Tropical fever (Roman, Simenon)

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Tropenkoller (original title Le Coup de lune ) is a novel by Georges Simenon first published in 1933 .

In the novel, which was written after Simenon's trip to Africa in 1932, a young Frenchman named Joseph Timar seeks “happiness in Gabon , finds something like love and has to leave the country head over heels for his life and the rest to save his dignity ”. When it was published in 1933 with Das Haus am Kanal and The Engagement of Monsieur Hire , the novel was one of the first three “romans durs” Simenons with which the thirty-year-old writer endeavored to “no longer be regarded as the only man who Maigret - Writes stories. ”In addition, Le coup de lune was the first of Simenon's“ exotic novels ”about life in the colonies; followed by Touriste de bananes (Eng. The Banana Tourist , 1935) and Quartier nègre (1935).

action

Tropical forest in Gabon

Some Europeans live in Libreville in Gabon who go about their business here in the style of colonial times. The 23-year-old Frenchman Joseph Timar gets into this scene. He had been promised a job as a supervisor for the woodcutters through his uncle, but as soon as he got there, he realized that nothing would come of it, and he quickly lost his ambition and fell into lethargy . So Timar ends up in a strange city; the monotony can be felt physically until the day when a black man, Thomas, an employee in the hotel that Timar lives in, is murdered. Adèle, French and the wife of the hotel owner, is the only one with whom the young Joseph can establish something like a relationship. The older woman, however, only plays with his feelings and thus skillfully harnesses him for her own purposes. Eventually she got him to get his uncle a concession to felling wood inland. Every now and then she gives in to his wooing, but mostly she treats him like a stranger. This sequence of devotion and rejection in all its forlornness makes Joseph Timar an almost willless victim of her plans. Joseph thinks he could impose his will on Adèle. Isn't she responsible for the boy's death? Doesn't she also have her own husband on her conscience? Hasn't she been and still involved in all kinds of sinister machinations? But isn't it exactly the other way around, won't he himself become a puppet in this woman's hands? In the whirlwind of passion, fever and helplessness, Timar is slowly losing control of his own life. It is only his feelings for Adèle, the opaque wife of such a hotel owner, that "keep him awake". After the mysterious death of a black waiter who blackmailed Adèle and her husband, the opportunity suddenly arises to move inland as a couple and to plan a future together. But this doesn't take long. Finally, Joseph is sent home with a tropical frenzy because Africa has overwhelmed him psychologically.

background

The port of Matadi 1965

Georges Simenon was drawn to African subjects from an early age; under the pseudonyms Sim and Christian Brulls , he published the stories Nains des cataractes and Seuls parmi les gorilles , but had never visited the continent.

In June 1932, Simenon two months went with his partner Tigy, after moving to La Rochelle, on a journey across Africa, first by boat from Marseilles to Alexandria , then a plane from Cairo via Wadi Halfa in southern Sudan to to the border of the Belgian Congo . At the end of a trip across the Congo , they visited Georges' brother Christian, who held a post at the port authority in Matadi .

After his return to France, Simenon told "how he saw through colonialism ". "What particularly irritated him was the supposed" exoticism "of Africa, because he found that the people there are not much different from anywhere else in the world." He was more interested in the commonalities of the peoples, wrote the Simenon biographer Patrick Marnham. According to his philosophy, the “man in himself, l'homme nu , is always the same.” At that time, he condemned colonialism “primarily because of the effect it had on the white colonialists. He despised the easy life they led and the airs they gave themselves. ”This he found in the behavior of his brother Christian, who boasted about the business he could do with the natives. After his return, he described his experiences and impressions in a report (L'Afrique vous parle: elle vous dit merde) for the weekly Voilà and processed them in the following books and stories, as in 45 ° im Schatten ( 45 ° à l ' ombre, 1936), White Man with Glasses ( Le blanc à lunettes, 1936) and Ein Verbrechen in Gabon ( Un crime au Gabon, 1938). Le Coup de lune became a great commercial success for Simenon, not least because of the press coverage of the defamation process. This moved the novelist to deal further with colonial subjects. He then published with Gallimard Le Blanc à lunettes, which played in the Belgian Congo.

The novel Coup de Lune , which belongs to the series of "Non-Maigret" novels and stories, was written in autumn 1932 in Marsilly near La Rochelle (on the La Richardière estate ) and appeared in April 1933 after a preprint in the features section of the Candide magazine at Fayard. In the German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau, the story was first published in 1960 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch under the title Tropenfieber , and in 1979 by Diogenes in the new translation by Annerose Melter under the title Tropenkoller .

The first publication fell in a phase of increased interest in the African continent; Two years earlier, Hergé's comic Tim was published in the Congo , in the same year Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine .

