To the White Horse (novel)

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Zum Weißen Ross (French: Le Cheval Blanc ) is a novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It was written in Porquerolles in March 1938 and was published by Éditions Gallimard in November of the same year, following a preliminary publication in the literary magazine La Revue de Paris from May 1 to June 15, 1938. The first German translation by Trude Fein was published in 1980 by Diogenes Verlag .

The novel links two different milieus with one another: the life of the landlords and their servants in an inn in the Nièvre department and the members of a middle-class family who frequent the restaurant. The point of intersection of the two groups is an uncle of the family who lives as a seedy night watchman in the inn and keeps talking about killing someone.

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The Loire at Pouilly-sur-Loire

The Gasthaus Zum Weißen Ross is located on the Route nationale between Pouilly and Nevers . It is under the management of Monsieur Jean and Madame Fernande, two landlords with very different mentalities. Monsieur Jean is quick-tempered and after every skirt of the staff, especially the two maids Therese and Rose. His wife Fernande, on the other hand, is reserved, seems primarily interested in earnings and is feared by the staff. This also includes old Nine, whose legs are so swollen that she can hardly stand, Melanie, a help from the neighborhood, and the run-down night watchman Felix Drouin.

At Whitsun after a hike on the Loire , the Arbelet family from Nevers, father Maurice, mother Germaine and their two sons Emile and Christian , arrive at the White Horse to spend the night there. Although the Arbelets are used to saving money and foregoing all pleasures, Maurice is immediately fascinated by the lively, informal atmosphere of the inn, to which the pretty young waitress Rose contributes. After drinking too much in the evening, Maurice meets the night watchman, in whom he recognizes an uncle of his wife. Uncle Felix served as a soldier in the French colonies until the traumatic suicide of a comrade threw him off course. In the meantime he is vegetating in the garage of the inn, completely shabby and plagued by unhealed malaria, muttering to himself: "That shit!" Or "I'll kill another one!"

The next day Arbelet returned to the White Horse , ostensibly to offer the fallen uncle a place in the old people's home, which the latter brusquely refused. Despite the rejection, Arbelet cannot part with the atmosphere of the inn, and he becomes involved in a tangible argument between Therese's Polish husband and the cheating host, in the course of which a water bottle smashes on his head. Arbelet is right that the medical care requires another night in the inn, and his wife must first appear on site the next morning in order to tear him out of the spell of the White Horse .

After Arbelet's departure, the events in the inn come to a head. Felix has an attack of malaria, and the doctor who is called reveals to Monsieur Jean that he has contracted syphilis , of all things from the supposedly innocent Rose who is secretly prostituting herself. The landlord collapses under the stress of a particularly busy evening at the inn. Desperate at the thought of being stuck in the inn and in his life in general with no way out, he locks himself in his room. His wife fears that he took the revolver to commit suicide, but in fact the revolver is in Felix's hands. The night watchman has become so angry with the whole world that he barricades himself in the garage and shoots everyone who approaches him. In the end, like his comrade in Africa, he puts a bullet into his open mouth. Seriously injured, he survived the shot in which all the tension of the evening was discharged.

Four years later, Maurice Arbelet is drawn to the White Horse again on a hike with his family . Everything is still the same there. Only Rose, whom he is looking for, has since married and no longer works at the inn. Uncle Felix still ekes out his days in the garage and demands nothing more from life than to stay in the White Horse . Arbelet can understand the old man's longing only too well. But he himself returns to Nevers with his family, where everyday life awaits them.

interpretation

For Stanley G. Eskin, the Zum Weißen Ross inn becomes “a place of half comic, half pathetic 'escapes'”, a main theme in Simenon's work. By chance, Maurice Arbelet falls “under the spell of the horse ” and is “magically attracted by the turbulent world of taverns”. Volker Albers compares him to Kees Popinga from The Man Who Looked After the Trains , both family fathers , "in whom Simenon planted those longings that seem generally human", an "eternal search for the other, for that which is beyond Normality appears ”.

For Pierre Assouline, the night watchman Felix is one of those characters whose entire psychology can be summed up in a single sentence: “That shit!” The theme of the novel becomes his saying: “I'll kill another one!” Anaïs Nin called Felix the "most repulsive figure" in Simenon's work. But like so many of Simenon's characters, he was ultimately only a victim of circumstances by being charged with a crime of which he was innocent - his comrade's suicide in colonial Africa.

Ultimately, the men's outbursts remain inconsequential, which applies both to Felix's statement and to the “end. Enough. Enough. I'm sick of it! ”Of the landlord. According to Peter Kaiser, women are “the seismographers of the eruptive vibrations of their men”. They try to counteract the constant “danger posed by the dormant instincts of their men” through calming down and equanimity. This also includes their silence, their avoidance of any pronunciation that could have irreparable consequences. This is a characteristic saying of Fernandes: "There are things that you don't talk about ... You somehow set yourself up ..."

reception

Peter Kaiser summarized the novel: "On 168 pages, Simenon contrasts the clean, healthy suburban and terraced house universe with the rotten but very lively pub life." The "great mastery of Simenon" is shown in it, in the small size of the novel, all the characters are like that to describe that they are present to the reader and understandable in their actions.

Kirkus Reviews judged: "Very profound and a little weird work by a little master of pessimism". André Gide called Le Cheval Blanc “gorgeous”. In the epilogue to Die Marie vom Hafen, Simenon himself expressed the wish that one's quality as a writer should be “ judged according to Marie and the White Horse”.

In 2002, Preiser Records published an audio book version of the novel, which Hans-Peter Bögel read.

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Le Cheval Blanc . Gallimard, Paris 1938 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: To the white horse . Translation: Trude Fein. Diogenes, Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-257-01595-X .
  • Georges Simenon: To the white horse . Selected novels in 50 volumes, volume 13. Translation: Trude Fein. Diogenes, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-257-24113-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1924 à 1945 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of the Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Le Cheval-Blanc in the bibliography of 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. 121.
  4. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 229.
  5. ↑ a b c Peter Kaiser: Zwei Kreise ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.litges.at 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 litges.at.
  6. ↑ Volker Albers: Georges Simenon: Much more than just Maigret . In: Hamburger Abendblatt from April 28, 2011.
  7. ^ Pierre Assouline : Simenon. A biography . Chatto & Windus, London 1997, ISBN 0-7011-3727-4 , pp. 351-352.
  8. ↑ Michel Lemoine: L'autre univers de Simenon. Guide complet des romans populaires publiés sous pseudonymes . Editions du CLPCF, Liège 1991, ISBN 2-87130-026-7 , p. 271.
  9. ↑ Anaïs Nin : The Diary of Anaïs Nin . Volume 5. Harcourt Brace, New York 1975, ISBN 0-15-626030-1 , p. 47.
  10. ^ "Very subtle and somewhat oblique work from a minor master of pessimism". In: The White Horse Inn on Kirkus Reviews.
  11. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography. P. 239.
  12. ↑ Georges Simenon: Marie from the port . Diogenes, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-257-24112-9 , p. 174.
  13. ↑ To the White Horse on maigret.de.