My friend Maigret

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My friend Maigret (French: Mon ami Maigret ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 31st novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written from January 24 to February 2, 1949 in Tumacacori , Arizona and was published in the same year by Presses de la Cité . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1955 . In 1978 Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Annerose Melter.

Maigret travels to the French Mediterranean island of Porquerolles off the Côte d'Azur with a guest from Scotland Yard . A homeless fisherman was murdered there, apparently for the sole reason that he was referring to his friendship with the detective inspector. Maigret can hardly remember the supposed friend.

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Porquerolles coast

Scotland Yard's Inspector Pyke visits the Quai des Orfèvres to study the methods of his famous French colleague. Commissioner Maigret feels uncomfortable under the observation of his English colleague, and in addition there is constant rain in Paris in May. On the spur of the moment, the commissioner agreed to take his guest on a business trip to the French Mediterranean island of Porquerolles by Train Bleu . Marcel Pacaud, known by everyone as Marcellin, was murdered there. Nobody can imagine a reason for the murder of the popular but destitute fisherman. The only clue is that the night before his death he cockily announced that Inspector Maigret was his friend. So the local police are hoping to find out from their Parisian colleague whether Marcellin was actually murdered because of his friendship with Maigret.

It takes a while until Maigret even remembers his alleged "friend". The police files unearth a long criminal record of Marcellin's criminal record, which culminated in a prison stay during which the superintendent looked after Ginette, the friend of the petty criminal. At his instigation, the tubercular prostitute underwent treatment in a pulmonary sanatorium in Savoy . Ginette later separated from Marcellin, but Maigret remained grateful for his support for a lifetime.

Porquerolles, Maigret presents itself not only as an island with Mediterranean flair, but also as a refuge for stranded existences that have more or less voluntarily left their former lives behind. Maigret too soon developed a kind of “porquerollitis”, the sweet temptation to do nothing if Pyke's constant presence did not remind him of the duty of his investigation. He meets the crook Charlot, the English Major Bellam, who is in exile on the island as well as his compatriot Mrs. Wilcox, who endures the impoverished nobleman Philippe de Moricourt not only as a secretary but also as a young lover. The unsuccessful Dutch painter Jef de Greef and the 18-year-old Anna, whom he has downright kidnapped from her middle-class Bebelmans family, are also lovers. Finally, there are 79-year-old Justine, who runs a chain of brothels, and her shy son Émile, who is hoping to die in order to finally get married, with Ginette, of all people, who now runs the Nice establishment, his chosen one .

Port of Porquerolles

Ginette's presence on the island, even though Marcellin was transferred to the mainland for the funeral, makes Maigret suspect that there is more to the fisherman's death than meets the eye. Like Charlot, Ginette seems to sense a source of income that her former fiancé has found. When Maigret learns that Marcellin has asked her about the year Vincent van Gogh died and the unsuspecting Mrs. Wilcox reveals that she recently bought a picture from the painter at the instigation of her secretary, the pieces of the mosaic collapse for Maigret: he takes Philippe de Moricourt and Jef de Greef, who have long been gunning Mrs. Wilcox with fake pictures. Marcellin discovered the two fraudsters and tried to blackmail them, whereupon they murdered him.

Maigret leaves it to the judiciary to find out who of the two fraudsters was the murderer. He already foresees the process in which the cynical, world-despising de Greef will remain silent while the cowardly de Moricourt will confess to save his head. But Maigret did not foresee one detail: the only person who is guided by love, young Anna, commits suicide with an overdose of veronal in order not to have to betray her lover Jef. In the end, Maigret, although he was able to demonstrate to his English guest that a case had been solved, left the island extremely displeased.

background

The island of Porquerolles not only forms the background for the novel My Friend Maigret , it also played an important role in Simenon's life. For the first time he visited her in May 1926, when Simenon's health as a result of his intense literary work - he wrote in the years 1924 to 1926 each between 200 and 300 stories per year, which he published under numerous pseudonyms - and of social life in Paris attacked and he wanted to retire to the country for a few months. Simenon was so delighted with Porquerolles that he kept returning there in later years. The island also appears repeatedly in his novels and, according to Stanley G. Eskin, mostly serves “as a symbol of relaxation and joie de vivre”, for example in the novels Les Anneaux de Bicêtre or Cour d'assises . The representation in Le Cercle des Mahé is more differentiated .