Maurice Garçon

The trial of Le Coup de lune

Immediately after the publication of the novel Le Coup de lune in 1933, a widow thought she recognized herself in the (fictional) Adèle, a Madame Mercier who ran a hotel in Libreville that was named Hotel central just like the hotel in Simenon's book . She returned to France in May 1934 to produce material for a libel suit ; Simenon then took one of the most talented lawyers of the time, Maître Maurice Garçon (with whom he was already friends). This "destroyed" Madame Mercier in his cross-examination . The weakness of her argument was that she could only uphold her claim that the book was about her if she admitted that the portrait she supposedly painted was true. Maître Garçon told the court that it was probably the first time a woman had been seen who had traveled halfway around the world to confirm that " she was once a whore on the Place des Ternes ". "Madame Mercier lost her lawsuit, a lot of money and what was left of her reputation," as Simenon's rise as a writer continued unhindered.

reception

André Gide wrote to Georges Simenon six years after the book was published:

«Je viens de relire Le Coup de lune et puis témoigner en connaissance de cause de la prodigieuse exactitude de toutes vos notations, je reconnais tout, paysages et gens. »

“In the meantime I have read 'Le Coup de Lune' again and from my own knowledge I can confirm the astonishing accuracy of all your descriptions; I recognize everything, country and people. "

Colonial rulers in Libreville at 5 o'clock tea. (Photo taken before 1906)

Tilman Spreckelsen criticized the novel as latently racist , “ Stereotypes don't get better if they are portrayed as a deficient perspective. In other words: what Europeans claim and do in relation to the natives in this novel is unbearable. A disgusting corps spirit of the white men ensures that the blacks are treated together with some contempt and cruelty , without actually punishing the worst excesses. And Timar's rebellion against it, begun after a long struggle with himself, does not have much effect. "

For Behrang Samsami, "Simenon's world [...] is hard and cold-hearted, selfish and deterministic "; Tropical fever describes a “negative educational journey . Because not only does Joseph Timar return to his homeland in the end as a completely different, disaffected person. With his realistic and very cinematic narrative, Georges Simenon also demystifies the clichéd notions of the colonies: the protagonist experiences a two-class society in which whites rule over blacks, exploiting them economically and sexually. ”With the description of the Conditions in the colonies are reminiscent of Joseph Conrad's story " Heart of Darkness " (1899) and show where the "sources of evil " lie in people:

“Timar lets himself go like the others. Enthusiastic at first, he soon becomes numb. He's constantly weak and starts to drink more and more alcohol. After a while he behaves brutally - everything should be subordinate to Adèles and his goal. "

In view of Simenon's novel, René Merle recalls that he appeared in a France which at that time was conscious of its 'civilized nature' and in 1931 was enjoying the spectacle of a colonial exhibition (exposition coloniale) . It was a phase in which only the surrealists and the communist avant-garde accused the colonial abuses, and in which Simenon (who was really not a revolutionary) now gives society something to read that was beyond the usual perception of the colonies.

Adaptation

expenditure

French editions (selection)

  • Le Coup de Lune . Paris, Ed. Fayard, 1933.
  • Le coup de Lune . Paris, Club Francais du Livre, 1955.
  • Le Coup de Lune . In: Œuvres complètes (Lausanne, Editions Rencontre, 1967–1973) - tome 3.
  • Le Coup de Lune . In: Tout Simenon (Paris, Presses de la Cité, 1988–1993) - tome 18.
  • Le Coup de Lune . In: Tout Simenon (Paris, Omnibus, 2002–2004) - tome 18.
  • Le Coup de Lune: In Romans (Paris, Gallimard, 2003 - "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade") - tome I.
  • Le Coup de Lune . Le Livre de Poche, ISBN 9782253142997 .

German-language editions

  • Tropical Fever [Simenon-Romane, Volume 48]. Detective novel. German by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1960.
  • Tropical fever . German by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Munich, Heyne Verlag, 1974.
  • Tropical fever . German by Annerose Melter. Zurich: Diogenes, (detebe 20673) 1979.
  • Tropical fever . German by Annerose Melter (Revised translation). Diogenes, Zurich 2010, ISBN 9783257241020 .

further reading

  • Carole Perrier: L'exotisme colonial dans trois romans de Georges Simenon. le coup de lune, 1933, touriste de bananes, 1935, quartier nègre, 1938 . 1997

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Review by Tilman Spreckelsen
  2. ↑ In 1933 Simenon insisted on his publisher Fayard not to want to write any more dime novels and also temporarily discontinued the successful Maigret series ; "From now on he intended to write real novels". Cf. Patrick Marnham, The Man Who Was Not Maigret, p. 216 f.
  3. ↑ a b c Georges-Henri Dumont: Georges Simenon et l'Afrique
  4. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The life of Georges Simenon . Knaus, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-8135-2208-3 . P. 209.
  5. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The life of Georges Simenon, p. 210.
  6. ↑ N ° 462-469 from January 19 to March 9, 1933 in eight episodes.
  7. ↑ http://www.association-jacques-riviere-alain-fournier.com/reperage/simenon/notice_horsmaigret/note_horsmaigret_Coup%20de%20lune.htm
  8. ↑ http://carmadou.blogspot.de/2010/08/le-coup-de-lune-george-simenon.html
  9. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The life of Georges Simenon, p. 238.
  10. ^ Georges Simenon, Andre Gide: Correspondence . Translated from the French by Stefanie Weiss, Diogenes, Zurich 1977, ISBN 3-257-01547-X .
  11. ↑ http://www.literaturkritik.de/public/rezension.php?rez_id=16152&ausgabe=201112
  12. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from December 13, 2014 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / merlerene.canalblog.com
  13. ↑ http://viaf.org/viaf/213153914/