Мартин Личфилд Уэст: Жизнь и творчество классического филолога

British philologist and classical scholar (1937–2015)

Martin Litchfield West, (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a British philologist and classical scholar. In recognition of his contribution to scholarship, he was awarded the Order of Merit in 2014. West wrote on ancient Greek music, Greek tragedy, Greek lyric poetry, the relations between Greece and the ancient Near East, and the connection between shamanism and early ancient Greek religion, including the Orphic tradition. This work stems from material in Akkadian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Hittite, and Ugaritic, as well as Greek and Latin. West also studied the reconstitution of Indo European mythology and poetry and its influence on Ancient Greece, notably in the 2007 book Indo European Poetry and Myth (IEPM). West also produced an edition of Homer's Iliad for the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, accompanied by a study of its critical tradition and overall philology entitled Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad. A further volume on The Making of the Iliad appeared ten years later, and one on The Making of the Odyssey was published in 2014.

Martin Litchfield West was born on 23 September 1937 at Eltham General Hospital (Eltham, London), the first child of Catherine (née Baker Stainthorpe) and Maurice Charles West, a civil engineer. His younger sister, Jennifer Lesley West (now Bywaters) was born shortly after the war in 1947. His parents lived at that time in Orpington, but moved in 1939 to Hampton, where his father was appointed resident engineer at the Metropolitan Water Board operated waterworks. West father's family were from the Home Counties, and his mother's family from Yorkshire and Durham. His paternal grandfather, Robert West, lectured in electrical engineering; his maternal grandfather, John Stainthorpe, was a railwayman from Pickering. Litchfield was the maiden name of his paternal grandmother. Aged four, West entered the private preparatory school of Denmead. At 11, he lost a scholarship at Colet Court (now St Paul's Juniors), but was offered a feepaying place instead. West discovered at Colet his interest in languages and invented at 14 a competitor of Esperanto he labelled 'Unilingua'. In 1951, he won a scholarship to the main school, St Paul's. Excelling at both linguistics and mathematics, he was advanced to the 'Upper Eighth' and sat for a scholarship to Balliol College a year early. His tutors included Donald Russell, Michael Stokes and Russell Meiggs. Among his peers were future Nobel Prize winner Anthony J. Leggett, and future Permanent Secretary Peter Gregson.

West married fellow scholar Stephanie Pickard in 1960 at Nottingham, after meeting her at a lecture given by Eduard Fraenkel at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, whose seminars he attended. He became a junior research fellow at St John's College from 1960 to 1963. His doctoral thesis, a commentary on Hesiod's Theogony, won the Conington Prize for the best classical dissertation of the year in 1965, and was edited as a printed book the following year. From the mid sixties, West took especial interest in the relation of Greek literature to the Orient, and over several decades, culminating in his masterpiece The East Face of Helicon (1997), defended his view that Greek literature derives significant influences and inspiration from Near Eastern literature. He took up a position as tutorial fellow at University College, a position he filled from 1963 to 1974. In 1973 he became the second youngest person to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy, at the age of 35. He obtained a chair at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, which he held from 1974 until 1991, when he became a fellow of All Souls College. West retired formally in 2004, but remained active in All Souls until the end of his life.

West died of a heart attack in 2015 in Oxford at the age of 77. Fellow Oxford academic Armand D'Angour paid tribute to him as "a man of few words in seven languages."

West edited and commented Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days. In 1967, he published with Reinhold Merkelbach Fragmenta Hesiodea, an edition containing other fragmentary poems attributed to Hesiod. He also edited a book on the fragments of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. West edited Homer's Iliad and Odyssey for the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, and the Homeric Hymns for the Loeb Classical Library.

Hesiod, Theogony, ed. with prolegomena and commentary by M. L. West, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1966, xiii + 459 pp. Fragmenta Hesiodea, ed. : R. Merkelbach et M. L. West, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1967, 236 pp. Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati. 1 : Archilochus. Hipponax. Theognidea, ed. M. L. West, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1971, revised edition 1989, xvi + 256
Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati. 2 : Callinus. Mimnermus. Semonides. Solon. Tyrtaeus. Minora adespota, ed. M. L. West, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1972, revised edition 1992 x + 246 pp. Sing me, goddess. Being the first recitation of Homer's Iliad, translated by Martin West, London: Duckworth 1971, 43 pp. Theognidis et Phocylidis fragmenta et adespota quaedam gnomica, ed. M. L. West (Kleine Texte für Vorlesungen und Übungen 192), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1978, iv + 49 pp. Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. with prolegomena and commentary by M. L. West, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978, xiii + 399 pp. Delectus ex Iambis et Elegis Graecis, ed. M. L. West, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980, ix + 295 pp. Carmina Anacreontea, edidit Martin L. West (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), Leipzig: Teubner 1984, xxvi + 64 pp. ; corrected reprint with one page of Addenda, 1993
Euripides, Orestes, ed. with transl. and commentary by M. L. West, Warminster: Aris & Phillips 1987, ix + 297 pp. Hesiod, Theogony, and Works and Days, transl. and with an introduction by M. L. West, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988, xxv + 79 pp. Aeschyli Tragoediae cum incerti poetae Prometheo, recensuit Martin L. West (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner 1990, lxxxv + 508 pp. Greek Lyric Poetry. The poems and fragments of the Greek iambic, elegiac, and melic poets (excluding Pindar and Bacchylides) down to 450 B. C., [verse translation] Oxford: Oxford university Press 1993, xxv + 213 pp. Homeri Ilias. Volumen prius rhapsodias I XII continens, recensuit Martin L. West (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), Stuttgart & Leipzig: B. G. Teubner 1998, lxii + 372 pp. Homeri Ilias. Volumen alterum rhapsodias XIII XXIV continens, recensuit Martin L. West (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), K. G. Saur: Leipzig & Munich 2000, vii + 396 pp. Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer, edited and translated by Martin L. West. (The Loeb Classical Library 496) Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 2003
Greek Epic Fragments from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC, edited and translated by Martin L. West (The Loeb Classical Library 497). London Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 2003
Barrett, W. S., Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism: Collected Papers, ed. M. L. West (Oxford & New York, 2007): papers dealing with Stesichorus, Pindar, Bacchylides and Euripides
The Hymns of Zoroaster: A New Translation of the Most Ancient Sacred Texts of Iran, Leiden, 2010. Homerus, Odyssea, ed. M. L. West, (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), De Gruyter: Berlin 2017 (posthumous)

His works also include contributions to dictionaries and books and more than 200 articles and papers since 1960.