700 millions of copies sold
The 23rd episode of the series of Italian and foreign best-selling authors is dedicated to one of the most loved, appreciated and read writers of contemporary world literature: Georges Simenon.
If it may seem trivial to remember that this year marks the 90th anniversary of the narrative debut of Inspector Maigret, the news is so obvious and well known, the more interesting it may be to explore some aspect of its prolific creator.
In fact, according to a Unesco database, over 700 million copies sold are attributed to him: one of the largest publishing fortunes of the twentieth century worldwide, if not the largest ever. Our country, which has always reserved a very particular welcome for the famous commissioner with the pipe, has given a considerable contribution to it: over 25 million.
This particular predilection, it must be said, was well granted, given that it went to an authentic writer, to a racial narrator, to one of whom we do not know who can be considered superior, literary speaking, in the twentieth century. At best equal, but we do not believe superior.
An endless production
As far as the quantity of its production is concerned, the affirmation is even more peremptory and incontrovertible, proof of any denial. In fact, Simenon was a storyteller with such an easy vein that he composed an endless flood of novels, in the order of hundreds, and all of a high artistic level.
It makes you smile, thinking back to the joke uttered by we no longer remember which literary critic, who years ago wondered how so many novelists managed to write a book a year... And he argued that with that cadence it was not possible to compose books that remained, novels of quality valuable works.
He argued for this affirmation referring perhaps, or at least thinking about it, and certainly with affection and profound esteem, to our Manzoni, for whose masterpiece, between the first version, rinsing in the Arno, subsequent versions and so on, he waited over 25 years. Other times! Another geological era, one might say!
Well, our Simenon in one year composed, at least, but to say the least, ten novels. He wrote a book in a fortnight: 7-8 to jot it down and the others to rearrange it before delivering it to the publisher. And sometimes even less.
There was an experiment, we don't know if it was authentic or not, but still probable, in which he, locked up in a glass bell, would have managed to write a novel in three days. Whether the news is true or false, Simenon is credited with about 500 books, a hundred of Maigret's novels and short stories, and the others on various topics.
In short, a typewriter in perpetual movement, which worked at a frenetic pace, and not for a short time or for a particularly creative phase, but for its entire existence.
The life
Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1903, into a middle-class family: father an accountant, mother a housewife. But those of the parents are two families with frequent contrasts and misunderstandings, which push little Georges to side with that of his father, whom he has always loved deeply, while relations with his mother and her family will be stormy and marked by great difficulty and distrust .
He completed his studies up to the age of 16, when, due to his aversion to the type of teaching imparted to him in the Jesuit college, he left school and began to report in the newspaper of his hometown. He adopts the pseudonym Georges Sim, which he will then use, together with others, to sign his initial novels, before using his real name.
At the age of 19, in 1922, shortly after his father's death, he moved to Paris, and here he forcefully and massively entered the world of "writing". Not yet in that of "literature" with a capital L, since she composes popular novels in incredible quantities, never succeeded by anyone. He defined them as attempts to learn the trade. He signs them with various pseudonyms, over 15 confirmed ones.
A life of excess
And in Paris also begins that life of excesses in every field, from writing to emotional life, which will be a constant for over half a century.
In the French capital, meanwhile, he collaborates on several magazines at the same time and publishes weekly stories at a pace that would be too little to define as industrial. In fact, there is talk of 750 stories in three years: almost one a day. He also writes popular novels on a regular basis.
It seems that in five years, from 1925 to 1930, he composes 170: a pace that no narrator of the world in any era has ever been able to keep. And then there was no computer, with the time facilities it allows, but the simple, albeit highly effective, typewriter. If these are not excesses!
This gives him considerable wealth, given the quantity of publications, and then his writings are liked, and in any case, even if each one is paid a modest sum, it is always a lot of money.
The same type of excesses applies to emotional-sexual life: two wives and four children, as well as a long coexistence, until his death, after the divorce from his second wife. And so far nothing to complain about!
But to his friend Federico Fellini, whom he met during the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, and who later became his great friend, he confessed one day that he had had 10.000 lovers: not only sex professionals, but also virtuous women, with whom he felt the need to “communicate”, as he put it. Which then presupposed going to bed with him, since sex for him was like breathing.
And what would that be, too, if not an excess? Which would remain so even if a zero, or even two, were removed from that number. And something else.
The same goes for the changes of residence, which were over 30, for an average of one residence every two years or so. He also used to declare himself a voracious reader of other people's works. If one then considers that he had relationships with publishers, human, family, cultural and social commitments of all kinds, and the fact that the days were, even for him, 24 hours, one cannot understand how he was able to keep together all these things in such quantities.
