Words are considered criminal only at the beginning, as witnessed by the word of God: in principio erat verbum. It is the beginning itself that is criminal. Delicta verbalis (a terminus technicus coined by clever lawyers in the recent request for amnesty of Yugoslav political prisoners, that is, those who committed verbal offenses only), refer to this beginning, to the precondition of the act of creation.

Conversely, where there has been silence, where silence has become a substitute for the word, where the residuum threatens to explode the word, where the word has become suspicious before it is uttered—there will be no beginning. (Or so “they,” the guardians of Heaven, hope.) Without the word there will be perpetual ending. And at the end there is no word. At the end there is nothing but silence. Each and every word menaces the silence at the end, when it has become palpable and unavoidable. The word itself becomes criminal. The word and crime coincide, and the recently adopted legal device becomes a pleonasm.

Addendum (July 4, 2013)

This was written with former Yugoslavia and the Soviet orbit in mind, but it rings true in “free” Croatia to this day. Paradoxically, I was spared the court shenanigans in that ancient world in spite of all my ramblings, and in print, but now I am facing the funniest of courts for a single word—a straightforward metaphor for those working in the dark and behind closed doors—uttered in anger bordering on despair. Cockroach! Yes, the word! Indeed, words are considered criminal in the end, as well. As I have discovered a bit late in my life, et in finem erit verbum. The guardians of Heaven are still up and about, as witnessed by the former mayor of Motovun. Slobodan Vugrinec. My nemesis. An heir of communism from head to toe, he took me to court for one single word. Yes, cockroach. Delicta verbalis are far from relinquished to history. They are alive and well in the staunchly capitalist as well as purportedly democratic Croatia today.