Literary works in small languages and (un)known scripts: the example of the Croatian Glagolitic script as an identity problem of a part of contemporary Europe by Marisstella Octek (SL Čižmešija)
In my story “Risan is Teuta” [published in Croatian in the Montenegrin magazine ARS 2019, translated into English in KDP AMAZON 2025], the main character Queen Teuta cries over the fate of the Illyrian language: because the new fashion is for poets to write in Latin. If readers of the poet's native language do not read his poems, he is forced to write in a language that is read (appreciated) and which will replace his native language in the future. Teuta distances herself from the greedy materialistic people (and murderers) among the Illyrians who engage in piracy for the benefit of their interests and against the economic and peace agreements between her and the powerful Roman Empire. Teuta is aware of the truth: if the Illyrian language and art in the content of the phrase "common good" were more of an interest to her Illyrians than selfish personal material and social gain, then neither the Illyrian language nor the Illyrians would ever become extinct.
Do rare enthusiastic writers who write (and) in the Croatian Glagolitic script, which is read by only a few and is not officially catalogued as a separate Croatian script, have the right to a national destiny? Why the Kajkavski (kajkavian) and the Čakavski (chakavian) are not readable in library programs as dialects: offered in professional processing of the CROATICA corpus as the notable subspecies of that corpus?
World history (does not) need the apparent nation-states that, like the old vanished civilizations, are just one of the passing facts in the historical sequence, a minor gesture of opening up historicity to the small and insignificant. Still, these small and insignificant are rightly not part of the great and long-lasting stories because their driving force and horizon is not survival in a permanent-eternal-spiritual form, but exclusively in a changing-short term-material form.
Europe has uncritically accepted the member states of "Eastern" Europe into its ranks, accepting their modus operandi - the assumption that to be European is a set of material and social-status achievements but not spiritual cultural civilizational. The member states of “Eastern” Europe that have not carried out lustration (only East Germany and Poland have carried it out) present themselves as Europeans, exhaust European material and economic resources but at the same time purposefully undermine European spiritual cultural civilizational achievements. The policies of “Eastern” Europe that Europe is generously financing are policies of the unlustrated legacy of bolshevism-communism-socialism, therefore they are godless neo-communist. Among them, all those renewed by the collapse of the totalitarian regime of YUgoslavia exist within the framework called postYUgoslavia (YU was essentially a dominant Orthodox Greater Serbia). "Eastern" Europeans cherish exclusively protocol patriotism and resolutely reject the idea of elaborate long-term national strategies because the national state is a verbal, protocol, formal decoration but not (instead of) a goal, purpose, and content for them. Through their institutions, which are essentially non-sovereign and often actively anti-sovereign, cherish pro-YUgoslavism with dominant pro-Serbian (Serbization) and pro-Orthodox policies (Slavism and Pan-Slavism) and then pro-Islamic (Muhadjid) policies. The Islamists of Bosnia and Herzegovina are supported by two disastrous regime ideologies: the ideology of YUgoslavia that accepts them into its seemingly multicultural community, and the ideology of Nazism with the legacy of the contribution of Bosnian Muslims to Nazi war units: the purpose is a strategic undermining of national non-Muslim states with the ultimate goal of the victory of Islam.
Entering the European Cultural Circle means being well-versed in Europe's history and spiritual achievements, from the philosophers and epics of ancient Greece [old Greek dramas were part of the school curriculum, but with accession to the European Union, obligatory reading was abolished] to the French Revolution. The French Revolution showed how, through cries of freedom and fraternity, to tear apart the entrails of pious strict Catholicism and clericalism, the ideal of aristocracy and the nobility of a selected and nurtured educated spirit... introducing the germ of godless and violent atheism, mediocrity and socialist equalization, leveler (uravnilovka) which flourished in the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century - bolshevism, communism, socialism - under the leadership of the Russian mega criminal's violent comrade Lenin, then Stalin and the communist (later a mason) with a stolen identity (non-Croat) violent Tito... continue even today in the post-communist "states" of "Eastern" Europe and in the communist regimes of the Far East. Europe's fascination with the legacy of the French Revolution, whose revolutionary nature subconsciously inspired the communist regimes of the 20th century, which cruelly and purposefully killed the bourgeoisie, the middle class, craftsmen, artists, scientists, all educated thinking people and the upper class of the nobility, and purposefully committed genocide, aristocide, and culturocide... persists today.
