lunedì 18 maggio 2020

SIMENON SIMENON "VINTAGE" - BRITISH CREATIVE AGENCY WINS RIGHTS TO SIMENON WORKS


The Telegraph - 23/01/2013 - Katerine Rushton - The entire works of Maigret creator Georges Simenon are to be published in English for the first time, after talent agency The Rights House won a battle against his son for the estate.The company quietly bought 90pc of the Georges Simenon estate from Chorion, the intellectual property company that collapsed into administration last year, after seeing off fierce competition from John Simenon, who retains the remaining 10pc.DC Advisory Partners brokered the deal for an undisclosed sum. Now Peters Fraser Dunlop, the literary arm of The Rights House, plans to establish Georges Simenon as a major brand.The prolific Belgian crime writer, who wrote 391 books including 75 around his Maigret detective character – played above by Michael Gambon in a 1992 TV version – is a bestseller in Europe but has “languished” in Britain, said Caroline Michel, PFD’s chief executive.The company is in discussions to revive Maigret for a new television series and has struck a major deal with Penguin to publish all the books, starting in the Autumn. It will also produce audio versions with Amazon’s audiobook venture, Audible, where Ms Michel hopes they will benefit from the US launch of Whispersync...>>>

sabato 16 maggio 2020

SIMEON SIMENON "REPORT" - PIERRE ASSOULINE: "SIMENON A CONSTRUIT UNE OEUVRE QUI AIDE A VIVRE...


Destimed - 13/05/2020 - Jean-Rémi Barland - Brillant romancier -son dernier opus « Tu seras un homme mon fils » est consacré à Kipling-, fin lecteur, membre de l’Académie Goncourt, journaliste dont chaque biographie publiée s’est imposée comme un ouvrage de référence, Pierre Assouline considère Georges Simenon comme l’un des plus grands écrivains de langue française du XXe siècle. Ayant consacré au créateur de Maigret une biographie (rééditée en Folio) et un livre intitulé « Autodictionnaire Simenon » (disponible au Livre de Poche) Pierre Assouline a également préfacé le Tome 1 de « Tout Maigret » (dix volumes au total chez Omnibus) dans lequel il dit : « Le génie de Simenon, c’est qu’il vous parle de vous sans jamais vous interpeller. Il vous fait directement accéder à l’universel. Pas de gras chez lui. On est tout de suite à l’os. De quoi parle-t-il ? De l’amour, de la haine, de l’envie, de la jalousie, du mensonge, du regret, de la honte… Mais que la rédemption est difficile à y trouver. On devrait ceindre son œuvre d’un bandeau intitulé "La condition humaine" et tant pis si c’est déjà pris » Nous avons rencontré Pierre Assouline pour évoquer avec lui cet auteur unique qui, à l’image de son commissaire Jules Maigret demeure comme le note Pierre Assouline : « Un intuitif, et un instinctif qui s’imbibe, s’imprègne, se pénètre d’un univers, pour comprendre les mécanismes d’un milieu...>>>

venerdì 15 maggio 2020

SIMENON SIMENON. MAIGRET É LENTO

Il commissario e le sue inchieste hanno un ritmo calmo

SIMENON SIMENON. MAIGRET EST LENT
Le commissaire et ses enquêtes ont un rythme calme
SIMENON SIMENON. MAIGRET IS SLOW
The chief inspector and his investigations have a calm pace



