on the Place Vendôme and leads an unhappy married life from which he tries to escape through extensive visits to the tavern Royale on Rue Royale. But only the appearance of Victor Gaillard brings movement to the investigation. The friend of the executed Lenoir wants to tell the inspector, for 30,000 francs, the murderer whom the two young men had once observed. First, he leads Maigret on the trail of the supposed victim, a Jewish junk dealer and usurer, who was known as Papa Ulrich and has been missing for eight years. Maigret finds out that Feinstein owed that Ulrich considerably. In order to pay off these, he made it a sideline to blackmail his wife's changing lovers.

When Basso is picked up in La Ferté-Alais , the truth finally emerges in a confrontation with James and Gaillard. James also once had an affair with Mado Feinstein, for which he borrowed money that he could never have repaid from his modest salary. In a physical dispute over his debts, he killed the lender Ulrich. When he was then blackmailed by Lenoir and Gaillard, he turned to his friend Basso, who advanced the hush money. Although he already knew about Mado's easygoing life through James' experiences, the coal dealer also got involved in an affair with the married woman. Feinstein's death, however, was an accident that occurred when he tried to blackmail Basso with infidelities. The coal trader refused to make the requested payment, whereupon the indebted Feinstein theatrically threatened suicide. In the scramble between the two men for the pistol, the shot, which was fatal for Feinstein, was released. While Basso has no legal consequences to fear because of the accident, Maigret is struck by James' confession, his abysmal hopelessness and his life weariness. But just a few hours later, the inspector travels to Alsace with his wife in a holiday mood, in order to finally begin his summer vacation.

background

Painting La Guinguette by Vincent van Gogh

A guinguette , as the country pub is called in the original French title La Guinguette à deux sous , is a tavern in the suburbs of larger cities such as Paris , which was particularly popular with the urban population on the weekends. According to Michael Dibdin , such venues had their peak in France before the First World War and largely disappeared during the Second World War, with few remaining exceptions on the Seine and Marne . Most of their guests came from the middle class, who left the cities in search of cheap entertainment, while the upper class spent the summer in their villas and the lower class stayed in the cities. Typical of the equipment of a guinguette was the mechanical piano , which played dance music with coins. Such a piano operated with French sous also gives the country pub its name for the last sou in the novel.

The landscape between Morsang-sur-Seine and Saint-Fargeau-Ponthierry , which forms the background of the novel, was explored by Simenon in 1928 with his first boat Ginette on the Seine. According to research by Claude Menguys, he merged three different restaurants in the area into the Guinguette à deux sous . When Simenon wrote the novel three years later, in October 1931, it was written in a completely different French region: in the coastal town of Ouistreham in Normandy . La Guinguette à deux sous was one of a total of eight Maigret novels that Simenon wrote in rapid succession from March to December of the year after the series pronounced in February 1931 with Maigret and the late Monsieur Gallet and Maigret and the Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien started successfully.

interpretation

Stanley G. Eskin describes Maigret and the small country bar as “suburban history” that revolves around a femme fatale and her numerous admirers. It is typical for Simenon that the female figure is strong and powerful, goal-oriented and straightforward, while the men turn out to be weak and suggestible, unable to deal openly with their women. Tilman Spreckelsen , the novel is reminiscent of Georges Brassens ' chanson Il n'y a pas d'amours heureux (“There are no happy loves”). In the Walpurgis night hustle and bustle of the pub guests and their lax understanding of love and loyalty, the only affectionate couple is the one who is separated throughout the novel and only maintains contact by means of sad, loving telegrams: Maigret and his wife.

In the country pub last Sou Maigret gets loud Klaus N. Frick in a "holidaymakers party on the banks of the Seine, with dancing and drinking people with love confusion and jealousy". Patrick Anderson describes "a long, glowing scene of laughter, sunlight, and abandon that captures the painfulness of people's lifelong pursuit of pleasure." According to Peter Foord, "greed, blackmail, guilt, infidelity, and jealousy lurk behind the facade of the revelers." the shadow of murder ”. Despite the shabby locality and the greasy guests, Michael Dibdin sees the Guinguette as the mythical power of an enchanted forest, into which Maigret and the readers are transported in order to find their way back to freedom with their intellect and intuition alone.

