Maigret's confession

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Maigret's Confession (French: Une confidence de Maigret ) is a detective novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 54th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . Written in Echandens from April 26 to May 3, 1959 , the novel was pre-published in 20 episodes from August 24 to September 15, 1959 in the daily Le Figaro , the book edition was published in September of that year by Presses de la Cité . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1960 under the title Maigret and the Josset case . In 1982 the Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Roswitha Plancherel under the title Maigret's confession .

Over dinner together, Maigret tells his friend Dr. Pardon an old investigation, the Josset case. All the evidence indicated that a pharmacist who had become wealthy by marriage murdered his wife in order to marry his mistress. But during the interrogation by the inspector, Josset protested his innocence. While the press and public had long since prejudged the suspect, the doubting commissioner had his hands tied because the investigating judge, who was also convinced of Josset's guilt, took the case to himself.

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The Pont Mirabeau in Paris

A May evening in Paris : The Maigrets are invited to dinner with the Pardon couple. Dr. Pardon his thoughts on a patient, a Polish tailor and father of five, who is dying. He expects the next desperate phone call from the helpless woman at any moment. To distract him, his friend Maigret tells him the story of a previous case.

Adrien Josset was a small pharmacist when he achieved prosperity and social advancement through his marriage to the widow Christine Lowell, who was a few years older than him. Thanks to his wife's fortune, he soon led the pharmaceutical company Josset & Virieu. But in their circles he remained the stigma of an upstart and gigolo . When he started an affair with his secretary Annette, her father, the dutiful provincial official Martin Duché, confronted him and forced Josset to consent to the marriage. That evening his wife was murdered by twenty-one stab wounds in her villa in Auteuil . Josset made to flee, packed his bags, threw a knife from the Pont Mirabeau into the Seine , but finally turned himself in to the police.

Although all the evidence spoke against him, Josset protested his innocence when interrogated by Inspector Maigret. The marriage with Christine was a love marriage, the bond between the spouses could not have been tarnished by Josset's affair. On the contrary, he even wanted to get her advice on how to deal with his marriage promise and Duché's father. But when he found his wife dead in her bed, he panicked and could only think of fleeing and destroying any traces that might burden him, such as his old army knife.

Maigret remained undecided in his verdict on Josset, but the examining magistrate Coméliau soon took the case out of his hands and only let the criminal police do servants for his investigations. Like the general public, he was firmly convinced of Josset's guilt. The media kept revealing new details that turned public opinion against Josset. So he had sent Annette to an angel maker after an unwanted pregnancy . And father Duché committed suicide when he found out about the murder charge from journalists in Fontenay-le-Comte .

Two weeks later, on the return visit of the Pardons, Maigret concludes his interrupted story. Although he did come across traces during his investigations that exonerated Josset, they did not allow him to be followed. For example, Martin Duché had no alibi for the murder evening when he got drunk in Paris, and there were arguments at the pharmaceutical company about the company's strategy. Finally, Christine promoted a number of young men from the artistic milieu, their so-called "protégés", including a seedy criminal with the nickname Popaul. But public opinion could no longer be changed. Josset was convicted and executed. Two years later, while investigating another case, Maigret found out about the alleged testimony of a popaul in Venezuela who bragged about the murder of Christine Josset. But the man could not be found, the Josset case is officially closed. To this day Maigret does not know whether he was guilty or innocent.

interpretation

Josef Quack described Maigret's confession - in addition to the special case of Maigret's memoirs - as the "most spectacular deviation both from the scheme of the crime novel and from the usual narrative style of the Maigrets ". The detective novel leaves "almost all basic questions of the genre open". For Murielle Wenger, the late phase of the Maigret series is characterized by the fact that Simenon increasingly repurposed his protagonist as a mouthpiece for his own thoughts about law and justice , responsibility and guilt . In Une confidence de Maigret , this is already evident in the external form, as the actual case is told in full in the flashback . It is not the details of the investigation that are important, but Maigret's memories of her. The investigation itself shrinks to Maigret's interaction with the suspect and general ruminations about the policeman's profession. The story plays on three narrative levels: the narrative presence between Maigret and Pardon, Maigret's stories in the first person form and passages, especially in the middle chapters, in which an outside narrator completely takes over the account of the case.