La letteratura poliziesca di Simenon non ha bisogno di ritmo. E per ritmo in questo genere s'intende una serie di avvenimenti che si verificano uno dopo l'altro, quasi a non lasciar al lettore altra scelta che concentrarsi su quei veloci e talvolta bruschi cambiamenti. Non di rado poi, come se non bastasse, si inserisce tra questi anche qualche "colpo di scena". E, se vogliamo aggiungere, le inchieste simenoniane non hanno bisogno nemmeno della "suspense", quell'artifizio letterario, a volte assai efficace, che instilla il sospetto che qualcosa di terribile stia per succedere, ma dilatando il tempo di attesa in modo che il lettore, come si dice, trattenga il fiato perché non sa quando e come questo avvenimento si verificherà e ciò crea appunto quell'attesa angosciosa definita "suspense" (termine francese che infatti deriva dall'espressione "en suspens" che significa "in sospeso").
Perché questi due elementi che sono pilastri della narrativa gialla o d'investigazione, sia letteraria che cinematografica, nelle indagini del commissario sono assenti?
Azzardiamo una spiegazione. Il motivo è semplicemente Maigret. Potrebbe essere che più che voler scrivere dei polizieschi, Simenon fosse interessato a creare un personaggio che fosse il fulcro dei rapporti con altri soggetti umani, quasi un ponte che gli permettesse di arrivare dritto dritto nelle vite degli altri? E certo che un commissario di polizia arriva in certi ambienti nei momenti più delicati, dove certi tratti psicologici sono più scoperti e le relazioni interpersonali sono stressate e più evidenti. 
Maigret è un osservatore. Come ha detto e ripetuto Simenon, il commissario non è intelligente, ma intuitivo. Ed infatti ce lo dipinge sul luogo del crimine quasi sempre taciturno, fermo in un angolo o al massimo che procede su e giù a passi lenti. La pipa accesa tra i denti e gli occhi semichiusi come fosse pigramente svogliato.
E invece sappiamo che da quelle fessure esce uno sguardo tagliente che seziona l'ambiente in cui si trova, capta l'atmosfera e esegue una sorta di radiografia dei personaggi e delle loro relazioni.
Ma c'è molto di più.
Infatti mentre se qualcuno gli chiede, in quei frangenti, a che cosa stia pensando e lui risponde: "Non penso a niente", in realtà sta entrando in simbiosi con quell'ambiente, come si dice spesso, si sta "impregnando" di quel "milieu", perché finché non farà parte di quel contesto, finché non entrerà nei panni di quelle persone, non potrà capire e non sarà in grado di indagare.
Ecco le inchieste simenoniane, che mancano, quasi sempre, di inseguimenti d'auto, sparatorie, scazzottate, azioni violente, ma che sono ricche di analisi psicologiche, dell'acquisizione della mentalità di quella realtà, di osservazione, di empatia. E questa è tutta roba che richiede tempo, calma, la fretta è bandita e la lentezza è una conditio sine qua non...E per di più le investigazioni sono inframmezzate dalle piccole cose della vita quotidiana. Il commissario, fuma, mangia, beve, gira per i bar, curiosa nelle cucine delle case che visita, scherza con i suoi ispettori, e anche tutto questo rallenta il ritmo delle indagini.
E in più si potrebbe ipotizzare che anche l'umana dimensione di Maigret, uomo massiccio e lento, ritardi di per sé il corso della vita e delle sue indagini... Vi convince? Riflettetici... ma senza fretta!

giovedì 14 maggio 2020

SIMENON SIMENON "REPLAY". MAIGRET AND THE ENGLISH

Nationality and social class. Maigret voyage (Maigret Travels) 


SIMENON SIMENON. MAIGRET E GLI INGLESE /4 
Nazionalità e classe sociale. Maigret voyage (Maigret viaggia) 
SIMENON SIMENON. MAIGRET ET LES ANGLAIS /4 
Nationalité et classe sociale. (Maigret voyage)

