A glance into the past: the creation of The Dictionary

In order to understand Benešić's Dictionary as well as the problems that his follwers have to deal with while trying to complete it, we need to mention that Julije Benešić (1883 – 1957) was a Geography teacher who soon abandoned his profession to become a poet and a novelist, editor, linguist, translator, theatrologist and polonist. Thanks to his involvement in editing the works of renowned Croatian authors, many of whom were also his contemporaries, Benešić had an excellent knowledge of literary works. He came into contact with lexicography while writing his Croatian-Polish Dictionary and, earlier, the dictionary of the dialect of his hometown, The Dictionary of Local Speech of Ilok (manuscript). At the age of 65 he had in front of him a new extensive lexicographic task to which he ardently devoted himself. It is therefore not surprising that, in defining the guidelines for The

Dictionary’s compilation, Benešić started from his position of a novelist and clung to

his personal feeling for language paying not too much attention to lexicographic standards. When he handed in The Dictionary’s manuscript up to the letter K in 1954, the principles of interpretation seemed to him clearly defined. They reflected the character of both The Dictionary and its author: Benešić, the poet, editor and translator brought to the task of compiling the dictionary primarily his passion for the written word and his capacity for a profound enjoyment of literary works. The circumstances in which The Dictionary was compiled and which had impact on its character are also mentioned in the foreword to The Dictionary's first volume: »its [the Dictionary's] departure from certain rules which apply in strictly philological

lexical works should not confuse: from the very beginning the dictionary was imagined as a sort of lexical anthology of Croatian literature in the last hundred and fifty years« (Benešić 1985: Foreword).

Envisaged, therefore, as the dictionary of Croatian literary language, i.e. as the collection of quotations from the works of the finest Croatian authors who were active writers during the stormy one hundred years period in the history of Croatian literature and language, The Dictionary aimed to show the development of Croatian literary language:

The purpose of this Dictionary is to present a portrait of the literary language which Croatian writers used from the period of Illyrian movement (1835) till the beginning of World War II, exactly: in the period of one hundred years, and with quotations accompanying every word, in the form in which that word was used in the works of Croatian poets and belletrists (Benešić 1985: XVII).

There existed a certain disagreement between Benešić and Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences, which was the publisher of The Dictionary, or more precisely between the reviewers appointed by the Academy to evaluate the manuscript that Benešić handed in. In his description of the principles of the treatment of the entries, Benešić, discussing the interpretation of meaning, emphasised his belief that explanations should be kept to a minimum. In other words, it is not necessary to explain some words since Croatian language is not a foreign language to the reader of The Dictionary so there is no point in describing what leg, nose, church,

mass is, or what happiness, nobleness, wrath, work, think, write etc. means (Benešić

1985: IX). He therefore concluded that the words will mainly be explained through synonyms and examples from the texts: «I repeat: the reader of the dictionary is familiar with and speaks Croatian language and the dictionary is not really the same as a comprehensive grammar book» (Benešić 1985: IX).

Furthermore, Benešić explained that he did not cite the title and the page of the literary work from which the confirmatory quotation was excerpted but only the name of the author out of consideration for the space available. Those who might be interested in more details are referred to the notes containing such information which constitute the material collected for The Dictionary and which can be found at the Linguistic Research Institute of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Although he was asked, in the reviews written for the Academy by linguistic experts, to accompany every word with an explanation, Benešić in his answer further explained the main characteristics and the purpose of the dictionary he was compiling at the same time sticking to his choice.

The dictionary of any literary language cannot be normative like an instruction how to write correctly.[…] The dictionary of a literary language is informative (and therefore not normative). Such is this dictionary that I am compiling and editing (Benešić 1985: XXVI). Moreover, the philologists reviewers insisted that the title, edition and page number of the literary work to which the examples refer be indicated alongside the author so that confirmatory quotations may be checked. In the light of contemporary state of lexicography but also in the light of the fact that today's users

are considerably better informed, the final decision to leave out the data about the title, the year of publishing and the page number of the literary work caused massive damage36 to Benešić's Dictionary (cf. Nikolić-Hoyt 2010). The polemics about the principles of dictionary compilation were ended by this and Benešić continued to work on The Dictionary. He reached the word serenade when his work was cut short by death before Christmas in 1957.

Almost thirty years after the author's death, the first volume of Benešić's

Dictionary was finally printed in 1985. Eleven more volumes followed after that and

the last, the twelfth volume (P–R) was published in 1990. After another period of

silence, at the Linguistic Research Institute of Croatian Academy of Sciences and

Arts, the work on completing The Dictionary was resumed in 2008. This work is based on accepting and carrying out the guidelines defined in 1948 at the beginning of the project and it sets out two conditions: the dictionary should be completed as if Benešić had completed it himself but without repeating the mistakes related to inconsistent treatment. Apart from the fact that reconciling these two aspirations represents a great challenge, we should also take into account that the amount of material waiting to be interpreted is greater than the material contained in the first twelve volumes of The Dictionary, which undoubtedly points to the conclusion that the task of dictionary completion is very extensive and time-consuming.