The Real Life of Commissioner Megre: Hundreds of Romance Novels, a Pipe Collection and a Family Tragedy

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The life that Georges Simenon lived seems much more interesting and dramatic than the biography of Maigret. But it is the stories about the police commissioner that have been gaining the attention of readers for over ninety years, allowing not only to understand the crimes committed, but also to walk around Paris, which no longer exists.

Not French, but Belgian

Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was born in Liege, Belgium on February 13, 1903. His mother, Henrietta Brühl, was very alarmed by such an unhappy date of birth of the first child and did everything to make Georges's official birthday 12 February. Mother in general had a serious influence on the personality of the future writer. She was from a family of merchants, attached great importance to financial well-being and suffered from the fact that the family did not live well. Georges' father, Desiree Simenon, found joy in what was, content with his job as an accountant in an insurance company, and a family with two sons - a few years after Georges, Christian was born to the Simenons.

Georges Simenon's adolescence fell on the First World War, because of it and because of his father's illness, he had to leave the prestigious Jesuit college, in which his mother hardly arranged for him. The main occupation was to raise funds for life. Sixteen-year-old Simenon managed to get a job as a reporter in the editorial office of the Gazette de Liege, where he dropped in at random in 1919. Georges had been fond of literature since childhood, but a special love for books was instilled in him by many hours of conversations with foreign students, for whom Madame Simenon opened her house in the post-war period, organizing something like a family hotel. At the same time, Simenon's first story "The Idea of a Genius" was born, and after a while - the first short novel "On the Bridge of Shooters".

After completing his military service, the nineteen-year-old Simenon went to the French capital - there, in Paris, he earned money by keeping a judicial chronicle, for which he constantly kept in touch with police stations - hence the amazing realism of his works, which makes one forget that Commissioner Maigret is a fictional character.

By that time, he was already engaged to Regina Ranchon, an artist from the bohemian circles, whose "royal" name did not like Simenon at all. He began to call her "Tizhi". In 1923, the wedding took place. From this marriage, about which Simenon later spoke rather warmly, a son, Mark, was born. The couple spent their time in the best traditions of the bohemians of the twenties - at parties with artists, in a cafe on Boulevard Montparnasse, where Tizhi drew inspiration and talked with colleagues in the shop, and Simenon wrote all new works.

From humorous stories to a series of novels about the Commissioner Maigret

The first stories were sold in entertainment newspapers, the writer's works were more likely to be humorous prose. The first detective story, entitled Knox the Elusive, was written in 1924. Simenon created his works in just a few days, if he could spend months and even years thinking about the plot, then the execution of the plan had to be kept within that short period of time when the writer was reincarnated into characters, began to see life through their eyes. This process made it possible to create a reliable, atmospheric text, but it also required a large amount of the author's mental strength, and therefore was short-lived. Simenon spent four to six days writing an adventure novel. Great productivity provided a livelihood - in ten years, the writer created more than three hundred works.

But not only literature occupied Simenon, travel was his real passion. In the future, the writer will visit the African and American continents, will visit Russia, but for now he travels a lot in Europe, and for the fees received for the books, he first buys a boat, and then a sailing ship. Wandering with his family along the rivers of France, Belgium, Holland, going out into the open sea, Simenon continues to invent new subjects for his works and invariably devotes his morning and evening hours to his work. During the voyage on the sailing ship "Ostgot", after a stop at the port of Delfzijl, Commissioner Maigret, the hero of the novel "Peters the Lettish", was invented. This book was written in just six days.

Jules Maigret, whose image glorified Simenon, was both the embodiment of some of the features of the writer's father, and a kind of portrait of himself. Georges, too, from his youth and until his death, did not part with a pipe, and one of his favorite book characters was the detective Rouletabille from the works of Gaston Leroux - in a raincoat and with a short smoking pipe.

