Vasil Iljoski


Vasil Iljoski was a Macedonian writer, dramatist, professor and an important figure in Macedonian literature, especially in Macedonian drama between the two World Wars.

Biography

Vasil Iljoski was born in Kruševo in 1902. He has finished his elementary education in the town of Kumanovo, where he moved in his early childhood. During that period, he has helped his father in their family business, but he did not accept it as his future profession. Iljoski finished secondary school in Kumanovo and enrolled at the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje. At the beginning of his career, he worked as a teacher in the City Gymnasium in Kumanovo. His play Begalka, or known as Lenče Kumanovče, performed in 1928 in the Skopje theater was staged in the Kumanovo dialect, which belongs to the Torlakian dialects. This play was soon banned, because of the then Yugoslav policy of Serbianization and its author was transferred from the local school. Other significant plays written by Iljoski are: Učenička avantura, Čest, Kuzman Kapidan, Mladi Sinovi and others. With the end of WWII and the foundation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, the Yugoslav authorities recognized a distinct Macedonian language in which standardization he participated. Vasil Iljoski is one of the founders of the Association of the Writers of Macedonia and member at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 1967. He finished his working career as a regular professor at the Pedagogical Faculty in Skopje.

Works

Vasil Iljoski is the author of many dramas, comedies and essays. Among them are: