Open brief aan Hare Majesteit Koningin Beatrix

Majesteit,

graag zou ik Uw advies willen vragen omdat ik een moeilijke taak heb en dat als schizofreen. Omdat het steeds slechter met de wereld zou gaan en de mensen verder van God en Zijn Woord verwijderd raken heeft de dichter Dante Alighieri een verborgen betekenis achtergelaten in zijn werk de Divina Commedia. Sommige schrijvers hebben dit geweten, maar nooit openbaar gemaakt. Zou ik het openbaar kunnen maken denkt u of is het misschien beter een geheim een geheim te houden?

This is a story, a story with a beginning, relations to other stories and based on older stories as it is clear that people can only live standing on the shoulders of history, live in a world made by past men. And in this I've been badly lucky as I will explain.

My first major confrontation with the limits of my capabilities was when I studied Italian language at university. I was following a course about medieval Italian literature. It was the question from Belaqua, a 'fella' citizen to Alighieri, in:

I came to him he hardly raised his head,
Saying: 'Hast thou seen clearly how the sun
O'er thy left shoulder drives his chariot?'

in Dante's Purgatorio. For a moment I thought the meaning left shoulder referred to the left shoulder of the stellar constellation the Big Bear as a bear as one can see in all the stars of this constellation, which points to the the Little Bear and finally to the Polar Star. We are arrived in the poem at the world upside down, the southern part of the hemisphere, and further on the personage is introduced with a particular move so a medieval commentary to this episode makes it a 'bizarre' episode with undefined meaning.

Then, in the 'Diary about Nature' of Nescio (meaning 'I don't know') I found in a passage about ferries and bridges the exclamation, of course without meaning, appearing from a totally different context: 'Beatrice!'; a name inseparable from the poetry of Dante.