Bernard Knox

The New Republic Books and Arts

The Warrior-Humanist: Bernard M.W. Knox (1914–2010), by G.W. Bowersock , September 4, 2010 | 12:00 am

The World of Odysseus by M.I. Finley, introduction by Bernard Knox

M. I. Finley (1912-1986), the son of Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzellenbogen, was born in New York City. He graduated from Syracuse University at the age of fifteen and received an MA in public law from Columbia, before turning to the study of ancient history. During the Thirties Finley taught at Columbia and City College and developed an interest in the sociology of the ancient world that was shaped in part by his association with members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, when he was teaching at Rutgers, Finley was summoned before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party. He refused to answer, invoking the Fifth Amendment; by the end of the year he had been fired from the university by a unanimous vote of its trustees. Unable to find work in the US, Finley moved to England, where he taught for many years at Cambridge, helping to redirect the focus of classical education from a narrow emphasis on philology to a wider concern with culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and was knighted in 1979. Among Finley’s best-known works are The Ancient Economy, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, and The World of Odysseus.

google book the world of odysseus

Quotes

A scintillating work of literary and historical sociology, this book, originally published in 1954 and last revised in 1977, is back in print….His book and E. R. Dodd’s The Greeks and the Irrational remain the smartest and most dazzling works on ancient Greece that are accessible to the layman.

— The Atlantic Monthly

the first edition, paperback
Dood's book, pdf amazon google book

He [Walter Benjamin] had an American visa and hoped to join Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who had re-established the Frankfurt School in the US.

Walter Benjamin 是个大才子。
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin

长久以来，大家都认为他是在1940年逃亡美国以前自杀的。近来则
有人认为他是被他杀的。
Did Stalin's killers liquidate Walter Benjamin?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/jul/08/humanities.internationale...

不论怎样，这位兄弟的著作在六十年代被人译成英文后，西美才“发
现”了一个天才。他在中国80年代是跟沙特卡缪等人一起热过，但对

它的系统介绍，是这几年才发生的事情。

这兄弟兴趣广泛，我常常在不同的专题的树立读到他的名字。最早
是他谈复制艺术的东西，后来是他谈藏书。

他谈藏书的文章，是Illuminations (Essays and Reflections)那本小
书里的第一篇： Unpacking My Library，里面有很多精屁。这些搞
评论的人，写得东西，读起来都不是很容易。

今天跟人说这些人的文章都是很难翻译的，也不出乎意料，别人告
诉我，他的书国内有翻译了。我查了一下，被翻成《启迪》(本雅明文选)
http://www.bookschina.com/3038252.htm
那里正好有翻译的第一篇藏书的文章：
打开我的藏书　谈谈收藏书籍
我看了一下，觉得翻译的真不错。（明显的是从英文转译的），很想知
道译者张旭东是在哪个庙里念经。一查，呵呵，纽约大学
Professor of East Asian Studies, Comparative Literature
Chair, East Asian Studies
http://complit.as.nyu.edu/object/xudong_zhang.html
对有的人，不服还真不行。

他的译本，1998年就在港台出版了，不知道为什么，到了2008年才
出了大陆本。那书又没有什么政治很敏感的东西。