SIMENON SIMENON. YOU CAN'T GO WITHOUT MAIGRET…

Why Simenon continued to write novels with the Chief Inspector 

SIMENON SIMENON. NON POTETE ANDARE SENZA DI MAIGRET…

Perché Simenon ha continuato a scrivere romanzi con il commissario

SIMENON SIMENON. ON NE PEUT PAS SE PASSER DE MAIGRET...

Here is what Simenon told in a 1980 interview published in the book entitled Simenon, released by l'Age d'Homme editions: “When I had written the eighteenth Maigret novel, I went to Fayard and I told him: - I'll stop the Maigret collection. – Why? – Because I want to write what pleases me.” And so the novelist stopped writing Maigret novels for some times, and wrote only “romans durs”. Those novels had success too, despite Fayard's doubts… Nevertheless, we may wonder what would have happened if Simenon had kept his word and had never written Maigret novels anymore… Of course, the “romans durs” are important and essential enough to ensure him posterity and the place he deserves in the story of literature. Yet would he and his works have been the same without the Maigret novels? Didn't this hero, who followed him for more than forty years, contribute to a kind of equilibrium for the novelist and for his works? 

Simenon tried several times getting rid of Maigret, this character who had brought him glory and also, one must admit, the money that allowed him to live as he wanted to. No doubt the novelist found that his hero was somewhat cumbersome and even invasive, because it is true that for a long time people would only know Simenon as a detective novel writer… 

Simenon had to wait long till he was recognized as a great novelist, and, according to the law of the pendulum swing back, literary critics attempted then to eclipse the Maigret novels… Fortunately, thanks to Maigret's evocative strength, nowadays almost everyone acknowledges that the Maigret novels and the “romans durs”, that is to say both sides in Simenon's works, are equally important, and that the Maigret novels are much more that just good for relaxation in the waiting room... 

As for Simenon himself, he eventually realized that Maigret was necessary to his “writing balance”. He needed to alternate the “romans durs” and the Maigret novels, because writing an investigation lead by the Chief Inspector was a kind of little joy he offered himself between two hard writings, and also because he could try, in a Maigret novel, a theme he would afterwards develop in a “roman dur”; or, on the contrary, a Maigret novel would allow him to discuss topics he didn't succeed in dealing with in a “roman dur”. Over time Maigret would serve him as a kind of counterpoint, of counterpoise, putting some lightness in the heart of the works, but also becoming a character to which he could confide his own questionings about many subjects that haunted him. 

And their relationship got closer and closer over time. Whereas Simenon had forgotten, once he ceased to be a novelist, most of the characters he had created, wasn't Maigret the only character that the novelist talked about in his autobiographical works, and even many times?... 

 

by Simenon-Simenon