Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[1]. Ref.:0_5516930_125008.jpg

 

George Simenon[2] and Mr.  Cardinaud (1942 )

 

“…However, he and only he was named ‘Mr. Cardinaud’…”[3]

Differently from the superintendent Maigret, which gave a fair success to George Simenon, Hubert Cardinaud  didn’t ever deal with investigation in all his life. Also if he was neither a rebel nor a progressist man, he preferred studying rather than – as it was in his family tradition – being a retailer with a shop and a wife. Cardinaud got to his degree, and thanks to his competence he could go on a good professional career, up to when he decided to marry the girl he liked. “Also joy was quiet in Cardinaud…”[4]

However something happened, and surely not scheduled : coming home from church, a Sunday morning with Jean, his eldest son of three, he realized that his wife Marthe has given their newborn Denise to mademoiselle Julienne, their neighbour and came away without any message but taking away three thousands francs, ready to pay the imminent instalment of their loan which would expire in a few days.

In their town, where everyone already knew what Cardinaud ignored, people looked at him and waited, some of them laughing and some gossiping… He however, who even twice did cry – sobbing the first time, but silent the second time[5] – at last decided, without any doubt or bad purpose, to do something not so usual as far as his familiar tradition is concerned.

“I’ll go to look for her, and to lead her home again.”[6]

So that, Hubert Cardinaud had to ask a number of ‘please’ : firstly to the owner, Mr. Mandine for money in advance – he would never ask before - on his own salary but the expiry of the loan was imminent and they hadn’t any other savings; then he had to ask ‘please’ to someone reliable who could care care of children and home while he was away to look for Marthe; and last he had to ask ‘please’ to someone who – even without any compassion – could link him with that “little rogue…”[7] who did succeed, flattering and weeping, in catching their money from Marthe.

Here is what Cardinaud did think, his own original defence – effective and not ingenuous – to have back his stolen benefit : and firstly he realized that his woman was a real benefit. This was really his own work, no one suggested anything and people looked at him ironically at first, then paying attention as Cardinaud “would be a suffering patient to be treated carefully…”[8]  

Jacques Lacan pronounced a second time, in November 1973 ‘Les Non-Dupes Errent’[9]: in the double signifiance, which can be heard also as ‘les noms du pères’, there is the melencholic irony by Lacan, just looking at his back when considering his own and whole work.

There is the symbolique, there is the imaginaire… and there is the real, does tell us Jacques Lacan.

But it is not imaginaire the real, as it carries each one of us as nothing and no one can then, because that is a knowledge we cannot know, just ‘love’ it – and the word is still an obscure one as it recapitulates, condensates and also hides much of what has been ‘removed’ by oneself : the position of ‘the ‘inconscient’ then is still at risk and ingenuous, not so innocent in his or her masking – also if accepted by Culture – and above all not defendable.

Just a little after, in his dense text, Lacan acknowledges that ‘disharmonious’ which we can at last recognize as reliable, so also the ‘inconscient’ can be considered specifically human : but why have we to ‘love’ that one, which can be so disagreable and disharmonious as Lacan says in ‘Les Non-Dupes Errent’ ?

Here it is, then ‘I’ as a hypothesis of a ‘not fallic’[10] preceeding Law Court, as far as logic is concerned, our language but not our birth, authorizing oneself to a specific knowledge and putting him or her at work without any ingenuity, and without any melencholy too.

It is just a beginning, one of my first steps, I will write on again.

 

          Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio April 5, 2021 and Easter Monday.

 

 

(1) Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France too, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’.

(2) George Simenon (Liegi 1903 - Losanna 1989) begun youngest, at his sxteens, to work as a journalist : then writer, he edited also under pseudonyms a number of tales and romances and took to TV and movie success the chief policeman ‘Maigret’, by himself invented. His accuracy and sobriety let the readers look for information and links no more detailed.

[3] ‘Il signor Cardinaud’, George Simenon – Adelphi Edizioni Spa (2020), translated by Sergio Arecco/ p.37

[4]  ‘Il signor Cardinaud’, George Simenon – Adelphi Edizioni Spa (2020), translated by Sergio Arecco/ p.9

[5] “After weeping he come back chief ohi own nerves…”/ p.49

[6] ‘Il signor Cardinaud’, George Simenon – Adelphi Edizioni Spa (2020), translated by Sergio Arecco/ p.59

[7] “…a little rogue” as named by Drouin, a big sea man working at the vessel engine, who sells oysters and cares his kitchen garden in his free time : he met Chitard whom Cardinaud is looking for and hiding on vessel ‘Aquitaine’, thanks to patience of Drouin but who has stolen to Drouin his father o’clock, just before coming down the boat. ‘Il signor Cardinaud’, George Simenon – Adelphi Edizioni Spa (2020), translated by Sergio Arecco/ p.70-73

[8] ‘Il signor Cardinaud’, George Simenon – Adelphi Edizioni Spa (2020), translated by Sergio Arecco/ p.59

[9] The original is on www.radiolacan.com

[10] ‘Il pensiero di natura’, Giacomo B. Contri (1998) – SIC Edizioni, p.22, p.83, p.99, p.195;‘Ereditare da un bambino. Perché no?’, Marina Bilotta Membretti (2014) Isbn 978-88-91081-63-6, p.23, pp.27-29, p.30, p.46.