summa cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...
Rhodes Scholar
The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
while at Oxford and later received Wilson, Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships. He was awarded ten honorary degrees.
Arrowsmith is remembered for his translations of
Petronius
Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter" Satyricon'' (1959) and Aristophanes' plays ''The Birds'' (1961) and ''The Clouds'' (1962), as well as Euripides' ''Alcestis, Cyclops, Heracles, Orestes, Hecuba'', and ''The Bacchae'', and other classical and contemporary works. He was the general editor of the 33-volume ''The Greek Tragedy in New Translations'' (Oxford, 1973) and of Nietzsche's ''Unmodern Observations'' (Yale, 1989). Arrowsmith also translated modern works, including ''The Storm and Other Things'' (Norton, 1985) by Eugenio Montale, the Nobel laureate Italian poet; ''Hard Labor'' (Grossman, 1976) by Cesare Pavese, for which he won the U.S. National Book Awardin category Translation (a split award);"National Book Awards – 1980" National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-10. There was a "Translation" award from 1966 to 1983.
and ''Six Modern Italian Novellas'' (Pocket Books, 1964). He is known for his writings on Italian film director
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni (, ; 29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian filmmaker. He is best known for directing his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents"—''L'Avventura'' (1960), ''La Notte'' (1961), and ''L'Eclisse'' (1962 ...
. A prolific writer and editor, he founded and edited '' The Hudson Review'' and later ''
Arion
Arion (; grc-gre, Ἀρίων; fl. c. 700 BC) was a kitharode in ancient Greece, a Dionysiac poet credited with inventing the dithyramb. The islanders of Lesbos claimed him as their native son, but Arion found a patron in Periander, tyrant ...
'' and served on the editorial board of ''Delos'', ''Mosaic'', ''
American Poetry Review
''The American Poetry Review'' (''APR'') is an American poetry magazine printed every other month on tabloid-sized newsprint. It was founded in 1972 by Stephen Berg and Stephen Parker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The magazine's editor is Elizab ...
NYU
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-United States Secretary of the Treasu ...
, and Emory University. He gained notoriety with his attacks on graduate education in the humanities in the 1960s, particularly in a Phi Beta Kappa lecture on "The Shame of the Graduate Schools: A Plea for a New American Scholar" published in Harper's Magazine in 1966. He blamed "the hideous jungle of academic bureaucracy" for making the humanities irrelevant to modern life and sacrificing education to trivial research, "the cult of the fact" and career training. Later he served on a National Endowment for the Humanities panel that issued a report in 1984 voicing similar views. He was also on the board of the American Association for Higher Education and the International Council on the Future of the University.
Arrowsmith died after suffering a heart attack at his home in
Brookline, Massachusetts
Brookline is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, in the United States, and part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area. Brookline borders six of Boston's neighborhoods: Brighton, Boston, Brighton, A ...
at age 67. An extensive tribute to Arrowsmith appeared in ''Arion''.