Nescio, Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh (Amsterdam, 22 juni 1882 - Hilversum, 25 juli 1961), was a great fan of James Joyce because of the literary novelty and artistic genius he might have considered a relief in the days of the nazi regime. In the years after the WOII he kept a diary which is published in his Verzameld Werk (1996) as the Natuur Dagboek.
What do Joyce and Nescio have in common?
They both have had, as many artists and millions of others have had, a reading of the first book of human culture.
I should explain more about this. Scientists share the opinion (Curtius, 1948: Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter) that the first fiction book of human culture is the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri from just before the year 1300. This is the first written representation of real life in the form of a different world (speaking from the readers perspective) created by a human being [].
In the year 2010 we can say that this text from the 13th century made the big hit and nowadays we all kind of live a life with access to and knowledge about and maybe from fiction, whether it's literature, advertisements or movies and etc. But in the year 1300 it was a novelty.
Now back to literature. Joyce and Nescio both knew about the Comedy as the text was originally called by the author (La Commedia di Dante Alighieri fiorentino). In Ulysses there are several italian italics, or better : passages in italic in some dialect of italian. Actually they are taken from the Hell of the Comedy but remade in some bastard form. Like the much talked about relation with the poetry of the contemporary english writer T.S.Eliot. 'Make it new' and they did. Nescio on the other hand only has one, as far as I know now, italian quote. Just in between the lines of the diary there is the word with so much literary connotations: `Beatrice`. And it really is like out of the blue in between the lines of the diary. Like sticking a yellow star on judes. Makes no sense no?
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