Literature
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The Life You Give: José Ortega y Gasset *1883
José Ortega y Gasset, (born May 9, 1883, Madrid, Spain, is the philosopher and humanist who greatly influenced the cultural and literary renaissance of Spain in the 20th century. Ortega y Gasset studied at Madrid University (1898–1904) and in Germany (1904–08) and was influenced by the neo-Kantian philosophical school at Marburg. As professor of metaphysics…
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The Life You Give: Samuel Beckett *1906
Samuel Beckett, born Samuel Barclay Beckett, on April 13, 1906, in Foxrock, County Dublin, Ireland, was author, critic, and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. He wrote in both French and English and is perhaps best known for his plays, especially En attendant Godot (1952; Waiting for Godot). Samuel Beckett was…
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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: 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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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 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 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: 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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David Payne — C. S. Lewis: My Life’s Journey
Join us in a few minutes, in Celebration of C. S. Lewis. David Payne acts in an entertaining and informative play, the Life’s Journey of C. S. Lewis. At the Aristipposian Poet Club November 29 at 11:30pm ESTon Clubhouse
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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 