Maigret and his dead

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Maigret and his dead (French: Maigret et son mort ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 29th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written from December 8 to 17, 1947 in Tucson , Arizona and was published the following year by Presses de la Cité . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1954 . In 1981 the Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Elfriede Riegler. A revision of the translation by Wille / Klau was published by Kampa Verlag in 2018 .

When a man calls Commissioner Maigret's office and asks for help because he is being followed by a gang of murderers, the Commissioner initially believes in a madman. But the calls are repeated, the man's escape leads through half of Paris until he is found murdered that night. During the investigation that followed, Maigret felt a special bond with the murder victim, so that soon there was only talk of "his dead" in the entire office.

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Place de la Concorde in Paris

In mid-February on the first mild days of the year in Paris: On the Quai des Orfèvres , Commissioner Maigret had to deal with an elderly lady suffering from paranoia. So he is easily prepared to see an anonymous caller who puts himself through to the inspector's office because he is being chased through Paris by a gang of murderers, just as a madman. However, when the calls were repeated in increasing panic from different locations in the city, Maigret dispatched his inspectors, who missed the refugees several times by a hair's breadth. In the evening the calls fall silent and during the night the man is found stabbed to death on the Place de la Concorde , where, according to witnesses, the body was transported in a yellow Citroën .

Maigret discovers that the dead man's name was Albert Rochain and that he and his wife Nine ran the small restaurant Au Petit Albert in Charenton-le-Pont . But the bar is deserted, Nine has disappeared, and without any further traces, the inspector falls on the idea of ​​having his inspector Chevrier reopen the bar in order to lure the murderers from the reserve. This actually works, and a dumb-looking redhead who fits the description of the caller looks around the restaurant. Maigret and Lucas pursue the man, whose escape leads through half of Paris in a reversal of the events of the previous day. In the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile district, the redhead seems to have arrived in familiar surroundings, but before he can lead the pursuers into his hiding place, he is shot in front of their eyes, presumably by a member of his gang.

Rue du Roi-de-Sicile in Paris

The dead man turns out to be Victor Poliensky, a native Czech. A night raid on Rue du Roi-de-Sicile leads Maigret on the trail of a whole gang of Czechs who were hiding in the Hôtel du Lion d'Or . But the other three men, Carl Lipschitz, Serge Madok and the teenage Pietr, have left, only the Slovak Maria is heavily pregnant and is being admitted to the hospital for delivery, where Maigret interrogates her despite an indignant nurse. The commissioner learns that the young mother was the lover of all the gang members who, as the so-called Picardy gang, terrify the region of northern France with particularly brutal robberies. Maigret spreads Maria's whereabouts in the media in order to use her as bait, and an incident actually occurs in front of the hospital when Carl wants to visit his beloved and is shot by the young but all the more jealous Pietr, who is proudly arrested. The last member of the gang, Serge Madok, can be picked up in a brothel.

Horse racing in Vincennes

Together with Inspector Colombani from the Sûreté nationale , who is responsible for the case of the Picardy gang , Jean Bronsky, the man behind the murderers, is also arrested. All the robberies in Picardy were committed for his money-intensive lifestyle at the side of his lover Francine Latour, who played the Folies Bergère , and his ruinous horse racing . At a horse race in Vincennes , a train ticket fell out of his pocket, which Albert Rochain, who happened to be present and who was also enthusiastic, habitually picked it up. The destination of Goderville reminded the innkeeper of the recent crimes of the Picardy gang . With his shocked reaction, he drew the attention of the gang who pursued the escaping confidante and murdered him in his house. It was two dubious friends of the dead man who got his body aside in their Citroën that night and brought his wife Nine to safety in an inn near Corbeil . There Maigret looks for her, and with the prospect of adopting her newborn baby after the death penalty to be expected for Maria, he is able to give the grieving widow new hope.

Structure and language

Maigret und seine Toter is the longest novel in the Maigret series, which offers an unusually large number of settings and supporting characters. Nevertheless, its structure, from calling the stranger, killing him, searching for the perpetrator, tracking down the Czech gang to their arrest, is completely linear , no different from any Whodunit . Thomas Narcejac comments that it is probably the most linear and weakly constructed plot in Simenon's entire work. But the plot only forms the background, which, like a musical theme, only becomes interesting through its variations . For example, the initial scene with the anonymous caller develops into a detailed, nerve-racking chase through the Parisian cafés. Two opposing rhythms determined the novel: On the one hand, the inspector's calm, meticulous search for the victim's identity and past life. On the other hand, the rapid hunt for the murderers, the speed of which increases more and more until the final peripetia .