When Simenon mentally returned to Porquerolles at the beginning of 1949 with the novel Mein Freund Maigret from the American continent, where he had emigrated since the end of the Second World War, it was for relaxation and reassurance, because his private life was under the auspices of the divorce from his first Wife and the birth of his second son. That relaxation, especially before the more stressful non-Maigret novels, the author sought again and again in his character Maigret in later years. Simenon's own experiences about Porquerolles flowed into the novel. So Maigret corresponds travel in Train Bleu and his morning awakening in a thriving landscape of Provence with Simenon's arrival in May 1926. The ferry Cormoran between Giens runs and Porquerolles, and the hostel Noah's Ark , which is still considered Arche de Noé on found on the island come from reality. To this day, Simenon's daughter-in-law lives on Porquerolles, where, according to Andreas Bernard, with just 350 islanders, nothing else has changed compared to Simenon's times.

interpretation

Murielle Wenger points out how different Simenon depicts the sea of ​​the north and that of the south in his novels. While the former is mostly described as cold and windy, in a mood of passing summer, the sea of ​​the south represents summer heat and indolence. Maigret has already experienced such an atmosphere in Maigret in the Liberty Bar , during an investigation in Antibes that is alluded to in the novel. In Mein Freund Maigret , too , the commissioner is attacked by "porquerollitis", a mixture of soporific warmth and diverse sensory impressions, smells and noises that condense into a holiday mood with relaxation and idleness and seem to endanger the investigation. However, behind his mask of laziness and devotion to island life, Maigret is able to "soak up the specific character of the islanders like a sponge", as Julian Symons puts it. His aura precedes the detective even on the remote island, so that his arrival seems like the reception of a film star.

At the center of the plot is the contrast between the French commissioner and his English guest from Scotland Yard. The characters represent some typical clichés about their countries of origin, from food and drinks to the always impeccable appearance and behavior of the inspector in contrast to Maigret's laissez-faire style. The confrontation of the different mentalities leads to a real competition, a match in which the commissioner cannot avoid counting the points internally. He feels it is his duty not only to stand up for his own way of life, but for the honor of his entire nation. The two figures symbolize the contrast between theory and practice, textbook knowledge and intuition . While Inspector Pyke hopes to study Maigret's methods, he experiences a complete lack of methodology in the investigation. According to Colas Duflo, Simenon shows as unmethodical a commissioner as humanly possible in the novel. Tilman Spreckelsen emphasizes how nervous Maigret makes the constant observation by his colleague, who "treats him just like he usually treats any suspect". Murielle Wenger refers to another ironic twist: The former prostitute Ginette, who Maigret once rescued as a Good Samaritan , ends up as a puffmother, which proves that Maigret's skill as a “fixer of fates” occasionally reaches its limits. When looking into his reflection, Maigret asks himself who could take the little boy, who is still looking at him from there, seriously as a detective inspector, a first questioning of his profession, which will become more and more decisive in the later phase of the Maigret series.

