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The Life You Give: Milan Kundera *April 1 1929
Milan Kundera, born April 1, 1929, in Brno, Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]), is novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet whose works combine erotic comedy with political criticism and philosophical speculation. The son of a noted concert pianist and musicologist, Ludvik Kundera, the young Kundera studied music but gradually turned to writing, and he…
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The Life You Give: Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin *April 1 1755
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, born Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, on April 1, 1755, in Belley, France, was lawyer, politician, [judge, violinist}, and author of a celebrated work on gastronomy, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste). Brillat-Savarin followed the family profession of law. A deputy of the Third Estate at the Estates-General of 1789, he was forced to flee…
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The Life You Give: Hans Christian Andersen *1805
Hans Christian Andersen, born April 2, 1805, Odense, near Copenhagen, Denmark, is the master of the literary fairy tale whose stories achieved wide renown. He is also the author of plays, novels, poems, travel books, and several autobiographies. While many of those works are almost unknown outside Denmark, his fairy tales are among the most…
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The Life You Give: Max Ernst *1891
Max Ernst, born Maximilian Ethelbert Ernst, on April 2 1891, in Brühl, Germany, was painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A key member of first Dada and then Surrealism in Europe in the 1910s and 1920s, Max Ernst used a variety of mediums—painting, collage, printmaking, sculpture, and various unconventional drawing methods—to give visual form to…
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The Life You Give: Shirley Verrett *March 31 1931
Shirley Verrett was one of America’s finest opera stars and recital singers, and was one of the remarkable generation of great African-American singers who came to international prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. She studied voice in Los Angeles with Anna Fitziu and Hall Johnson. In 1955, she won the nationally broadcast CBS program Arthur…
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The Life You Give: Joseph Haydn *1732
Joseph Haydn, born Franz Joseph Haydn, on March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Austria, is the composer who was one of the most important figures in the development of the Classical style in music during the 18th century. He helped establish the forms and styles for the string quartet and the symphony. Early years Haydn was…














