Some authors seem immortal, others sink into oblivion. After a while, what’s left? In its monthly series Should we reread…?, The duty revisits one of these writers with the help of admirers and attentive observers. Today, it’s time for the mist and the rain which permeate the work of an author famous in his time, still appreciated in our time: Georges Simenon (1903-1989). Because not only did he know how to create unique atmospheres, x-ray the human soul, he also shaped an emblematic figure of 20th century literature.e century, commissioner Jules Maigret. All this has made, and continues to make, his fortune.
Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni owe a debt of gratitude to Georges Simenon. In 1960, the Belgian writer, already crowned by decades of triumphs, chaired the jury of the Cannes Film Festival. His recognizable figure – he never left without his hat and his pipe, in symbiosis with Maigret – imposed himself on the Croisette, and the man also imposed his authority within a group little inclined to consensus. After some epic arguments, the author of Pietr-le-Letton (first novel starting the Maigret cycle in 1931) offered Fellini the Palme d’Or for The good life and the Jury Prize to Antonioni for The Adventure. Both films were greeted with controversy, and left with the seal of consecration.
The one who started his career as a news journalist at the age of 15 in The Liège Gazette, the city where he was born, never managed to achieve great honors. To others, the Nobel, the Goncourt, the French Academy, etc. The man has nevertheless reaped the fruits of success, to the point where the figures are dizzying. Because Simenon gave birth to a colossal body of work with his 220 works written under his surname or pseudonym (Georges Sim, Christian Brulls, etc.), including 85 novels for the Maigret cycle. This abundance quickly overflowed the borders of France and Belgium with 550 million copies sold throughout the world, more than 3,700 translations into 47 languages, not to mention the 80 cinematographic adaptations and the 350 TV films or television series. Other statistics? He was also nicknamed the man of 10,000 women (including 8,000 prostitutes…), a reality with which his three wives, including Quebecer Denyse Ouimet, had to deal with.
Beyond the mist
Georges Simenon did not like the label “detective novel”, or “noir novel”, to describe his books. Whether the famous commissioner of 36, Quai des Orfèvres was present or not, whether a villainous murder was committed or not, the triumphant resolution of the enigmas interested him little; the mystery pleased him more. As a journalist, Simenon had been confronted with the horrors of the underworld, sharpening his sense of observation, taking an interest in little people to turn them into a great human comedy.
But what hasn’t already been said about the atmospheres emanating from Simenon’s universe? He was described as a painter of ambiguity, disarray and fall, fond of pithy sentences, capable of setting a scene and an atmosphere in a few words. The famous actor Jean Gabin, who has ten adaptations of the writer’s novels in his filmography, including Meadowsident (1961), by Henri Verneuil, Maigret sees red (1963), by Gilles Grangier, and Cat (1971), by Pierre Granier-Deferre, stated: “With Simenon, we know where we are going, it is solid because the characters are real. » It is also whispered that the cantankerous wife of Catbrilliantly played by Simone Signoret, would be a model of Simenon’s mother, with whom relationships have always been complex and tense.
“Maigret did not follow an established plan. He had no idea. He was a bit like a hunting dog that came and went sniffing. And he didn’t mind, deep down, finding the air of that Montmartre, which he hadn’t breathed for years. »
The author of all superlatives, the one who could produce up to eight books per year, who had lived in 130 homes in Europe, the United States… and in the Laurentians (that’s where he wrote Three bedrooms in Manhattan, published in 1946), cultivated simplicity. A posture which, in his Maigrets as in his “hard novels”, which he also nicknamed his “roman novels”, touched straight to the heart. Solange Bergeron has admired him since adolescence, and wrote a master’s thesis entitled Investigation into the Maigrets, at Laval University, in 1999. “At the time, the subject was frowned upon, the detective novel was shunned,” remembers the French professor at the Sainte-Foy CEGEP. However, this genre allows us to consider the world differently, and to understand it in all its complexity. »
Solange Bergeron likes to follow the thread of his great quest, “constantly seeking the human being, what he called the naked man, and to constantly establish contacts with human beings”. Simenon’s Maigret works more on instinct, much more than Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, who are very Cartesian. “Maigret not only wants to know who killed, but why it was him, and not someone else. The criminal could be anyone, and for Maigret, identifying the culprit is nothing other than identifying with him. » This shows great empathy, and the teacher believes that young people would further develop theirs by reading Simenon’s novels.
“Understand and not judge, that was always his motto,” underlines Serge Truffaut, former journalist at Duty. He too immersed himself in the work of Simenon during his youth, but quickly abandoned it only to return to it later upon discovering a successful adaptation of the Tenant (1934) by Pierre Granier-Deferre, The North star (1982). “That’s when I started reading his tough novels, and the distinction is striking with his Maigrets. In the first, he seeks the truth of man, he dissects it, he goes to the depths of his psyche; Monsieur Hire’s engagement (1933) is quite fascinating from this point of view. In the Maigrets, what is extraordinary is that we know little about this commissioner… even if we have read all the books in the cycle. We know some of his habits — veal blanquette is his favorite dish! —, but unlike the heroes of hard-boiled novels, Maigret, as a central character, remains a mystery. »
“What interests me, my reason for writing, is the naked man. Not the man as he sees himself or disguises himself to reassure himself, with a hat, a false collar, a suit. No, the man alone, when, for example, he is about to fall asleep. Alone with his thoughts, with himself. »
If such skill and conciseness command admiration, the French literary institution was not very sensitive to it. “After the Second World War, Simenon moved away from the Parisian cultural scene and finally settled in Switzerland,” recalls Serge Truffaut, contributor to the information site. In withdrawal composed of “journalists born in the age of printing”. His independence was fierce, he never went to parties organized by his publisher, Gaston Gallimard. He lived his glitz and glitter era in the 1930s, at the time of cabarets and his affair with Joséphine Baker. »
Simenon’s revenge
Mathieu Larnaudie, French writer (Our desire is without remedy, Young people), invited last spring to a major event dedicated to the author of yellow dog in Liège, defines himself as a “summer” reader of Simenon, “a reading done during walks, travels and meetings, not at all planned, which does not make him a beach author”. His own novels are sometimes compared to those of this master of the simple phrase, “which surprises me a little, but in Blockhouse (2020), my most autobiographical book, there is this seaside atmosphere.”
Just like Serge Truffaut, Mathieu Larnaudie notes that Simenon has changed status over the decades, and his influence appears where we least expected it, among others at Éditions de Minuit, long the house of Duras, Sarraute, Robbe-Grillet , champions of the new novel. “ [Le journaliste et écrivain] Jérôme Garcin keeps saying that Yves Ravey [Pas dupe, Adultère] is the heir of Simenon, that the editorial policy of this house seems borrowed from his hard novels, and I completely agree,” asserts Truffaut. Larnaudie, also a publisher, makes the same observation. « Yves Ravey and Julia Deck [Monument national] were present in Liège. At Minuit, they extend the same strong writing proposals of Simenon, just like Jean Echenoz [Je m’en vais], their eldest. These authors master the codes, but you have to take them from somewhere. Which demonstrates that Simenon really irrigated part of literature. And he didn’t do it as a code provider, but as a writer. »