Maigret's childhood friend

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Maigret's childhood friend (French: L'ami d'enfance de Maigret ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 69th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written in Epalinges from June 18 to 24, 1968 and was published in November of that year by the Parisian presses de la Cité . From December 3 to 31, 1968, the French daily Le Figaro published the novel in 23 episodes. The first German translation Maigret and his childhood friend by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1970 in an anthology with Maigret and the murderer and Maigret hesitates . In 1988 the Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Markus Jakob under the same title. In 2018, Kampa Verlag published a revised new edition of the translation by Wille / Klau under the title Maigrets Jugendfreund .

A childhood friend, whom Maigret has not seen in decades, turns to the inspector after his girlfriend was shot. In addition to him, the young woman had four other lovers who knew neither about him nor about him. But the only man who was proven to be present at the time of the crime is Maigret's childhood friend, who claims to have been hidden in a walk-in closet during the crime.

content

Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in the 9th arrondissement of Paris

It's mid-June in Paris . A classmate from Maigret's high school at Lycée Banville in Moulins visits the inspector on the Quai des Orfèvres . The baker's son Léon Florentin was once the class clown and made his classmates laugh with faxes and notorious whispers. Florentin is now 54 years old, tall and gaunt, and he still has a tendency to make funny grimaces under pressure. But this cannot hide the fact that he failed in everything he started in his life. He is currently working as an unsuccessful antique dealer and lives on the money of his lover, Joséphine Papet, 20 years his junior, known as Josée, who in turn is supported by four lovers.

The same Joséphine was shot a few hours ago in her apartment in the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette , with Florentin's revolver. But Maigret's childhood friend said he hadn't heard anything of the crime, as he had hidden in the dressing room, as he often did when his girlfriend received visits from her lovers out of turn. The traces have been blurred, the dead man's secretary cleared away, and both their letters and savings of 48,000 francs are missing. When the latter are found in Florentin's shabby studio, all signs speak against him, and Maigret wonders whether he is not inappropriately protecting his former classmate by not arresting him on the spot. After all, he lets his inspectors monitor him around the clock, and there, too, the person under surveillance makes himself suspicious when he jumps off a bridge into the Seine without motivation. In any case, Maigret does not take the alleged suicide attempt from the excellent swimmer any more than his other excuses, which repeatedly turn out to be lies.

Little by little Maigret identifies the other four lovers of the dead. François Paré is a staid civil servant in the road construction department, Fernand Courcel is a fat businessman from Rouen , and Victor Lamotte is an arrogant wine merchant from Bourdeaux . They all have in common that they are married and have to keep the affair with Joséphine a secret. But this is especially true for Lamotte, who in the upper-class residential area of ​​Chartrons depends on its good reputation. The young insurance agent Jean-Luc Bodard, whom Joséphine really loved and with whom she hoped to replace Florentin, whom she had grown tired of, as a permanent "dear friend", falls out of line. Madame Blanc, the corpulent and ill-tempered concierge , does not want to have seen any of the four lovers on the day of the murder, but when Maigret finds 2,500 francs in her apartment, he is sure that she will cover the real perpetrator for hush money.

Despite all the pressure, Maigret does not manage to get the obdurate concierge to talk. Florentin, on the other hand, proves to be far less resistant. In fact, the visit on that day was not to Joséphine, but to him. In his fear of being penniless on the street after a breakup, Florentin had begun to blackmail the rich Lamotte. When this furiously stormed into Joséphine's apartment to confront her roommate, the young woman tried to appease her lover while the cowardly Florentin hid behind her. Lamotte aimed Florentin's revolver at him, but accidentally shot his lover and fled in a panic. The former class clown, on the other hand, had the callousness not only to pocket Joséphine's cash and the compromising correspondence with her lovers, but also to cover up Lamotte's tracks in order to be able to blackmail them for a lifetime. The only purpose of jumping into the Seine was to get rid of the incriminating letters despite being monitored. In the end, both Lamotte and Florentin are arrested, and Maigret regrets having met the disappointing baker's son of all schoolmates after so many years.

interpretation

Portal of the Lycée Théodore-de-Banville in Moulins

For Murielle Wenger, two sets of motifs determine the novel: Maigret's memories of his time in high school and the portrait of a failure: Florentin's childhood friend. In Simenon's work there is a gallery of failure portraits, of people who cling to their illusions, who dazzle and deceive, and who nevertheless never manage to make anything of their lives. For Tilman Spreckelsen the title of the novel is misleading, because the classmate was always anything but a childhood friend of Maigret. While a hallodri like the baker's son may have been amusing in his youth, he can no longer be taken seriously as an adult. The world around him has moved on, but he still seems stuck in his role as a class clown. “Basically, Florentin is a person who never comes to rest, thought Maigret. The eternal weird act was just a facade so that he didn't have to face the pathetic reality. He was a failure in the book, yes - worse, more embarrassing - an aging failure. "

Apart from a few nostalgic fragments, Maigret's childhood and youth memories are almost never positive, according to Murielle Wenger, be it the decline of the count's castle in Maigret and the Saint-Fiacre affair , be it the appearances of former childhood friends like Ernest Malik in Maigret up , Ferdinand Fumal in Maigret experiences a defeat or Léon Florentin in Maigret and his childhood friend . The inspector often seems to want to escape his past and everything that makes him aware of it. Florentin's attack on Maigret's father marks the last blow to Maigret's youth in Saint-Fiacre in the series. In the novels that follow, his childhood will only produce harmless, nostalgic reminiscences. In any case, according to Tilman Spreckelsen, the Commissioner is to be credited for treating Florentin fairly and understandingly, even though the latter taints the memory of his father.

