Backing into the Future: The Classical Tradition and Its Renewal

by Bernard Knox

"Prospective readers puzzled by the somewhat enigmatic title Backing into the Future may well come to the conclusion that it is a reference to the amusing film produced in 1985, called Back to the Future . But in fact the source of the title is much older. The phrase is based on a number of expressions found in ancient Greek literary texts: the chorus's description of its bewilderment in Sophocles's Oedipus the King , for example -- 'not seeing what is here nor what is behind' -- or the characterization of an older man in Homer's Odyssey as 'the one who sees what is in front and what is behind.' The natural reaction of the modern reader is to understand the first of these expressions as 'not seeing the present nor the past,' and the second as 'who sees the future and the past.' But the Greek word opiso , which means literally 'behind' or 'back,' refers not to the past but to the future. The early Greek imagination envisaged the past and the present as in front of us – we can see them. The future, invisible, is behind us. Only a few very wise men can see what is behind them; some of these men, like the blind prophet Tiresias, have been given this privilege by the gods. The rest of us, though we have our eyes, are walking blind, backwards into the future." --from the Foreword

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Essays, Classics, Philosophy, Literary Criticism

356 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1994

About the author

Bernard MacGregor Walker Knox (Ph.D., Classics, Yale University; M.A. Harvard University; B.A., St. Johns College Cambridge, 1936) was a classicist, author, and critic. He taught at Yale until 1961, when he moved on to become the first director of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC. He was the editor of The Norton Book of Classical Literature and wrote the introductions and notes for Robert Fagles’s translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

In 1939 he married American novelist Betty Baur, who wrote under the name Bianca van Orden. He served in the United States Army during World War II, making his way from private to captain between 1942 and 1945 in the European Theatre, and was awarded a Croix de Guerre a l'Ordre de l'Armée for parachuting behind Allied lines in Brittany to arm and organize French Resistance forces. Knox additional was the recipient of the 1977 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, 1977 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism (1990), and the Charles Frankel Prize from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1990).

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite magazine is The New York Review of Books. The essays in this collection by classical philologist Bernard Knox are, most of them, from that publication and the Times Literary Supplement--a testament to their quality. Intended for lay readerships, all are accessible. Knox writes well and the subject matter covered is broad.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

perceptive set of essays by a well known classicist.