The narrative perspective never leaves the protagonist's perspective. The gang of criminals is depicted completely from the outside perspective, which results in the greatest possible distance to their crimes, which are not detailed, but only hinted at. According to Josef Quack, the “alternation of dialogue , description of the action and reflection report” creates a “great narrative rhythm that is unusual even for the prose artist Simenon.” The language encompasses “an unusual breadth of speeches and forms of expression” from the humorous telephone conversation the examining magistrate Coméliau with Maigret in his dressing gown to the dialect conversation of the craftsmen in the café to the jovial revue director at the end, who simply addresses the inspector as “fat”.

interpretation

According to Josef Quack, Maigret and his dead has “a basic anthropological motif of Simenon” on the subject: “the animal regression of man”. Various works by Simenon show how people break through the thin layer of civilization and fall back into animal behavior. About the band of robbers in Maigret and his dead it says at one point: “You had decided once and for all to live as an outsider. They were raging wild animals who would not be moved by the bleating of the sheep. ”They commit their deeds without any moral awareness. Their motive is not primarily the greed for money, but rather: “They were all hungry.” When they are finally brought to justice, they cannot hope for any mercy, because: “Civilized people are afraid of wild animals, especially before those of their own species, who remind them of times long past, when their ancestors still lived in the woods. ”Simenon's program is supported by an extraordinary accumulation of animal metaphors . In addition, he performs manhunts several times, whereby the police are not much more humane in their pursuit of a suspect than the gang of criminals before. Ultimately, it also uses "primitive affects and archaic forms of behavior" to protect civilization .

On the other hand, for Murielle Wenger, the novel demonstrates how Maigret is able to develop a relationship with the murder victim, who was previously completely unknown to him. In it he recalls Maigret and the young dead woman . In both cases, the inspector follows a dead man on his last journey, whereby the aim is not only to question witnesses, but also to get close to the victim, for example by drinking the same drink in a bar. When Maigret enters the dead man's bar, he immediately feels at home there, as if he were moving into a new home himself. By slipping into the skin of Albert Rochain, whose life is imitating, the inspector begins to understand the personality of the dead man and to sense how he clashed with the Czech gang. In contrast to his author Simenon, who traveled half the globe, Maigret reveals in the novel that the reason why he never leaves the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir is his deep dislike for change. Murielle Wenger speculates that his domestic stability is the opposite pole to the investigations in which the commissioner slips into the most varied of lives. In the novel, the house number of Maigret's famous home is revealed for the only time in the series: 132 Boulevard Richard Lenoir , an address that Michel Carly sees as the French version of 221b Baker Street .

background

After the Second World War, Georges Simenon, who spent the war years in occupied France , left Europe for America and subsequently lived in Canada , Florida and Arizona . In the productive years of 1946 and 1947 Simenon wrote a total of ten novels, including three from the Maigret series. Maigret and his dead was created in December 1947 just a few weeks after Maigret is on vacation , although the two differ significantly in terms of atmosphere and plot. While working on the novels, Simenon learned that his brother Christian had died in the Indochina War . Georges himself advised Christian, who had collaborated with the pro-fascist Rexists and was sentenced to death in absentia in Belgium after 1945 , to go into hiding in the Foreign Legion . Simenon felt guilty for life for the death of his brother. The previously conceived Roman Maigret and his dead did not yet take up Simenon's personal situation. Only the following non-Maigret novel The snow was dirty served the author to come to terms with his feelings of guilt.

Before Maigret and his dead man , Simenon had already dealt with the subject of an Eastern European gang who attacked isolated farmsteads in northern France and proceeded with extreme brutality, including murder, in earlier works, for example in the Maigret story Maigret and Stan the Killer (1938 ) and in the non-Maigret novel The Outlaw (1941), which also revolves around a main character nicknamed "Stan". However, in the two earlier works, the nationality of the robbers was Polish, while the gang in Maigret and his dead man consists of Czechs. Another Czech was Johann Radek, the nihilistic opponent in the early Maigret novel Maigret Fights for a Man's Head (1931). Gang crime is a rather unusual subject for the Maigret series. You can find the topic in Maigret in New York or in Maigret, Lognon and the gangsters . Tilman Spreckelsen sees a whole series of stereotypes in the description of the band of robbers of Maigret and his dead .