The publisher Fayard, whose collaboration brought the success of the series of novels about the Commissioner Maigret, initially criticized Simenon's creation: neither the structure obligatory for the detective, nor the indispensable love line, nor the special personal charm of the protagonist - from the stories about the investigations of the Parisian commissioner, apparently, they did not expect a lot. But nevertheless, Maigret became incredibly popular - precisely due to the dissimilarity from previously written in this genre. “Another” type of criminal novel, where the main focus is not on solving the mystery of the crime, but on its circumstances, reasons, and most importantly - people related to what happened, whose fates turned out to be tied in bizarre tangle of relationships; it is their unraveling that the commissioner is busy with.

The incredible popularity of Maigret's novels played a bad trick on him when the Nazis came to France. Book publishing in Paris during the years of the occupation was developed like nowhere else in Europe, and the works of Simenon were willingly published and even filmed by the Nazis. Subsequently, the writer will be accused of collaboration - despite his help to refugees and partisans and refusal to cooperate with the Nazis, and after the end of the war, Simenon was prohibited from publishing books for five years.

The war was reflected in the novels of the Belgian writer - "The Ostend Clan", "Mud in the Snow", "Train". In general, despite the fact that in the world Simenon is known primarily as the author of detective stories, he himself considered his best works to be others - "difficult" books, psychological novels.

"Father" of Commissioner Maigret and father of his children Georges Simenon

But it was Maigret who was destined to become a "showcase" of Simenon's work, as it happened with Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. The French commissioner turned out to be the reader's guide to the Parisian reality, and Maigret himself, thanks to his unhurried, unemotional, filled with reflections and dialogues, progress towards the truth acquires the features of a just judge, a defender of the weak, and sometimes - an instrument of retaliation. While Simenon was still alive, a monument to Jules Maigret was erected in the city of Delfzijl, where the commissioner was "born," and the writer was given a birth certificate for his hero at the opening ceremony.

Outwardly bearing the character of detective stories, the stories about the commissioner touch upon the most pressing topics of the life of society and the deepest layers of human psychology, which makes these books attractive to any generation of readers. Not to mention the fact that the Paris of the times of Simenon, the one that is forever in the past, comes to life thanks to the way the Commissioner sees and feels this city, thanks to every step that he takes along the streets and squares. It is no coincidence that one of the most popular excursions in the French capital is now the "Paris of Commissioner Maigret". In 1972, Simenon stopped writing works of fiction, without even completing the Oscar novel, which had already begun by that time.

One of the main distinguishing features of Simenon's writing career - his fertility - was, perhaps, a natural consequence of his temperament, which required the implementation of an infinite number of ideas and investments of a constant flow of energy. The same applies to women - even if the number of ten thousand mistresses is overstated for the sake of a catchphrase, yet Simenon's lovingness clearly exceeded the average. While still married to Tizhi, he became involved with his secretary Denise Wime, whom he later married. In addition to official wives, the writer had many short-term novels, and just one night's connections - he himself mentions this in his autobiography.

In the second marriage, two sons and a daughter, Marie-Joe, were born, but this union also fell apart. Denise became addicted to alcohol and was diagnosed with a mental disorder. In 1978, she published a book about her relationship with her ex-husband, overly frank, full of accusations and harsh criticism. 25-year-old Marie-Jo, who loved her father dearly, committed suicide two months after the book was published. By her own will, the body was cremated; during the cremation, there was a ring on her finger, which Simenon gave to her daughter at her eight years old. The ashes were scattered in the garden of the house where her father lived.

After the death of his daughter, for ten years Simenon gave strength to his memoirs - twenty-one volumes of the writer's memoirs were published during this period. Part of this legacy - "Memories of the Intimate" - is addressed to the deceased daughter, to whom Simenon spoke as if he were alive, telling about what he had experienced. The last years of his life, the writer spent next to Teresa, a woman who, in his own autobiographical confession, made him happy. Georges Simenon died in Lausanne at the age of 86.

Another legendary, but already real fighter against French crime - Vidocq is an ambiguous figure, either a villain, or a hero, and, among other things, a writer.