Europe did not insist on the implementation of its Resolutions condemning all totalitarian regimes and is purposefully manipulatively disinterested in favor of their non-implementation in the countries of "Eastern" Europe, especially the Catholic countries of today's "Eastern" Europe, which before the totalitarian regimes belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that is, Central Europe [...and will belong to Central Europe again if they consistently and completely carry out an economic and spiritual (cultural and scientific) lustration]. Europe's traditional space ruled by Catholic and Protestant states together with the Jewish population before World War II is rapidly shrinking (narrowing). As a result of the mutual cooperation of Nazi and pro-soviet, pro-bolshevik neo-communist and pro-YUgoslav dominantly Orthodox and artificially insincerely constructed multicultural policies (which include also Muslims) – now the European space is expanding to include eastern Orthodox and Islamic cultures and, through economic (business) and scientific projects, it is reaching across the Muslim Middle East to the communist regimes of the Far East. What is European in a non-European militant Orthodoxy of the Old Testament type which officially - through the Serbian Memorandums – regularly produces conquest projects that for centuries have started world wars against the ancient, peaceful New Testament European Catholicism. What is European in a non-European militant Islam, especially after the glorious European past when Europeans, especially Croats, were Antemurale Christianitatis (Bulwark of Christendom) [= was a label that Pope Leo X gave to Croatia in 1519 which was the frontiers of Christian Europe defending Europe from the Ottoman Empire]. The structural reshaping of Europe is taking place with the help of liberal, non-conservative, globalist, atheistic, non-Catholic, pro-Eastern, migrant-invited, non-nationalistic... European policies towards “Eastern” Europe... and anti-European policies in “Eastern” Europe.
After the bloody war aggression by the Old Testament militant Orthodoxy that attacked the New Testament peaceful Catholicism, all institutions that represented the strongholds of Orthodoxy remained active, abundantly financed by fake Europeans in the institutions of “Eastern” Europe. In everyday life, this means, for example, that the Croatian Glagolitic script is not taught in schools, although we, some parents, took our children to a private course that was perceived by state civil servants as "bullying children with useless (non-STEM) knowledge". Children who attend a music school where European classical music by famous European composers is listened to and performed are exposed to enviable and primitive mobbing by some children and teachers who emphasize that such activities are not mandatory-obligatory and do not represent a contribution to education: because if you try to explain to state civil servants how you have set aside your time (and money) to teach your children the European spirit and the civilized cultural circle, they repeat like parrots that what is not mandatory - obligatory, or legally prescribed as necessary education, is not even education worth mentioning. Consequently, children born in new or restored states listen to newly composed primitive “songs” called “narodnjaci” in the Serbian language or an invented so-called common mixed ("understandable by all") language, which is not the native music of autochthonous folklore expression in the category of valuable cultural tradition and heritage, but is a hoax - a strategically designed YUgoslavization of the European space to undermine and abolish not only national states but also Europe.
Everyone in “Eastern” Europe who does not feel part of the East has only two choices: either to emigrate or to side with domestic chauvinists who see the only solution to all problems in the restoration of national states as they existed during World War II. I proposed a new paradigm (readable in my Essays in Croatian in SMASHWORDS) to the Croats: it is the RndH, or rather the summarized purified positive heritage of both the NDH and the RH, but purified without a trace of any totalitarianism.
On February 22, 1483, the printing of the first Croatian printed book (printer Ambroz Kacitić) in Glagolitic and Croatian was completed in the city of Kosinj in Croatia "Misal po zakonu Rimskog dvora " (Missal according to the law of the Roman Court), which confirmed the life of the Croatian Glagolitic. Contemporary authors who write in Croatian Glagolitic will not be honored in Croatia as “national heroes”, like, for example, Norwegians who still write with two written standards, Old Norse (bokmål = riksmål) and New Norse (nynorsk = landsmål). They will not even be understood as part of Croatian spirituality and culture at all, because the state finances Old Slavic institutes and so-called Slavists, distinguished doctors of science who are officially paid by the state to explain how the Glagolitic is a Slavic or Pan-Slavic project, and therefore also Eastern Orthodox. Working as a librarian-cataloger in the global library program Aleph, I processed a Montenegrin title in Montenegrin Cyrillic: I transcribed the title in Cyrillic and I translated it into Croatian Latin at the same time. Although this powerful global program [which also enabled me to download records from the Library of Congress Washington for further professional processing] has a handful of special signs and symbols and covers numerous non-Latin scripts, it did not include the Glagolitic script. For a valuable global program to know that Glagolitic exists, there must be a scientific elite that will explain it to management and leaders: to explain how Croatian Glagolitic exists as a significant Croatian script in which artistic creation is still taking place today. However, there is no scientific elite independent of official politics, and official politics is pro-Slavic, pro-PanSlavic, pro-Orthodox... in global pro-Eastern. This same eastern social-humanistic scientific elite, when lobbying for a code for (standardization of) the Croatian language in the Library of Congress Washington allowed, under pressure from jointed serbian-croatian Slavic, pan-Slavic, pro-Orthodox scientific policies, the internationally recognized code for the Croatian language to be implemented since 2008 instead of (since) 1991 when Croatian statehood was restored to the Republic of Croatia.