If his was not a life lived to the extreme in every manifestation, how could it be defined?
The abandonment of France after the war
During the war he was suspected of having collaborated with the Nazi invader, even though the various biographies tell of years spent in the Vendée, alleviating the suffering of wounded civilians and soldiers. The fact is that at the end of the war he decides to settle in the United States, to calm things down and perhaps escape a not impossible revenge, and he stays there until the early XNUMXs, also changing residence here frequently.
In America he marries for the second time and three children are born, two boys and a girl, the only one of his children, to whom, as we shall see, life does not reserve a happy destiny.
Things get worse for his brother, also suspected of collaborating with the Nazi invader, who in the end enlists in the Foreign Legion to escape any reactions, but will die in Vietnam, during the war that France is fighting there.
Inspector Maigret is born
There are countless film and film adaptations of Commissioner Maigret's investigations. Perhaps the most famous face of the commissioner with the pipe was that of the great French actor Jean Gabin.
In 1929 the figure of Commissioner Maigret was born, who made him famous and with whom he began to sign all the works with his real name. The first title, one of the most famous of all, is Peter the Latvian.
In the novel, those ingredients make their appearance that would later characterize the writer and make his fortune. There is the description of Paris and the province with a few, but extremely dense, brushstrokes, which have made school, and continue to do so almost everywhere, and which have established themselves among the most significant and original of contemporary French literature.
There are the many characters that fill and enliven the life of the commissioner, from his wife, called by him "Mrs. Maigret", to the inspectors Lucas, Janvier, Torrence. Other characters with whom he has to deal on a daily basis are the general manager, the judge, the columnist, up to the countless figures he meets in his investigations of him.
The plots and plots are also very significant, which although not as elaborate as those of Agatha Christie, another queen of the genre, still manage to captivate and enchant the reader until the conclusion of the novel.
A "poor" type of writing, but extremely significant
All in all, everything is narrated with a rather poor lexicon, but more than sufficient to recreate atmospheres, situations, characters, as best it could not be. Indeed, in the end one feels that no matter how hard one tries to find an alternative to the term used, be it an adjective, a noun, a verb, any other construct, no one would be able to surpass the one used by the Belgian writer.
This is further proof of Simenon's skill, which the official critics, not the readers, have perhaps not yet appreciated in all its aspects, even if the passage of time seems to benefit him more than damage him, especially in various novels. Just the opposite of what happens with authors much more ephemeral than him.
Returning to France in the XNUMXs, he moved first to the French Riviera, then to Switzerland, where he remained until his death, while continuing to change his residence frequently.
His name is now spreading all over the world. The translations are in all the languages of the planet and continue to grow, like its overall circulation.
Then there are countless television and film adaptations, which have seen actors of absolute world prestige interpret the figure of the commissioner, starting with Jean Gabin.
In Italy the figure of Gino Cervi, an extraordinary actor, has remained strongly imprinted in the collective imagination, alongside in the role of wife Andreina Pagnani, a great actress, and the only woman to whom, in her words, Alberto Sordi has asked to marry him, receiving a refusal!
The tragedy of his life
In a life of this tenor, however, there is no shortage of tragedy, and it is linked to the fate of his beloved daughter Marie-Jo, the one to whom the writer had given his own name, Marie-Georges, and whom he loved, reciprocated, with an extraordinary affection. . She will end up committing suicide in 1978, for reasons that are not fully ascertained, including a strong neurological pathology, perhaps transmitted to her by her mother, who suffered from it like her.
Some say that after reading the memoirs of the mother, the writer's second wife, an American secretary married in 1945, would have been shocked by the destructive news reported about her father. Who hypothesizes other scenarios, not excluding an even more infamous one.
The fact is that the twenty-five-year-old Marie-Jo, after a previous unsuccessful suicide attempt, will kill herself by shooting herself in the heart in 1978. Terrible tragedy, which induces her father, who shortly before had announced his farewell to fiction, to take up the pen and make one last effort: a book of memoirs and confessions to which he will devote himself for almost a year, he who finished a book, as we have seen, in ten days. It will be released in 1981 with the title of Intimate Memories, dedicated entirely to Marie-Jo.
Simenon died in Lausanne in 1989 at the age of 86, from the recurrence of a brain tumor, always assisted and cared for by the Friulian Teresa Sburelin who had lived with him for over 30 years.
