150 Years since the Birth of Vojislav Ilić
Vojislav Ilić (14th April 1862, Belgrade - 21st January 1894, Belgrade) Serbian poet who participated as a volunteer in the Bulgarian war in 1885, and then often changed appointments (corrector at the State Printing House, teacher in the Serbian school in Turnu Severin, scribe at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Vice-Consul in Priština). He published three collections of poems (1887, 1889, 1892), and a large number of poems in various magazines. In Serbian poetry, Ilić made a decisive break with romanticism and opened the way in which poetry became the most important for itself, and for its own artistic being. His best-known poems: Angel of Peace, Autumn, In Late Autumn, On Vardar, Confession, Homeland, St. Sava, Winter Morning, On the Drina River, Winter Idyll.
150 Years since the Birth of Janko Veselinović
Janko Veselinović (13th May 1862, Crnobarski Farm - 26th June 1905, Glogovac, Mačva) With less than 18 years he became teacher, then mayor of Koceljeva municipality, and then assistant to the editor of Serbian newspaper, Milovan Glišić. He was also corrector at the State Printing House, National Theatre playwright, founder and editor of the magazine "Zvezda", editor of magazines "Pobratim", "Dnevni list". As a storyteller, novelist and playwright, for criticizing the government, Janko has repeatedly been in jail. He wrote over 30 books, including the famous Images of Rural Life, Wild Flowers and Hajduk Stanko.
225 Years since the Birth of Vuk Karadžić
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (6th November 1787, Tršić - 7th February 1864, Vienna) Serbian philologist and reformer of Serbian language and Cyrillic alphabet (worked on the national language grammar), campaigner for the introduction of the vernacular in Serbian literature, writer of the first dictionary of Serbian language, collector of folk songs. Vuk’s reforms introduced phonetic spelling in Serbian language, which suppressed the church slavonic language. He believed that every phone should have only one letter. His greatest works include A Simple Little Slaveno-Serbian Songbook, Grammar of the Serbian Language (the first grammar of the Serbian language written in the vernacular with applied Adelung’s principle: Write as you speak and read as it is written - 1814), Serbian Book of Folksongs (1915), Serbian Dictionary (1818), National Serbian Proverbs (1836), the translation of the New Testament (1847).