With the resolution of the case, according to Gavin Lambert, the initially light and sunny tone of the novel darkens. An unsuccessful poet and a failed painter decide to take revenge on the world by gutting an old woman and cruelly murdering a homeless man. The viciousness of the perpetrators is beyond human behavior for which the inspector can muster his proverbial understanding. He doesn't know what else to do but through an outbreak of violence and smashes his fist in the face of Secretary de Moricourt. According to Murielle Wenger, in Simenon's novels it is time and again the type of male gigolo who excludes older women, whom the inspector despises. Josef Quack, on the other hand, focuses on the second perpetrator, the unsuccessful painter Jef de Greef, in which Simenon - similar to the earlier novels Maigret and the Hanged Man by Saint-Pholien and Maigret fights for the head of a man - “a pure nihilist who kill to kill ”, draw. According to Tilman Spreckelsen, the fact that Maigret does not anticipate the suicide of the painter's lover, but can only explain it in retrospect, leaves the inspector at the end of the novel more “in a bad mood” than rarely. With the expression "sales gamins" (dung finches), which closes the novel, Maigret will also refer to a group of degenerate young soldiers in his next case, Maigret in Arizona .

reception

For Julian Symons , My Friend Maigret is a novel "that shows all the qualities of the Maigret stories to the full", from Maigret's ability to interpret human behavior to some "scenes of luscious humor" in the contrast between the Commissioner and the British Inspector rich. Symons comes to the conclusion: "This book is certainly one of half a dozen of the best Maigret novels." Oliver Hahn also counts the novel "one of the best Maigrets", in which one particularly feels "the calm and serenity" of the inspector could. The flair of the surroundings probably leaves no reader untouched and some dream of "the blue of the sea". According to Andreas Bernard, it is simply one of “the most beautiful island thrillers”. Frank Böhmert sums up: “A typical Maigret: concise, atmospheric, lively.” The novel is one of Simenon's “sadly beautiful” works.

The novel was filmed three times as part of the TV series with Rupert Davies (1960), Jean Richard (1973) and Bruno Cremer (2001). In 2003 SFB - ORB , MDR and SWR produced a radio play adapted by Susanne Feldmann and Judith Kuckart . The speakers included Christian Berkel and Friedhelm Ptok . In 2018 Walter Kreye read an audio book for Audio Verlag .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Mon ami Maigret . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1949 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: My friend Maigret . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1955.
  • Georges Simenon: My friend Maigret . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: My friend Maigret . Translation: Annerose Melter. Diogenes, Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-257-20506-6 .
  • Georges Simenon: My friend Maigret . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 31. Translation: Annerose Melter. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23831-0 .
  • Georges Simenon: My friend Maigret . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau and Bärbel Brands. Kampa, Zurich 2018, ISBN 978-3-311-13031-4 .
  • Georges Simenon: My friend Maigret . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau and Bärbel Brands. Reading by Walter Kreye . The Audio Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-7424-0741-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 68.
  3. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 107.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Maigret of the Month: Mon Ami Maigret (My Friend Maigret) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  5. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography , p. 131.
  6. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography , p. 245.
  7. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography , p. 130.
  8. ↑ a b Andreas Bernard: The crime island . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin 43/2009.
  9. ↑ Julian Symons : Simenon and his Maigret. In: Claudia Schmölders , Christian Strich (Ed.): About Simenon . Diogenes, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-257-20499-X , p. 127.
  10. ^ A b c Gavin Lambert : The Dangerous Edge . Grossmann, New York 1976, ISBN 0-670-25581-5 , p. 182. (also online )
  11. ^ Colas Duflo: Philosophy du roman policier 1955-1995 . Ophrys, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-902126-12-3 , p. 108.
  12. ↑ a b Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 31: My friend Maigret . On FAZ.net from November 14, 2008.
  13. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography , pp. 400-401.
  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 , p. 59.
  15. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography , p. 400.
  16. ↑ Julian Symons: Simenon and his Maigret , pp. 127–128.
  17. ↑ The big time on maigret.de.
  18. ↑ Read: Georges Simenon, Mein Freund Maigret (F 1949)  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / frankboehmert.blogspot.de   in Frank Böhmert's blog .
  19. ↑ My friend Maigret on maigret.de.
  20. ↑ My friend Maigret in the HörDat audio game database .