“Eastern” Europeans enjoy the luxury of ignorance, disorder, unknowledge, non-work, and inaction... because they do not know how to designate, to describe a contemporary book of poems by a Croatian author (recently by poet Branimir Vurušić) in the Croatian Glagolitic script as the Croatian national corpus of CROATICA, determine what type of CROATICA it is (I wrote about the types of CROATICA in my Essays on STUDIA CROATICA published in Croatian in the SMASHWORDS), and enter it into the library program in parallel readable form in both the Croatian Glagolitic and the Croatian Latin scripts. On the contrary, they have state scientists who will declare contemporary works by Croatian authors in the Croatian Glagolitic script as a contribution to so-called Slavism within the glorified abortive (from the perspective of national literature) construct of Pan-Slavism. Personally, for years, enduring mobbing and isolation, I have sent requests to Croatian intellectuals (also) about the Glagolitic script, claiming that the Croatian Glagolitic script is part of the CROATICA national corpus (Studia Croatica) and deserves to be represented in library programs in the content of a rich system of special signs and symbols - however, to no avail.
European scientific contribution: Tomislav Beronić "Glagolitic script before Cyril and Methodius" (Zagreb, 2025). The author in his scientific-expert book presents the following theses on the origin of the Glagolitic script, which I put here in quotation marks. The enemies of the truth want to "strengthen the Pan-Slavic idea" and for centuries have been spreading and supporting "delusions in the Croatian academic environment" because reputable scientists "interpreters of the Glagolitic script are operatives of the Greater Serbian encroachment on Croatian cultural heritage" who "disparage the Glagolitic tradition embodied in the figure and work of St. Jerome" although "the Glagolitic folk tradition, especially in Dalmatia, is firmly tied to St. Jerome". However, "Croatian tradition respects St. Jerome as the creator of the Glagolitic script" and "there is no reason why first Croats, and then all other peoples, would prefer a very questionable interpretation of foreign hagiographic, that is, literary works about the Holy Brothers, to their tradition" and "it is difficult to escape the impression that the dating of Glagolitic monuments is avoided by exact methods precisely because of the Cyril-Methodist ban". If scientific research were conducted critically, objectively and in a European spirit: "In that case, if not the entire Cyril-Methodist science, then at least its part concerning the origin of the Glagolitic script would fall into disrepair. This would entail many other consequences, including the challenge of scientific works, and perhaps even academic titles. And so we conclude that lustration is not only a political concept but also a cultural one, and Croatian society will not be freed from the totalitarian mentality without it." I add: the mentality of all totalitarian regimes - because supporters of all totalitarian regimes of the 20th century criticize and dispute Beronić's contribution. While studying Old Norse literature, I noticed the similarity between runes and Glagolitic script (which I mentioned in my Essay on Old Norse literature and mythology published in Croatian in the SMASHWORDS content). Beronić states: “It should certainly be borne in mind that the inhabitants of Illyricum were technologically on the same level as other peoples in the surrounding area. In addition, the Illyrians were surrounded by cultures for which we have traces of their scripts – the Goths, who used runes, the Etruscans who had a separate script, the Romans who used the Latin script, and the Greeks who had their alphabet. I believe that the Delmatians, the Iapodes, the Liburnians, and others had their script and that this script was Glagolitic.” Regarding the character of Queen Teuta, who is in my story adorned with a fibula - Beronić writes about “The Development of Glagolitic Signs from the Illyrian Spiral Fibula (Clip).” Namely, “Glagolitic script originated in Liburnian, or perhaps better said - Illyrian homes, where housewives took motifs from everyday objects. They decorated their dishes and other objects with these motifs, made jewelry... and slowly created a communication tool using these pictograms. In the developmental process driven by the everyday lives of ordinary Illyrian women, I see the origin of written culture” and “Women elevated written communication skills to writing; it is not known when pictograms became letters.” The Beronić points out: “For a long time, the Illyrian script was invisible and uninteresting to the Romans, among other things, because they imposed their culture on the conquered, and later to the Latin Christian clergy as a kind of successor to the Roman Empire.”
