Classics Calendar for November 25

This building at Kyoto's Kinkakuji figures large in the mind of
a boy in Mishima Yukio's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Here are today's milestones:

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Born on this day:

Lope de Vega (1562; died August 27, 1635) Spanish playwright, poet and novelist, esteemed second only to Cervantes; Fuenteovejuna; El Perro del Hortelano (The Dog in the Manger); Punishment Without Revenge

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Joseph Wood Krutch (1893; died May 22, 1970) American writer, critic, and naturalist; The Desert Year; The Twelve Seasons; The Measure of Man

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Lewis Thomas (1913; died December 3, 1993) American physician and essayist; The Lives of a Cell; The Medusa and the Snail; Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

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Died on this day:

Isaac Watts (1748; born July 17, 1674) English hymnist, cleric, and theologian; "Joy to the World," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross"

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Upton Sinclair (1968; born September 20, 1878) American novelist, activist, and journalist known for The Jungle; Oil!; the "Lanny Budd" series; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1943)

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Mishima Yukio (1970; born Born: January 14, 1925) Japanese novelist, playwright, poet, short story writer, and essayist; Confessions of a Mask; The Temple of the Golden Pavilion; The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea; The Sea of Fertility tetralogy (Spring Snow; Runaway Horses; The Temple of Dawn; The Decay of the Angel); Hagakure Nyumon

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Bonus Classic:

Sayings of the Desert Fathers (end of 4th century) Middle Eastern collections of stories from the first Christian monks of Egypt

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