Tim Morris sees the actual investigation as a mixture of advanced forensic techniques and far more old-fashioned drinking. Klaus N. Frick describes: "At times Maigret hardly seems to be investigating in this novel, but almost enjoying the case", whereby he prefers to sit with James in a corner bar, indulge in alcohol and let his eyes wander around. Peter Foord sees the whole investigation determined by James' slow pace and his demonstratively displayed indifference, from which Maigret initially shows himself disturbed, only to develop more and more sympathy for the Englishman. Tim Morris points out that, as in some of his early novels, Simenon's description of the Jewish junk dealer comes uncomfortably close to anti-Semitic stereotypes. But he compensates for this by having his commissioner hunt down the non-Jewish murderers of two Jewish victims throughout the novel.

At a central point in the novel, Commissioner Maigret describes his approach to an investigation, with which, according to Thomas Narcejac , Simenon postulates his personal definition of a crime novel: “First of all, it was a matter of establishing contact with an unknown milieu, establishing relationships with people of whom one did not have the slightest knew how to penetrate into a small world that had gotten upside down as a result of a crime. ”Maigret always finds the phase of taking in the weather to be particularly fascinating. "Then suddenly you had one end of the thread in your hand, the beginning of the second phase was made, the actual investigation could begin, the gears started running." At the accelerated pace of this phase until the final disclosure, it no longer applies to the investigator to keep the course of events going, but only to follow them and keep them under control.

Josef Quack assesses Maigret and the small country pub as a “model novel of existential prose” . In no other novel in the Maigret series is "so extensively reflected on doom and despair". The topic is introduced at the beginning with the confession of the murderer, who takes full responsibility for his actions and rejects any social determinism . In contrast to this stands the fate- believing coal trader Basso, who, with his hasty and ultimately unnecessary flight, creates the situation that becomes unbearable for himself. James, on the other hand, expresses complete hopelessness in the end, the disgust for the misery of his entire existence, so that Commissioner Maigret has the impression that “he has never looked down into such a deep, so black despair.” The weekly exuberance formed the basis for this existential despair Happiness in the guinguette just a mask.

reception

The Heilbronn voice judged Maigret and the small country bar : “It is a wonderful criminal game that Simenon came up with when she was young, and at the same time a carefully observed portrait of society in France in those years.” Klaus N. Frick praised: “Maigret's milieu Descriptions are razor sharp; With just a few sentences he creates a mood, he sets clear accents. ”There is“ no gossip, there is clear narration and the plot is driven forward with many dialogues. Brilliant. Once again! ”For Patrick Anderson, like Maigret and the cellars of the“ Majestic ” , the novel offers “ solid police work, but beyond that they are charming and sometimes magical evocations of a Paris that has long since disappeared. ”You can tell the age of the novels only in their outward appearance and their non-violence, but not in their spelling: "Ironical, subtle, humanistic, these Maigret books are as timeless as Paris itself."

In December 1932, Roger Dévigne included La guinguette à deux sous in a selection of the ten greatest masterpieces after 1918, which he determined for Le Petit Journal . Kirkus Reviews found in the anthology, which also contained Maigret on the Flemish , two more "heroic deeds" of Commissioner Maigrets, whose idiosyncratic methods proved to be first class in solving the cases. According to the British Book News, “careful observation of his suspects and careful gathering of small clues” leads to the clarification in both cases. According to the Kliatt Young Adult Paperback Book Guide, it is in particular the writing style and tone that make Simenon's novels stand out from the rest of the crime literature. The desperation of the people involved is captured by the psychological drawing in a uniquely touching way.