In the local context, the countries of „Eastern” Europe that, for example, do not engage in the projects of mutual multilingual translations of their national literature and the popularization of their classics are, like Illyria, doomed to failure, primarily culturally and then in all other ways. Cultural neglect states should be recognized as a cancer that undermines European civilizational achievements, but targeted colonization to conquer territory and resources (both from the East and the West) is a possible justification for Europe to continue rewarding the exclusive protocolar (often feigned) statehood of new - renewed quasi-national states. The death dance of Europe consists in the fact that although Europe is now draining the resources of “Eastern” Europe through ruthless, soulless colonization, it will be outplayed, because as in past centuries (Historia magistra vitae est) this hostilely united, unlustrated “European Trojan horse” will once again shoot at Europe and deal Europe a mortal wound. Maybe it would be fairer for the countries of „Eastern” Europe that have not yet undergone lustration (because Pan-Slavism is not only pro-Orthodox but also pro-Serbian and pro-Russian, that is, pro-Soviet), to join the alliance of Slavic states led by Russia, and the alliance of Muslim states led by Turkey, because it has been proven through all modern creativity that they belong to them spiritually and mentally.
In the global context, the member states of Europe are also doomed to failure, as the English language becomes mandatory and the rapid replacement of the European population with non-Europeans who, as a rule, do not know or only mumble the language of the national state of residence without any interest in learning anything about the host culture is proof that Europe has neither self-awareness nor pride nor mechanisms for self-sustainability, and with the help of its politicians, modern-day Neros, cynically singing hymns to its self-destructive, deceptive policies, it is burning in a catastrophic fire like ancient Rome... without the possibility of return and (self)renewal.
Translation from Croatian: Marisstella Octek
GDBK = CSBK 21.2.2025. A.D.
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When adults read aloud, they introduce children to new vocabulary in context, which helps them understand and remember words more effectively. The rhythmic patterns, rhymes, and repetitive structures found in many picture books make them particularly effective for this purpose. These elements help young children anticipate what comes next, giving them the confidence to join in and, eventually, to read along.
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Nurturing Emotional Intelligence
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Fostering a Love of Reading
The stories we encounter in our earliest years often stay with us for a lifetime. By reading to young children, especially at bedtime, adults are planting the seeds of a lifelong love of reading. The comfort and joy that comes from sharing a picture book become associated with the act of reading itself.
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Creating a Bond and Sense of Security
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For a child, the presence of a trusted adult during bedtime reading provides a sense of security. This routine becomes a comforting anchor in their day, something they can rely on no matter what else has happened. The physical closeness, the sound of a familiar voice, and the shared experience of a story all contribute to a feeling of safety and belonging.
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Stimulating Imagination and Creativity
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The Entrepreneurial Mindset
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STANDBY TRAVEL - First in Series of Reflecting on days of future past
REFLECTING ON DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
Is a collection of biographical memories of the past. The following personal words are inspired by a poem titled REFLECTION.
“I should have known!” He thought, reflecting on the future past.
A future now determined by past deeds and decisions, a future no longer a targeted destiny. Not worrying about the future, and staying in the current can be healthy, but it is like running a race wearing blinkers. Only focused on the destiny, inflexible, blinded from the surrounding journey, or the fading memories quickly moving into a forgotten past. With the future coming increasingly faster, reflecting on the future past, is it worth remembering?
The current doesn’t consider versions of oneself, a version influenced in childhood by important people, spirits that nurtured and cared for his early years, by events that carved and caused early impressions, from phobias to dreams, holding onto unrealistic ambitions.
Staying current, staying healthy, they say.
Was it the soup of his DNA, his natural characteristics combined with infantile influences that chartered the course, the journey, his destiny, his fate, his choices. How much choice and individuality did he bring to his life? He reflected on his future past.
The older version of himself looking back through upgrades and downgrades of his younger versions, his journey was never straightforward, but what does it teach us, he thought – reflecting on the future past.
Staying current is only healthy when you decide to block out the reflections of future past, the older wise version critiquing, creaking with old age, with a biased view of the future past.
“I should have known!” needs to be rewritten. “I did, I do, and don’t regret.”
The older current version of self, having the last words in reflecting on the future past.