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Abstract:

The article discusses the hypothesis of the role of Elsa Triolet in the novel “A Man’s Head” by J. Simenon. Earlier, Triolet appeared on the pages of V. Shklovsky’s epistolary novel “Zoo. Letters Not About Love or the Third Heloise” (1923), then in her own autobiographical novels “In Tahiti” (1925) and “Wild Strawberries” (1926). In 1928, she met Louis Aragon at the Café “La Coupole” in Paris, and she became his muse and the heroine of his poems. However, her presence in one of Georges Simenon’s first detective novels, “La Tête d’un homme” (1930, published 1931, Russian translation, 1962), went unnoticed. Simenon uses the plot scheme of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” and its source, Balzac’s “Father Goriot”. Most of the novel takes place in the Café “La Coupole”, where Simenon, Ehrenburg, and Elsa Triolet were regulars. The French police kept a close eye on Elsa Triolet from 1926 onwards, believing that she was actively collaborating with the Soviet embassy, performed the role of a contact or even was employed by the secret service. According to the police reports and Elsa’s own recollections, she spent the afternoon in a café in Montparnasse. In the novel “A Man’s Head”, there is an image of a regular visitor to a café — a young poor Russian woman in “a black English suit, well sewn, but ironed, probably, at least a hundred times. She had a tired and nervous face”. It is suggested that the prototype of this character was Elsa Triolet.