William
Faulkner
Acceptance Speech of the 1950 Nobel
Prize for Literature
William Faulkner
(1897–1962) lived most of his life in Oxford ,
Mississippi Yoknapatawpha County
I
feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life's work
in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for
profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which
did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust.
It
will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it
commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like
to do the same with the acclaim, too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from
which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to
the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day
stand where I am standing.
Our
tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now
that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is
only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or
woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict
with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth
writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He
must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is
to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in
his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the
universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor
and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does, he labors under
a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses
anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or
compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He
writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until
he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the
end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that
man is immortal simply because he will endure; that when the last ding-dong of
doom has changed and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the
last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound:
that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this.
I
believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail. He is immortal, not
because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has
a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's,
the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help
man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and
hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory
of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be
one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
Suggestions
for Discussion
1. Do you agree with
Faulkner’s optimistic statement about man’s ability to “endure and prevail”?
Explain.
2. Do you think
Faulkner’s speech too brief for a major occasion such as the Nobel Prize
Awards? Explain your answer.
3. Discuss whether or not
man still lives in that state of general and universal physical fear to which
Faulkner refers.
Suggestions
for Writing
1. Summarize your own
opinions about man’s ability to survive the challenges of the next hundred
years.
2. Prepare a formal
speech in which you accept an international prize for literature or some other
accomplishment.
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