Gilbert Highet (1906–1978)
Author of The Classical Tradition : Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature
About the Author
Image credit: Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery (image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)
Works by Gilbert Highet
The Classical Tradition : Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature (1949) 430 copies, 6 reviews
The old gentleman 4 copies
The mind of man 2 copies
The Odyssey 2 copies
Η κλασική παράδοση 1 copy
Rare Gilbert Highet / The Immortal Profession 1976 - NY: Weybright and Talley, 1976 [Hardcover] Highet, Gilbert (1976) 1 copy
"Juvenalʻs Bookcase" 1 copy
The anatomy of satire 1 copy
Associated Works
Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture: Volume I: Archaic Greece: The Mind of Athens (1939) — Translator, some editions — 388 copies, 2 reviews
Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture Volume II: In Search of the Divine Center (1943) — Translator, some editions — 241 copies, 2 reviews
Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture Volume III: The Conflict of Cultural Ideals in the Age of Plato (1944) — Translator, some editions — 229 copies, 2 reviews
Gentlemen, Scholars and Scoundrels: A Treasury of the Best of Harper's Magazine from 1850 to the Present (1972) — Contributor — 62 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Highet, Gilbert Arthur
- Birthdate
- 1906-06-22
- Date of death
- 1978-01-20
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Oxford (BA|1932|MA|1936 - Balliol College)
University of Glasgow (MA|1928) - Occupations
- professor
radio host
literary critic
translator - Organizations
- Oxford University (St. John's College)
Columbia University
British Army (WWII)
Book-of-the-Month Club
Horizon (US magazine)
Harper's Magazine - Awards and honors
- Royal Society of Literature (Fellow, 1959)
- Relationships
- MacInnes, Helen (wife)
- Short biography
- Gilbert Highet was a Scottish-American classics professor, writer, intellectual, literary critic and historian. He met his wife, the spy novelist Helen MacInnes, while they were fellow students at the University of Glasgow, and they were married in 1932. In 1937 he was appointed to the chair of Latin and Greek at Columbia University and they moved to New York. He stayed at Columbia until 1971, except for British Army service in World War II. He became a naturalized USA citizen in 1951. Besides teaching, Highet also was a prolific author of books and essays, hosted a radio program, acted as a judge for the Book-of-the-Month Club, and served on the editorial board of Horizon magazine.
- Cause of death
- cancer
- Nationality
- UK (birth)
USA (naturalized 1951) - Birthplace
- Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
East Hampton, Long Island, New York, USA - Place of death
- New York, New York, USA
- Map Location
- USA
Members
Reviews
A very pleasant read, with much unintended comedy. First the good: Highet writes well, and gives you just enough information so that you want to read more of, or just read, the poets he discusses here: Catullus, Virgil, Propertius, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, and Juvenal. He also makes me want to go back to Rome. His biographies of the poets are charming, in the patrician, pre-criticism manner; his discussions of the poetry are intriguing, particularly when he focuses closely (as in the Horace show more chapter); and even the landscape writing, which generally bores me silly, had just enough people in it for me to care. He even has the occasional, pithy, perfect phrase, as when he suggests that reading Tibullus is like "watching Thomas Gray trying to write Baudelaire's 'Flowers of Evil.'" As that phrase suggests, Highet's learning is *broad*, and he puts it to good use.
The unintended comedy just comes from reading a book written as popularization of Latin poetry in the 'fifties. There is much demonization of Caesar and praise of the noble, upright, virtuous republicans who preceded him. There is very little reference to the disasters and crises that led to Caesar getting his imperial diadem, nor to the fact that the Republic looked nothing like, e.g., the America from which Highest was writing. There were slaves, there were very few citizens etc etc... For want of a better term, I think of this as his liberal conservatism, which also creeps into the sections on the poets: Ovid is a dirty-minded little bugger, nobody should use nasty words in their poems and so on. How, exactly, Highest managed to write a book on Juvenal is beyond me.
The typical biases of a classicist are on display, too: you'd be forgiven for thinking that between the death of Juvenal and the birth of Shakespeare nothing important happened, moreover, that nothing *good* happened. That was the Dark Ages, you see. Thank goodness the Renaissance was born from the head of [insert your hero here], with no input from the centuries preceding it.
And then, what had initially looked like bad scholarship (which it is) eventually came to seem like something else: cold war rhetoric. I doubt Highet intended it, or that he was even conscious of it, but reading this book today, it's fairly obvious: the Roman Republic is the good American Republic; the Roman Empire is the USSR.
