William Faulkner - The Nobel Prize in Literature 1949

Southhill

Banquet Speech*  

William Faulkner's speech at the Nobel  Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950

---

Listen to an Audio Recording of William Faulkner's Banquet Speech (paragraph 1-4)**
3 min.
Play
To hear the recording you need Adobe Flash Player or Windows Media Player
Copyright © Sveriges Radio AB 2011


  Ladies and gentlemen,
  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 here 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 old universal truths  lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor  and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does  so, 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 relearns 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 dingdong of doom has clanged  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.
        

  From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969  

   

---

  

* The speech  was apparently revised by the author for publication in The  Faulkner Reader. These minor changes, all of which improve  the address stylistically have been incorporated here.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1949

TO CITE THIS PAGE:
MLA style: "William Faulkner - Banquet Speech". Nobelprize.org. 14 Feb 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_ ... aulkner-speech.html

Southhill

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.

我相信人类不会仅仅只是存在，他还将胜利。他的不朽，不是因为万物当中仅仅他拥有取之不尽，用之不竭的声音，而是因为他有一个灵魂，能够同情和牺牲和忍耐精神。诗人，作家的责任就是写这些东西。这是他的荣幸通过提升他的盼望来帮助人的坚持，以勇气和荣誉，希望和自豪，同情，怜悯和牺牲来提醒他们，这一直是他的过去的荣耀。诗人的声音不仅是人类的记录，它还可以是人们忍耐并得到胜利的支持和支柱之一。