While chatting with Dr. Pardon at the beginning of the novel, Maigret spreads his views on modern policing and the role of the judiciary. For Stanley G. Eskin, this is “the prologue to the story of a miscarriage of justice based on social prejudice.” Josset, a man from a humble background, was denied access to his wife's circles for the rest of his life. This rejection on the basis of his origin continues in the investigations of the examining magistrate Coméliau, who also belongs to the class of the upper middle class. Maigret is the only one willing to look at the pharmacist without prejudice. Although all rational arguments point to Josset as a logical perpetrator, “the Commissioner mistrusted rational arguments.” Accustomed to only trusting his intuition, Maigret resists the logic of “ common sense ”, the application of which would have only contributed to the most appalling legal errors .

The novel allows Maigret's frequent opponent, the examining magistrate Coméliau, a constant presence in the background. He is presented as an “intimate enemy” of the commissioner, who nevertheless excuses him with the wrong understanding of his office of “showing severity when the existing order is threatened. I don't think he ever had any doubts. With the greatest serenity he separates the good from the bad and cannot even imagine that there can still be people who stand between the two camps. ”Coméliau is the prototype of a person who does not have his own experience and thus that understanding for other people that characterizes Maigret: “While the world changed from day to day, the judge remained true to himself and his ancestral milieu.” What separates him from the commissioner is a “gap between his and Maigret's views on life”.

On the other hand, there is a kind of kinship between Maigret and Dr. Pardon. Not only do they share many traits, they are about the same age, both smokers, have the same understanding of the language and can be silent together. They also have a similar attitude towards their profession, feel the overwhelming burden of responsibility and often wish they had chosen a less stressful profession. They repeatedly draw comparisons between the work of a doctor and that of a detective inspector. Both Maigret and Pardon have a job "which sometimes forced them both to make a decision on which the fate of a person depended". The commissioner does not have to “decide whether he is guilty or not. That is not a matter for the criminal investigation department. But we must at least ask ourselves whether it is even possible that ... And that is almost like a judgment. And that's exactly what dreads me! ”When Maigret was unable to solve the case in the end and the suspect was executed despite his doubts, the inspector saw this as a personal defeat and suffered from his helplessness.

reception

For the review magazine Kirkus Reviews , Maigret's admission was "an unusual Maigret". The novel is "not for those who like their detective puzzles to be cleared, but it's a dark, reflective story with Simenon's descriptions vivid enough to outweigh the static, dialog-heavy performance." According to The Christian Science Monitor , Simenon described the story "precisely with his usual haunting insights into how the psyche works. ” However, with reference to the framework story, Tilman Spreckelsen asked:“ Would this clothing have been needed? Did Simenon want to try something else, tired of the usual narrative machinery? "

The novel was filmed twice: as part of the television series with Rupert Davies (1963) and Jean Richard (1981).

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Une confidence de Maigret . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1959 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Josset case . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1960.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Josset case . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret's confession . Translation: Roswitha Plancherel. Diogenes, Zurich 1982, ISBN 3-257-20756-5 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret's confession . All Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 54. Translation: Roswitha Plancherel. Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-23854-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Une confidence de Maigret on the page of Yves Martina.
  3. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . In: Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 58.
  4. ↑ 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 , p. 40.
  5. ↑ Maigret of the Month: Une confidence de Maigret (Maigret Has Doubts) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  6. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , pp. 402, 406.
  7. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret's confession . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, pp. 31–32.
  8. ^ A b Georges Simenon: Maigret's confession . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, p. 122.
  9. ↑ Dominique Meyer-Bolzinger: Une méthode clinique dans l'enquête policière: Holmes, Poirot, Maigret . Éditions du Céfal, Brussels 2003, ISBN 2-87130-131-X , pp. 100, 119.
  10. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret's confession . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, p. 29.
  11. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret's confession . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, p. 14.
  12. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene , p. 53.
  13. ↑ "An unusual Maigret: [...] Not for those who like their mysteries neatly resolved, then - but it's a dark, reflective story [...], with enough vivid Simenon characterization to offset the static, dialogue-heavy presentation." In : Kirkus Reviews of May 31, 1982. ( online )
  14. ^ "Simenon tells the story succinctly, with his usual penetrating insights into the workings of the mind." James Kaufmann in The Christian Science Monitor of November 3, 1982. ( online )
  15. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret-Marathon 54: Maigret's confession . On FAZ.net on May 10, 2009.
  16. ↑ Maigret's confession on maigret.de.