The novel was filmed twice. In the episode The Wedding Guest of the British TV series, Rupert Davies played Commissioner Maigret in 1962 . In 1975 he was followed by Jean Richard in the French television series Les Enquêtes du Commissaire Maigret . Two radio play adaptations were made on German radio. In 1959 the Südwestfunk produced a radio play directed by Gert Westphal , the Maigret was spoken by Leonard Steckel . Two years later, a production by Bayerischer Rundfunk followed with Paul Dahlke and Traute Rose under the direction of Heinz-Günter Stamm . On the occasion of the publication of the radio play production of the BR on CD, Konrad Heidkamp remarked beyond all retro charm "that cozy existential emptiness that Simenon [...] made Albert Camus 's forerunner ." Horst Frank in particular speaks "wonderfully bored".

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: La Guinguette à deux sous. Fayard, Paris 1932 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Groschenschenke. Translation: Bernhard Jolles. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1955.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Groschenschenke. Translation: Bernhard Jolles. Heyne, Munich 1967.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the small country bar. Translation: Bernhard Jolles and Heide Bideau. Diogenes, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-257-21428-6 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the small country bar. Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 11. Translation: Bernhard Jolles and Heide Bideau. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23811-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ La Guinguette à deux sous 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. 64.
  3. ↑ a b Michael Dibdin : The Bar on the Seine . Foreword to the American edition of Penguin Books , 2003.
  4. ↑ a b c d Maigret of the Month: La Guinguette à deux sous. (Maigret and the Tavern by the Seine) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  5. ^ Pierre Assouline : Simenon. A biography . Chatto & Windus, London 1997, ISBN 0-7011-3727-4 , p. 99.
  6. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 167.
  7. ↑ a b c Tim Morris: lection: la guinguette à deux sous on the website of the University of Texas at Arlington .
  8. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret-Marathon 11: The small country pub . On FAZ.net from June 20, 2008.
  9. ↑ a b c Summer visitors and a murderer in Klaus N. Frick's blog , January 10, 2011.
  10. ↑ "It's a long, luminous scene, filled with laughter, sunlight and abandon, that captures the poignancy of humankind's endless pursuit of pleasure." Quoted from: Patrick Anderson: Vive Maigret! Simenon's Smoke-Filled Tales, Reinspected . In: The Washington Post, December 18, 2006.
  11. ^ Thomas Narcejac : The Art of Simenon . Routledge & Kegan, London 1952, p. 19.
  12. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret and the small country pub. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23811-2 , p. 111.
  13. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret and the small country pub. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23811-2 , p. 159.
  14. ↑ 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 , pp. 64–65.
  15. ↑ Quoted from: Georges Simenon: Maigret und die kleine Landkneipe ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diogenes.de 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. at Diogenes Verlag .
  16. ↑ "solid police procedurals, but beyond that they are charming and sometimes magical evocations of a Paris now long vanished. […] Wry, understated, humanistic, these Maigret books are as timeless as Paris itself. ”Quoted from: Patrick Anderson: Vive Maigret! Simenon's Smoke-Filled Tales, Reinspected . In: The Washington Post, December 18, 2006.
  17. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 169.
  18. ^ "Two more exploits of the French detective [...]. Maigret's individual methods prove top ranking in solving two mysteries ”. Quoted from: Maigret to the Rescue by Simenon . In: Kirkus Reviews of January 4, 1940.
  19. ^ "Careful observation of his suspects and a slow piling up of small clues". Quoted from: British Book News 1950, p. 797.
  20. ^ "It's the style of writing and the tone, more than anything else, that distinguish Simenon's books from other detective stories. And the psychological depiction of the characters captures the despair of the people involved in a uniquely touching way. "Quoted from: Kliatt Young Adult Paperback Book Guide Volume 25, 1991, p. 14.
  21. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's website.
  22. ↑ Maigret and the Groschenschenke in the HörDat audio game database .
  23. ↑ Konrad Heidkamp : You allow me to keep smoking? In: Die Zeit of August 18, 2005.