reception

Maigret and his dead is particularly singled out by some critics from the series of novels. Josef Quack described the book as “a police novel of the highest perfection, the most action-packed and personal, the longest and most exciting novel of the series”, which “stands out from this series of great detective novels”. According to Peter Foord, it is one of the most satisfying Maigret novels because it shows many different aspects of the investigation. He is one of Murielle Wenger's favorites because of the characteristic portrayal of the inspector's intuition and his empathy with the victim. Thomas Narcejac called him "the most touching and Parisian of all Maigrets". Oliver Hahn from maigret.de counted the novel among the five best novels in the series.

Saturday Night found Maigret and his dead "a slight but interesting departure from the norm in that Maigret had to deal with a tough, professional underworld conspiracy." Ellen Nehr described "an overcrowded, smelly, fascinating underworld of the Parisian slums where Maigret is about to have a rendezvous with danger ”after having identified the dead person and unveiled his habits by means of a particularly“ fine work of combinatorial enlightenment ”. According to Kirkus Reviews, the readership will enjoy the "detailed routine" of policing under "the stubborn but talented hand of the master policeman" as usual.

The novel was filmed five times as part of TV series about Commissioner Maigret. The first Maigret actor was Rupert Davies (Great Britain, 1961) in the episode The Winning Ticket . This was followed by Jan Teulings (Netherlands, 1967), Jean Richard (France, 1970), Kinja Aikawa (Japan, 1978) and Rowan Atkinson (Great Britain, 2016). In 1955 , the NWDR produced a radio play version directed by Raoul Wolfgang Schnell . In 1992 the comic adaptation Maigret et son mort by Odile Reynaud appeared with drawings by Philippe Wurm, which was also published in German by Ehapa Verlag a year later . In 2018 Walter Kreye read an audio book version for Audio Verlag .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Maigret et son mort . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1948 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his dead . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1954.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his dead . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his dead . Translation: Elfriede Riegler. Diogenes, Zurich 1981, ISBN 3-257-20810-3 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his dead . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 29. Translation: Elfriede Riegler. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23829-7 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his dead . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau, Sophia Marzolff. Kampa, Zurich 2018, ISBN 978-3-311-13029-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Maigret er son mort in the Maigret 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. 74.
  4. ^ Title at the German National Library
  5. ↑ 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. 59.
  6. ^ Thomas Narcejac : The Art of Simenon . Routledge & Kegan, London 1952, pp. 125, 161.
  7. ↑ a b 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. 59-61.
  8. ↑ a b Georges Simenon: Maigret and his dead . Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23829-7 , p. 161.
  9. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret und seine Toter. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23829-7 , p. 225.
  10. ↑ a b c d Maigret of the Month: Maigret et son Mort (Maigret's Special Murder / Maigret's Dead Man) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  11. ^ Simenon, Maigret and Paris: Two Recent Books on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  12. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The life of Georges Simenon . Knaus, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-8135-2208-3 , pp. 323-325.
  13. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 51.
  14. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret-Marathon 28: Maigret and his dead . On FAZ.net from November 1, 2008.
  15. ↑ 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. 17, 59.
  16. ^ "The most moving and the most Parisian of any Maigret". In: Thomas Narcejac: The Art of Simenon . Routledge & Kegan, London 1952, p. 124.
  17. ↑ The five best on maigret.de.
  18. ↑ "It represents a slight but interesting divergence from the norm, as Maigret finds himself dealing with a tough, professional gangland conspiracy." In: Saturday Night Volume 79, New Leaf Publications, 1964, p. 68.
  19. ↑ "In as fine a piece of deductive detection as he had ever done, Inspector Maigret identifies the dead man, established his habits led the police into the crowded, fetid, fascinating underworld of the Paris slums, where Maigret had a rendezvous with danger. “In: Ellen Nehr: Doubleday Crime Club compendium, 1928–1991 . Offspring Press, Martinez 1992, ISBN 0-9634420-0-7 , p. 420.
  20. ^ "As usual, the detailed routine of the Surete in action directed by the stubborn and talented hand of the master policeman will please his audience." In: Maigret's Dead Man by Georges Simenon on Kirkus Reviews.
  21. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  22. ↑ Maigret and his dead on maigret.de.
  23. ↑ Comic Maigret on maigret.de.