In Maigret voyage (1958) Maigret is preoccupied for the duration of the novel by two Englishmen yet he only meets one of them. How to explain this apparent paradox? Simply, colonel David Ward, an English millionaire, is murdered at the beginning of the story and in order to solve the crime the commissaire attempts to understand the life and character of the victim by interviewing his associates, one of whom is his business confidant and friend John T. Arnold. The action moves from Paris to Monte-Carlo to Lausanne and back to Paris with a cosmopolitan cast of characters which poses the question of the relation between the Englishness national identity of Ward and Arnold and the apparently supranational social environment in which they live. 
At first sight, Colonel David Ward bears a strong resemblance in his appearance and behaviour to other upper-class Englishmen Maigret has met in his career. But in other ways, Ward is quite different from Colonel Sir Walter Lampson (Le Charretier de la ‘Providence’) and Major Teddy Bellam (Mon ami Maigret). Lampson and Bellam both issue from the aristocratic wing of the English ruling class, have been professional soldiers in the British Indian army and live as expatriates because they no longer have the financial resources which would allow them to maintain the lifestyle expected of an upper-class Englishman in the land of their birth. In Ward’s case, his wealth and social status comes rather from industry, specifically the family wireworks he has inherited in Manchester, and the title of “colonel” which he uses because of the social cachet it carries comes not from a career of military service but rather from his role in military intelligence during the war. Ward’s decision not to live in England is for reasons of personal preference not financial constraint: ‘He detested Manchester’ and, according to his associate Arnold, was uninterested in the family business, which almost ran itself, to the extent that ‘I don’t suppose he’d spent three nights [in Manchester] in the last thirty years.’ 
Ward’s choice is rather to divide his time between his apartment in Lausanne, hotel suites in London, Paris and Cannes, which he rents by the year, and visits to other aristocratic resorts such as Biarritz and Deauville. Apart from his friend and business advisor Arnold (yet another whisky-drinking, cigar-smoking Englishmen, possessed of ‘innate self-assurance’), Ward’s social circle is international: his third wife, whose divorce is imminent, is an American, his mistress is the comtesse Palmieri, formerly married to an Italian count (and for some reason named ‘Paverini’ in Jean Stewart’s 1974 English translation) and his other associates include exiled members of different European royal families, a Parisian grande dame and the Belgian chemical magnate Jef Van Meulen, who had been, moreover, the second husband of the countess. Although English appears to be the lingua franca of this cosmopolitan jet-set, plurilingualism seems to be widespread: Arnold speaks French with barely a trace of accent and Van Meulen communicates with Maigret in flawless French.  
In short, Maigret finds himself in a social milieu where wealth and social status rather than nationality are the defining characteristics. Although Maigret ‘could understand English at a pinch, but by no means spoke it fluently’, his problem in penetrating Ward’s world has less to do with language than with social class and he has just as much difficulty understanding French-speakers such as monsieur Gilles, the manager of the hôtel George-V, and doctor Frère with his list of illustrious patients: ‘They uttered the same words as everybody else and yet they spoke a different language. When they mentioned “the Countess” or ‘the Colonel”, the words bore a meaning that eluded ordinary mortals.’ Even in his conversation, in French, with the hotel telephonist, at the very outer fringes of this private international upper-class world, Maigret discovers that ‘they didn’t speak the same language here as at the Quai des Orfèvres’. The obstacle to communication is in the connotation of words, the implicit meanings given to them by their speakers, rather than their denotation, their primary literal meaning. This much is recognised by the fluent French-speaking Arnold in the course of his first interview by Maigret: ‘He, too, must be thinking they were not speaking the same language, that they were on different wave-lengths.’ 
As the commissaire pursues his investigation from the George-V to the Hôtel de Paris in Monte-Carlo and on to the Lausanne-Palace before returning to the George-V, he is struck not only by the physical similarity of the locations but also by the identical lifestyles and social norms of their international clienteles. This is a world in which identity is based not on nationality but rather on wealth, social status, common behaviour and shared attitudes. In his eventual resolution of the case, Maigret discovers that Ward had been murdered by his fellow countryman, Arnold, but that the motives for the crime had no national dimension or origin: rather Arnold had decided in conjunction with his employer’s third wife to kill her husband before their divorce was finalised and Ward could marry the countess, thereby ensuring her inheritance and Arnold’s entry to the world of the super-wealthy in his own right rather than merely as Ward’s associate.  
In conclusion, although Maigret voyage presents a vivid portrait of its two central English characters, the theme is one of social class rather than nationality. As in other stories in the Maigret saga, such as Les Caves du Majestic (1942), Simenon draws on his own experience of life amongst the cosmopolitan super-rich to depict the contrast between a world whose snobbery and pretensions he later claimed to dislike, but in which he continued to participate, and the traditional French petit-bourgeois values and lifestyle of his commissaire.  