Unlike the aging class clown, whose comedy no longer catches, another character in the novel has the gift of embroidering people and captivating them in very different ways: Joséphine Papet, who is endured by three men. For the unhappy officer Paré, she becomes a compassionate listener to whom he can confess the problems and inadequacies of his life. For Courcel, who is only too happy to skip his entrepreneurial duties, it becomes a daydream and the fulfillment of his longings. For the oligarch Lamotte she is nothing but a practical substitute for the no longer available secretary. The latter triggers loud Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus already in his first telephone conversation with the Commissioner antipathy, and proves to be alienated as typical the common people and the petty bourgeoisie Maigret hated Bourgeois . Murielle Wenger juxtaposes Joséphine Papet with the concierge, two women who are primarily concerned with their own advantages, but who achieve their goal with completely different means: Josephine the gentle way, Madame Blanc the hard way. In Simenon's view of the world, Josephine's dominance over men turns out to be the more serious crime, for which, like Hélène Lange in Maigret in Kur , she is punished by a violent death. Josef Quack refers to two quotes from classics of crime fiction: The concierge's hiding place for the bribe is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's The Stolen Letter , the joint summons of the suspects to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe .

reception

Unmasking one murderer among five suspects, as demanded in Maigret and his childhood friend , should be child's play for the famous inspector , according to the Saturday Review , but objectivity is difficult for him when the suspect most incriminated by the evidence comes to mind old schoolmate. The conclusion was: "Where other authors cut their story out of large chunks and in the end produce rhinestones , Georges Simenon works on a small scale and produces a diamond." For John Raymond, the resolution of the case was quite banal, so he passed it on to Inspector Lucas or Janvier would have trusted the master himself. But the accessories promise Maigret's admirers a lot of pleasure.

According to Allen J. Hubin, Maigret is dealing with a case that fits his “unique talents”, “in which his knowledge of the human condition is more revealing than physical traces”. The American magazine Best Sellers noted Simenon's well-known "flair for the credible and the banal, which becomes interesting through his insights". Kirkus Reviews judged: "Again the careful simplicity that his admirers appreciate, but really only 'comme ci comme ça' or perhaps more 'mais si mais non'." Publishers Weekly, on the other hand, attested the latest Maigret novel to "the greatest tension".

The novel was filmed three times as part of TV series. In 1984 and 2003, Jean Richard and Bruno Cremer played Commissioner Maigret in two French TV series, and in 1993 Michael Gambon in a British production. In 2018 Walter Kreye read an audio book for Audio Verlag .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: L'ami d'enfance de Maigret . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1968 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the murderer . Maigret and his childhood friend. Maigret hesitates . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1970.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his childhood friend . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1970.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his childhood friend . Translation: Markus Jakob. Diogenes, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-257-21575-4 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his childhood friend . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 69. Translation: Markus Jakob. Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-23869-3 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret's childhood friend . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kampa, Zurich 2018, ISBN 978-3-311-13069-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1968 à 1989 ( Memento of the original from October 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The 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. on Toutsimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / toutsimenon.placedesediteurs.com
  2. ^ L'ami d'enfance de Maigret in the Simenon bibliography by 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. 73.
  4. ↑ a b c Maigret of the Month: L'ami d'enfance de Maigret (Maigret's Boyhood Friend) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  5. ^ A b Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 69: His childhood friend . On FAZ.net from September 4, 2009.
  6. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret and his childhood friend . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-23869-3 , p. 95.
  7. ^ John Raymond in: Adam International Review , Issues 328-336, 1969, pp. 93-94.
  8. ^ Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus : Forms and ideologies of the crime novel. An essay on the history of the genre . Athenaion, Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-7997-0603-8 , p. 162.
  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. 24.
  10. ^ "As usual, while other writers flail away at huge lumps of story and end up with rhinestones, Georges Simenon works small and produces a diamond." Quoted from: Saturday Review , Volume 53, 1970, p. 40.
  11. ↑ "The solution, when it comes, is somewhat banal - one feels that Lucas or Janvier could have handled this case as well as the patron himself. Meanwhile, Maigret's admirers can promise themselves much incidental pleasure. ”Quoted from: Adam International Review , Issues 328–336, 1969, p. 94.
  12. ↑ “As usual, here is Maigret with a problem well-mated to his unique talents, one in which his perception of the human condition is more revealing than physical evidence.” Quoted from: Allen J. Hubin: Criminals at Large . In: The New York Times, September 20, 1970.
  13. ^ "Georges Simenon's flair for the credible and commonplace made interesting by his insight". Quoted from: Best Sellers Volume 30, United States Government Printing Office 1970, p. 236.
  14. ↑ "Again the meticulous sobriety his admirers respect, but really only comme ci comme ca, or would that be mais si mais non." Quoted from: Maigret's Boyhood Friend by Georges Simenon . On Kirkus Reviews dated September 16, 1970.
  15. ↑ "Superlative suspense". Quoted from: Publishers Weekly Volume 197, Part 3, 1970, p. 40.
  16. ^ Films & TV on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.