Literature
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La Vida Que Das / The Life You Give: Gabriel García Márquez *1927
Gabriel José García Márquez nació en Aracataca (Colombia) en 1928. Cursó estudios secundarios en San José a partir de 1940 y finalizó su bachillerato en el Colegio Liceo de Zipaquirá, el 12 de diciembre de 1946. Se matriculó en la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad Nacional de Cartagena el 25 de febrero de 1947,…
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The Life You Give: Victor Hugo *1802
Victor Hugo, born Victor-Marie Hugo, on February 26 1802, in Besançon, France, is the poet, novelist, and dramatist who was the most important of the French Romantic writers. Though regarded in France as one of that country’s greatest poets, he is better known abroad for such novels as Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Misérables…
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The Virtuous Black XVII: James Baldwin
James Baldwin, born James Arthur Baldwin on August 2 1924 in New York, New York, is the essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, later, through much of western…
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The Life You Give: Bertolt Brecht *1898
Bertolt Brecht, born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, on February 10 1898, in Augsburg, Germany, is the poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer whose epic theatre departed from the conventions of theatrical illusion and developed the drama as a social and ideological forum for leftist causes. Until 1924 Brecht lived in Bavaria, where he was born, studied…
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The Virtuous Black IX: Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A., is the poet, memoirist, and actress whose several volumes of autobiography explore the themes of economic, racial, and sexual oppression. Although born in St. Louis, Angelou spent much of her childhood in the care of her paternal grandmother in rural…
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The Virtuous Black I — Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith, born Sadie Smith, October 27 1975 in London, England, is the author known for her treatment of race, religion, and cultural identity and for her novels’ eccentric characters, savvy humour, and snappy dialogue. She became a sensation in the literary world with the publication of her first novel, White Teeth, in 2000. Smith,…
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The Life You Give: Virginia Woolf *1882
Virginia Woolf, born Adeline Virginia Stephen, on January 25, 1882, in London, England, is the writer whose novels, through their nonlinear approaches to narrative, exerted a major influence on the genre. While she is best known for her novels, especially Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), Woolf also wrote pioneering essays on artistic…
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The Life You Give: J.R.R. Tolkien *1892
J.R.R. Tolkien, born John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, January 3 1892, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, is the English writer and scholar who achieved fame with his children’s book The Hobbit (1937) and his richly inventive epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). At age four Tolkien, with his mother and younger brother, settled near Birmingham,…
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Celebration Day I: January 1 2022 — Happy Birthday, Edmund Burke *1.1.1729
Edmund Burke, born January 1, [Old Style], 1729, in Dublin, Ireland, was statesman, parliamentary orator, and political thinker prominent in public life from 1765 to about 1795 and important in the history of political theory. He championed conservatism in opposition to Jacobinism in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Early life Burke, the son…
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The Life You Give: Rudyard Kipling *1865
Rudyard Kipling, born Joseph Rudyard Kipling on December 30, 1865, in Bombay [now Mumbai], India, is the short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. Life Kipling’s…
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The Life You Give: Jean Genet *1910
Jean Genet, born Dec. 19, 1910, in Paris, France, was a criminal and social outcast turned writer who, as a novelist, transformed erotic and often obscene subject matter into a poetic vision of the universe and, as a dramatist, became a leading figure in the avant-garde theatre, especially the Theatre of the Absurd. Genet, an…
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The Life You Give: Heinrich Heine *1797
Heinrich Heine, born Dec. 13, 1797, Düsseldorf, Germany, was a poet whose international literary reputation and influence were established by the Buch der Lieder (1827; The Book of Songs), frequently set to music, though the more sombre poems of his last years are also highly regarded. Heine was born of Jewish parents. His father was…
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The Life You Give: Rainer Maria Rilke *1875
Rainer Maria Rilke, born December 4 1875, in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic] was the poet who became internationally famous with such works as Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Rilke was the only son of a not-too-happy marriage. His father, Josef, a civil servant, was a man frustrated in his career; his…
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The Life You Give: William Blake! *1757
William Blake, born Nov. 28, 1757, in London, England, was engraver, artist, poet, and visionary, author of exquisite lyrics in Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) and profound and difficult “prophecies,” such as Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), The First Book of Urizen (1794), Milton (1804[–?11]), and Jerusalem (1804[–?20]). These…
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The Life You Give: Stefan Zweig *1881
Stefan Zweig, born November 28, 1881, in Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire [now in Austria] was a writer who achieved distinction in several genres — poetry, essays, short stories, and dramas — most notably in his interpretations of imaginary and historical characters. Zweig was raised in Vienna. His first book, a volume of poetry, was published in…
Sila Blume 