William Alder 

mercoledì 13 maggio 2020

SIMENON SIMENON. SIMENON-CINEMA



L’œuvre de Simenon est l’une de celles qui a connu le plus grand nombre d’adaptations au cinéma. Sans compter les romans Maigret, plus de 50 films ont été tirés des romans durs. Dans cette rubrique, nous vous proposons un choix parmi tous ces films 

L’opera di Simenon è una di quelle che ha conosciuto il più gran numero di adattamenti cinematografici. Senza contare i romanzi di Maigret, più di 50 film sono stati tratti dai romans durs. In questa rubrica, vi prponiamo una scelta tra tutti questi film. 

Simenon’s work is one of those that have seen the largest number of cinema adaptations. Without counting the Maigret novels, more than 50 movies have been adapted from the “romans durs”. In this column, we propose a choice among all those films. 


Feux rouges




D’après le roman éponyme. Réalisé par Cédric Kahn, sur un scénario de Cédric Kahn et Laurence Ferreira-Barbosa. Produit par Alicéleo, France 3 Cinéma, Gimages Films, Cofimage 15, Banque Populaire Images 4Sortie en mars 2004Avec : Carole Bouquet (Hélène), Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Antoine), Vincent Deniard (l’homme en cavale), Jean-Pierre Gos (l’inspecteur). 


Tratto dal romanzo omonimo. Diretto da Cédric Kahn, per la sceneggiatura di Cédrix Kahn e Laurence Ferreira-BarbosaProdotto da Alicéleo, France 3 Cinéma, Gimages Films, Cofimage 15, Banque Populaire Images 4Uscito nelle sale nel marzo 2004Con: Carole Bouquet (Hélène), Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Antoine), Vincent Deniard (l'uomo in fuga), Jean-Pierre Gos (l’ispettore).


Based on the eponymous novel. Directed by Cédric Kahn, from a screenplay by Cédric Kahn and Laurence Ferreira-Barbosa. Produced by Alicéleo, France 3 Cinéma, Gimages Films, Cofimage 15, Banque Populaire Images 4Released in March 2004With: Carole Bouquet (Hélène), Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Antoine), Vincent Deniard (l’homme en cavale), Jean-Pierre Gos (l’inspecteur).

Murielle Wenger

martedì 12 maggio 2020

SIMENON SIMENON. MAIGRET, SIMENON ET LA HOLLANDE EN MAI

Pourquoi le roman "Un crime en Hollande" se déroule-t-il en mai ? Posons une hypothèse… 

SIMENON SIMENON. MAIGRET, SIMENON E LA OLANDA IN MAGGIO 
Perché il romanzo "Maigret in Olanda" si svolge a maggio? Ipotizziamo...
SIMENON SIMENON. MAIGRET, SIMENON AND HOLLAND IN MAY 
Why is the novel "crime in Holland" taking place in May? Let’s hypothesize... 

