On the occasion of Croatian Book Month, the two “Maticas” – Matica hrvatska (Matrix Croatica) and Hrvatska matica iseljenika (Croatian Heritage Foundation), promoted Bošnjak’s two books that reveal our diaspora’s peculiar social and cultural treasures…
Organized by the Croatian Heritage Foundation in Zagreb, on October 14, the two books of essays on the literary and cultural production and social life of Croats outside of Croatia were presented by Milan Bošnjak, Ph.D., entitled Suvremena hrvatska književnost nastala izvan Hrvatske (Contemporary Croatian Literature Produced Outside Croatia) and Hrvatska nacionalna manjina – status i perspektiva (The Croatian National Minority – Status and Perspective). The co-publishers are Matrix Croatica and the Croatian Heritage Foundation.
Ivan Tepeš, Ph.D., Deputy Director of the Croatian Heritage Foundation, welcomed the many attendees on behalf of the host, congratulating the author on his persistent and thorough description of the cross-section of current cultural and social production of Croats abroad.
Also addressing those in attendance was the President of Matrix Croatica, Damir Zorić, Ph.D., saying, among other things: “Croatian literature produced outside of Croatia or in the Croatian diaspora is a constituent part of the identity of the Croatian people. That is why I’m very pleased that we are working jointly with the Croatian Heritage Foundation, the Central State Office and others, because there is plenty of work to be carried out, and we must not waste our strength; we must join forces in order to present this constituent factor of our contemporary identity to the Croatian public as much as possible and to the foreign public as well, especially when it comes to Croats abroad. Without this, we will not have our complete contemporary national identity.”
The State Secretary of the Central State Office for Croats Abroad, Zvonko Milas, congratulating the author, emphasized “that these two books that speak about political bilateral activities and topics, but also about life, art, culture and everything that Croats outside the Republic of Croatia cherish from where they reside, so all the values by which they are recognized as members of the Croatian people, are a valuable contribution to the better status and position of the Croatian national minority, but also above all, help preserve the Croatian national identity, so everything important for Croats living outside the Republic of Croatia to truly preserve values, so that they can be recognized by them, and in such a manner that this is aimed at the well-being and betterment of everything surrounding them.”
Speaking about the books further in the program, in addition to the author, Bošnjak, were reviewers Professor Sanja Vulić, Ph.D., and Professor Željko Holjevac, Ph.D., as well as editors Luka Šeput, Ph.D. (Matrix Croatica) and Vesna Kukavica, M.Sc. (Croatian Heritage Foundation).
These are two separate collections of ingenious essays, which, together, comprise more than 400 pages in a not-so-small format, by which the author Milan Bošnjak critically explores the contemporary intercultural segment of the Croatian diaspora – both in overseas locations and in the closer European neighborhood.
The first book focuses on the recent literary production of emigrants, including the translation undertakings of writers of Croatian descent, capturing our scattered philological treasure with intention. The second book presented stems from the author’s direct insights into the social, political, educational and cultural circumstances of the Croatian national minority in twelve countries of Central and Southeast Europe. In the book, the author provides an inventive attempt at the conceptual definition of this minority in the period after the democratic transformations in Europe (1989), which opened up completely new perspectives for all the peoples of this part of the Old Continent.
The music program at the Bošnjak book presentation, which the two “Maticas” co-organized as part of Croatian Book Month, was performed by soloist Nika Pastuović, and the promotion was professionally moderated by Ivana Perkovac from the Croatian Radiotelevision’s International Voice of Croatia program.
According to reviewer Sanja Vulić, collected between the covers of the book “Suvremena hrvatska knjiženost nastala izvan Hrvatske” are the author’s many years of research on Croatian language, literature and culture, as well as presentations of works of postmodern Croatian fiction produced over the last thirty years in Croatian minority communities and in the diaspora. The author, Bošnjak, indisputably enriches the corpus of Croatian literature, including those literary works written in English, German and Spanish, produced by writers of Croatian descent, which, in addition to the roots of the author, incorporate into Croatian literature topics and motifs related to Croatia and the Croatian people.
“The impartial and fact-based analyses in this book allow readers to become acquainted with a large number of new authors and their works, with the aesthetic value of these works and their more or less successful inclusion in contemporary trends of the literary environments in which they live, as well as the modern world in general.”
In Bošnjak’s essays, the intercultural element seems to be more significant than the linguistic one – when it comes to “survival and literary production” in another culture, that is, the acceptance of Croatian people on the move in a domicile multilingual and multicultural society – noted the editors of Bošnjak’s two books, Croatian linguist, Luka Šeput, and migrant literature theorist, Vesna Kukavica, congratulating the author on successful and stylistically refined essays on Croats and Croatian culture.