If you can extricate the good from the school-marmish silliness, the tiresome acceptance of Renaissance pieties, and the self-righteous Republicanism, this is very enjoyable. But I do worry that people will read this book, and believe what he's saying, rather than reading it for enjoyment, with a skeptical eye. show less
The unintended comedy just comes from reading a book written as popularization of Latin poetry in the 'fifties. There is much demonization of Caesar and praise of the noble, upright, virtuous republicans who preceded him. There is very little reference to the disasters and crises that led to Caesar getting his imperial diadem, nor to the fact that the Republic looked nothing like, e.g., the America from which Highest was writing. There were slaves, there were very few citizens etc etc... For want of a better term, I think of this as his liberal conservatism, which also creeps into the sections on the poets: Ovid is a dirty-minded little bugger, nobody should use nasty words in their poems and so on. How, exactly, Highest managed to write a book on Juvenal is beyond me.
The typical biases of a classicist are on display, too: you'd be forgiven for thinking that between the death of Juvenal and the birth of Shakespeare nothing important happened, moreover, that nothing *good* happened. That was the Dark Ages, you see. Thank goodness the Renaissance was born from the head of [insert your hero here], with no input from the centuries preceding it.
And then, what had initially looked like bad scholarship (which it is) eventually came to seem like something else: cold war rhetoric. I doubt Highet intended it, or that he was even conscious of it, but reading this book today, it's fairly obvious: the Roman Republic is the good American Republic; the Roman Empire is the USSR.
If you can extricate the good from the school-marmish silliness, the tiresome acceptance of Renaissance pieties, and the self-righteous Republicanism, this is very enjoyable. But I do worry that people will read this book, and believe what he's saying, rather than reading it for enjoyment, with a skeptical eye. show less
Poets in a Landscape, originally published in 1957 and newly reprinted this year, is Highet’s idiosyncratic account of traveling through Italy, visiting the towns and villages that were home to the great Latin poets—Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Juvenal, among others. It is not like the self-indulgent travel accounts so popular these days, with their endless recitations of meals consumed in small trattorias and wines drunk in olive grove picnics. In fact the personal pronoun “I” show more almost never appears in the book. And “we” is equally rare—uttered only when Highet and his wife (the espionage writer Helen MacInnes, although he never introduces her) stop to knock on the door of some ancient villa reputed to belong to the poet Horace, or introduce themselves to the caretaker of his newly-excavated country house. There is no food, except what Virgil happens to mention when he talks about farming, and no wine, except what Horace writes about drinking at his Sabine farm. (Although to be fair there is quite a lot of that.) The tone reminds me, instead, of D.H. Lawrence’s Twilight in Italy, or Etruscan Places. Highet, like Lawrence, has his eyes set on more eternal things than the smug satisfaction that comes from a good supper in a strange town.
It was a mad enterprise, to go looking for an Italy that was last seen more than two thousand years ago. But Gilbert Highet, who, as he writes, had spent his life “on the study and interpretation of Roman and Greek history, philosophy, literature, and art”—his reputation as a classical scholar and beloved teacher at Columbia University was already well established—was certain it was there, still showing through the cracks, as it were, of the overlaid presences of Renaissance architecture and Baroque pomp.
He found what he was looking for. “. . . although I knew that much of the Greco-Roman world survived in Italy,” he writes, “still it was a tremendous surprise for me to discover the nature of that survival, and to experience its intensity.” That intensity he speaks of is infused throughout the book, stripping away the modernities of the landscape (meaning, anything dating later than about 100 AD) to show the vistas that would have held the gaze of his ancient poets...full review show less
It was a mad enterprise, to go looking for an Italy that was last seen more than two thousand years ago. But Gilbert Highet, who, as he writes, had spent his life “on the study and interpretation of Roman and Greek history, philosophy, literature, and art”—his reputation as a classical scholar and beloved teacher at Columbia University was already well established—was certain it was there, still showing through the cracks, as it were, of the overlaid presences of Renaissance architecture and Baroque pomp.
He found what he was looking for. “. . . although I knew that much of the Greco-Roman world survived in Italy,” he writes, “still it was a tremendous surprise for me to discover the nature of that survival, and to experience its intensity.” That intensity he speaks of is infused throughout the book, stripping away the modernities of the landscape (meaning, anything dating later than about 100 AD) to show the vistas that would have held the gaze of his ancient poets...full review show less
Gilbert Highet's essay collection "Talents and Geniuses: The Pleasures of Appreciation" was initially inspired by his radio speeches from the early 1950s, which were mainly aired on WQXR in New York City. Highet's broad intelligence, wit, and profound admiration for literature, the arts, and human nature are all evident in the book. Highet, a Scottish-American professor of humanities and classics at Columbia University, makes difficult subjects approachable and pleasurable for a wide range show more of people with his knowledge and captivating style. Under the headings of "Music and Art," "Characters," and "Writing and Reading," the essays are arranged into three thematic sections that each highlight his ability to combine academic knowledge with a conversational tone. show less
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- Works
- 28
- Also by
- 14
- Members
- 1,712
- Popularity
- #14,991
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 18
- ISBNs
- 45
- Languages
- 2
- Favorited
- 7