Dans les romans de la saga, Simenon indique toujours la saison, et presque systématiquement le mois où se déroule l’enquête du commissaire. La météo joue un rôle important dans l’intrigue, surtout parce qu’elle a souvent une influence sur l’humeur de Maigret et sur sa façon de réagir. On trouve des enquêtes qui se passent à toutes les époques de l’année, avec une majorité d’investigations printanières, malgré le cliché d’une ambiance automnale et pluvieuse qui colle à la peau du commissaire… Parmi les enquêtes du printemps, les plus nombreuses sont celles du mois de mars, mais on en trouve aussi une certaine quantité en mai. Alors qu’une bonne part des premiers romans, ceux écrits pour Fayard, sont des enquêtes automnales, et particulièrement de novembre, plus on avance dans la saga, plus les enquêtes « à la belle saison » se font fréquentes. Mais tous les romans de la période Fayard ne sont pas des enquêtes dans les frimas et le brouillard ; on en a aussi à d’autres saisons : par exemple, La Nuit du carrefour en avril et La Guinguette à deux sous en été. 
En général, les enquêtes qui se passent en mai ont lieu à Paris et par beau temps, et Maigret savoure, comme dans la nouvelle Le Client le plus obstiné du monde, « une journée tiède, ensoleillée, avec, dans l'air, cette vibration particulière au printemps parisien ». Cependant, la première enquête, du point de vue de la chronologie rédactionnelle, que Maigret mène au mois de mai se déroule… aux Pays-Bas. En effet, le roman Un crime en Hollande débute lorsque Maigret arrive à Delfzijl une après-midi de mai ; les notations sur le beau temps se retrouvent tout au long du texte ; par exemple au chapitre 1 : « Il y avait du soleil. »« Le ciel était pur, l’atmosphère d’une limpidité étonnante. » ; au chapitre 5 : « Dehors, c’était un bain de soleil, de douce chaleur, de quiétude. » ; au chapitre 7 : « On plongea, la porte franchie, dans une atmosphère lourde de soleil et de calme. » 
Simenon a toujours affirmé qu’il n’avait décrit dans ses romans que des ambiances et des lieux qu’il avait connus. Or, c’est en septembre 1929 que le romancier, installé sur sa barge à Delfzijl, créait, selon la légende, son personnage de commissaire. Pourquoi alors, dans le roman Un crime en Hollande, où il envoie son héros sur le lieu mythique de sa naissance, ne lui fait-il pas mener son enquête en septembre, voire plus tard dans l’arrière-saison, puisque c’est dans cette ambiance qu’il avait imaginé Maigret ? Il aurait semblé « logique » qu’il place le commissaire dans un contexte semblable… 
D’autre part, les descriptions de l’ambiance printanière à Delfzijl sonnent véridiques. On peut donc se demander si Simenon, en réalité, ne s’était pas trouvé dans le port hollandais justement au printemps, et plus précisément au mois de mai, ce qui expliquerait son choix de cette saison pour y emmener Maigret. 
L’hypothèse est vraisemblable, si on considère quelques dates. Simenon, au mois de mars 1929, quittait avec l’Ostrogoth le chantier de construction de Fécamp, remontait la Seine jusqu’à Paris et s’amarrait au square du Vert-Galant, à la pointe de l’île de la Cité, où il fit baptiser son bateau le 3 avril. Puis il entreprit un voyage qui le fit remonter vers la Belgique, avec pour objectif le nord de l’Europe. Il traversa les Pays-Bas, et c’est alors qu’il passa une première fois à Delfzijl. Puis il continua son voyage en direction de Hambourg, avec un arrêt à Wilhelmshaven ; c’est là qu’il se fit refouler et qu’il dut retourner à Delfzijl ; d’après les dernières recherches simenoniennes, cela se serait passé en juin. 
D’où notre hypothèse : si le départ de Paris a eu lieu au début d’avril, et qu’il a dû quitter Wilhelmshaven en juin, Simenon pouvait fort bien se trouver à Delfzijl en mai… Pourrait-on vérifier cette hypothèse en retrouvant des documents ? Le romancier avait-il un livret de bord de l’Ostrogoth qui existerait encore quelque part ? Reste-t-il des traces dpassage de son bateau, dans les archives des ports qu’il a traversés ? Les regrettés chercheurs simenoniens qu’étaient Menguy, Deligny et Lemoine nous manquent aujourd’hui pour entreprendre de telles investigations. Auront-il des successeurs aussi zélés ?... 

Murielle Wenger