‘I stood on the little bridge on the edge of nothingness, enveloped in infinity.’
The unbridled aspirations of youth are like a fiery golden sunrise, h‘I stood on the little bridge on the edge of nothingness, enveloped in infinity.’
The unbridled aspirations of youth are like a fiery golden sunrise, headstrong and self-assured to light the world ablaze with midday brilliance and pushing aside the inevitability of the purple twilight that is to come. Amsterdam Stories, a slim yet surprisingly substantial collection from the life’s work of Nescio— the Latin pseudonym of Dutch businessman and director of the Holland-Bombay Trading Company Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh meaning ‘I Don’t Know’ —beautifully bottles the passions and endeavours of youth in pristine prose. Focusing on a cavalcade of young artists who passively watch the world turn while assured of their own importance and coming fame, Nescio’s stories read like a more matured and polished Beat novel coming alive in the streets of Amsterdam and the artistic expressions of his characters. The natural world reigns supreme with Nescio as his artists attempt to harness it for personal glory while inevitably succumbing to the passage of time that leaves them only dust and the world churning on.
Perhaps the enjoyment of Nescio hinges on one’s tolerance for youthful nostalgia performed through long walks and talks, drunken binges and the occasional art of otherwise unproductive young men in society. However, even those disenchanted with Beat Generation style antics are sure to find solace in the much more matured insight through the gorgeously polished prose of Nescio. For me, the nostalgia is like being seated around a warm fire on a vast summer’s night with friends now long gone; the stories made me feel the heart within my chest throb in all its abstract and emotional qualities and overflow my senses with nearly-forgotten stimuli as if I were suddenly transported to the basements and bars of my early twenties. Reading more like a memoir than short stories as the majority contain the same characters in a circle of friends, Nescio refrains from adding much concrete detail to character descriptions and the reader is sure to naturally fill the gaps in with their own adolescent friends; many of these stories read like experiencing your own past as Nescio bestows a universality to his characters that make you believe you somehow know them.
We would shock the world, unimpressive as we were, sitting calmly there with our legs pulled up and our eight hands clasping our eight knees
Nescio instills that youthful feeling of infinitude and importance, where the world is just a test, and obstacle, that can easily be overcome for one to find themselves reigning supreme. The hatred for the privileged that skate through life on their last names, the disgust towards bleeding out your life as a bound and tied slave to corporate servitude, all the aspects of maturity and adulthood that youth despises despite doing nothing to the contrary come alive in each story. Nescio returns you to the feeling that nothing is impossible, the wonderful feeling that you are unique, special and bound for greatness—a greatness that grows exponentially with each drink and smoke as you chatter away with your friends into the endless numbered nights.
'Oh, we took our revenge, we learned languages they had never even heard of and we read books they couldn't even begin to understand, we experienced feelings they never knew existed.'
Each story perfectly captures the emotions of young life. The Freeloader (‘he always knew how to have a damned good time spending money while other people earned it’, seemingly a acute observation of an author with a business bent on his artistic friends and lifestyle) features a friend we all know and initially loved for their carefree manner and ability to enjoy life to the fullest without suffering the yellow-dawn existential angst and regret that typically permeate each hangover and smoked-out morning breath. Young Titans, my personal favorite, exquisitely examines the group of artists on a lifelong timeline, from sunrise to sunset, first loves and dreams towards a lifetime of mediocrity and defeat, and rings true to the point of jabbing its emotional knife into the soul of every reader. The Little Poet in particular manages to assess love, particularly impossible love and the sleeplessness of love-pangs, in a world where God and the Devil toy with their creations for sport. These are stories of white-hot emotion and ambition, of burning the candle at both ends just to see it blaze, and dying in the afterglow.
‘I sit there aimlessly, God's will is aimless. But to keep this awareness always is granted to no man.’
Nescio’s prose is full of vibrant life and color. While his characters go relatively undescribed, except the beautiful women of Holland each with intoxicating ‘knowing eyes’ that even leads God Himself to wonder ‘if he had seen ten thousand girls or one girl ten thousand time’, the Dutch landscapes are described in lavish language. The natural world and it’s impenetrable mysteries and unharnessed beauty enlivens each page and inspires the characters as they trade in their lives in artistic servitude to capture nature through their paintings and poetry. It is no surprise then that in Insula Dei the most disconcerting aspect of the Nazi occupation to the focal character is the destruction of trees and nature, as mankind is acknowledged as disposable to ‘God’s plan’ and nature the everlasting truth. Nescio gives a sobering reminder that we are finite in an infinite universe, yet avoids melancholy and accepts this truth in a manner that feels all the more empowering and beautiful for it.
Two thousand years, that’s nothing, the earth has existed for thousands and thousands more years than that and will probably exist for thousands more. The water will probably flow thousands of years more, without him seeing it. And even if the world did end, that still didn’t really mean anything. There would be so much more time afterwards, time would never end. And all that time, he would be dead.
There is something so freeing in accepting one’s fate, in acknowledging that time eats all and outlasts all. Through Nescio, we watch the goals of youth shattered on the shores of adulthood, either crushed by the world, sunk into mediocrity working for a paycheck ‘hounded and oppressed by people and by necessity, just like everyone else,’ or disintegrating and disappearing forever as time takes it’s course. Despite the typically morose endings to the stories, Nescio manages to avoid burdening the reader with sadness but instead a sly smile at the irony of existence.
‘A new age would dawn, we could still do great things. I did my best to believe it, my very, very best.’
These stories really struck a chord with me. They returned me to my youth in decrepit college apartments with former roommates as we passed long nights laughing, talking, smoking, and dreaming as we welcomed the stars with wine and guitars. Nescio rings true into the depths of the human soul and his message is just as valuable and digestible now as it was when first written. While this seems a meager offering of translated stories, a large chunk of the included works being unfinished drafts, the culmination of work still steals the heart and allows the reader to watch the progression of the author through the years. Amsterdam Stories leaves the reader wishing there was more, however, this is preferable to a collection having the reader overstimulated, overwhelmed and beyond ready for completion. Nescio captures the essence of youth in all its fiery glory and one is sure to feel empowered by his words. 4/5
‘A new batch of little Titans are still busy piling up little boulders so that they can topple [God] down off his heights and arrange the world the way they think it should be. He only laughs, and thinks: “That’s good, boys. You may be crazy but I still like you better than the proper, sensible gentlemen. I’m sorry you have to break your necks and I have to let the gentlemen thrive, but I’m only God.” And so everything takes its little course, and woe to those who ask: Why?’...more
s.penkevich
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