According to reviewer Željko Holjevac, the content of the book “Hrvatska nacionalna manjina – status i perspektiva extensively explores, through eight essays, today’s positive cultural, educational and scientific practices within the Croatian national minority. Members of the Croatian minority, whose total number in 12 European countries amounts to about a quarter of a million people, live in the following countries: Republic of Austria, Republic of Bulgaria, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Republic of Italy, Republic of Kosovo, Hungary, Romania, Republic of North Macedonia, Slovak Republic, Republic of Slovenia and Republic of Serbia. The book consists of 228 pages, is richly illustrated and features scientific elements; in addition to abstracts in Croatian and English, it contains references, selected international legal documents on minorities, and other comparative sources, as well as a list of Croatian national minority institutions and associations in 12 European countries containing over 220 diverse organizations. “The articles, essays, studies, presentations, speeches and interviews, combined in this work by Milan Bošnjak on the status and perspective of the Croatian minority in the European neighborhood, point to the extensive institutional cooperation of the Republic of Croatia with the Croatian minority in the surrounding countries. On the other hand, the contributions included in this book provide interesting insights into the significance of Croatian minority communities in the mentioned 12 European countries as bridges between countries, societies and cultures in a diverse European environment. By linking the development of various forms of activities with rich and diverse minority experiences in a conceptually conceived and communicative manner, the author provides a better assessment of the existing model of activities and contributes to the recognition of the development of optimal participation of Croatian minority perspectives in the mosaic of contemporary European challenges,” concluded reviewer Željko Holjevac.
Bošnjak’s book describes, for the first time in our country, in one place, the advantages and disadvantages of current models of minority regulation in relation to two important multilateral treaties of the Council of Europe, that is, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (1992) and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (1994) – both in 12 European countries where the Croatian minority communities live and in the model of minority representation applied by the Republic of Croatia for representatives of 22 minorities living in its national territory. An interesting element is that the author, Bošnjak, manages to sketch the complexity and social and historical conditionality of the ethnocultural communities with Croatian roots marked by the concept of national minority from a time line of half a millennium and to point out the occasional absence of its more widely accepted minority reality in the social practice of the domicile communities of Central and Southeastern Europe. In addition, Bošnjak noted the useful efforts of intergovernmental mixed committees for the protection of national minorities, singling out exemplary practices between Croatia and Hungary, along with the first-rate minority legislation applied in the Republic of Croatia.
At the end of the promotion, author Milan Bošnjak thanked the publishers – Matrix Croatica and the Croatian Heritage Foundation – for recognizing the maturity of his interpretations of the cultural, social and, especially, literary life of Croats outside of the homeland. The effect of these interpretations, Bošnjak believes, could help all in the academic community develop better institutional intercultural models in the future, which will strengthen contemporary Croatian cultural unity at the global level. “I believe that the concept, the paradigm, the model of Croatian global unity is the only sustainable concept for the development of the Croatian people, the Croatian nation, the Croatian state in the 21st century. And this is something that is not invasive, aggressive, which does not question anyone, but which also does not set boundaries for those wishing to access the global Croatian community. It is up to all of us, in any manner we can, to contribute to it and to develop it,” said Bošnjak.
The ceremony was attended by numerous dignitaries from public life, including: Jasna Vojnić, Envoy of the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament; Ivan Gugan, President of the Croatian Government Council for Croats Abroad and President of the Croatian Self-Governing Body in Hungary; Terezija Gras, Director of the I. Directorate for Europe in the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs; Milan Kovač, President of the Management Board of the Croatian Heritage Foundation; Mirjana Piskulić, on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and Media; Katarina Milković, M.Sc., Director of the Education Agency; Vesna Golubović, Ph.D., on behalf of the National and University Library in Zagreb; Željka Lovrenčić, Ph.D., Vice President of the Croatian Writers’ Society for International Cooperation and translator; Marija Žebec, on behalf of the Directorate for Pastoral Care for Croats Abroad; Prof. Tihomil Maštrović, on behalf of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts; Academician Jasna Čapo, Ph.D. from the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore; Damir Boras, Ph.D., former Rector of the University of Zagreb; former directors of the Croatian Heritage Foundation Ante Beljo, Nikola Jelinčić and Marin Knezović; and numerous other representatives of political and cultural institutions and associations.
Text: Snježana Radoš / Photo: Jurica Galoić
