On this day in 1950, William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Because I strongly believe that his words and themes are timeless, I will post his acceptance speech—a speech that retains every ounce of power that it held on the day it was delivered—below. Also, I will include a brief anecdote published in today’s Writer’s Almanac edited by Garrison Keillor.
It was on this day in 1950 that William Faulkner received the Nobel Prize in literature. When a Swedish correspondent in New York called to give him the news that he was being honored, Faulkner was busy working on his farm in Oxford, Mississippi, and he said, “It’s too far away. I am a farmer down here and I can’t get away.”
The man pleaded for him to go the award ceremony, and so did Faulkner’s friends, relatives, publishers, editors, agent, and other American writers. But Faulkner resisted. Finally, his wife devised a plan. Their only daughter, Jill, asked for a trip to Europe as a graduation gift — she wanted to accompany him to the ceremony in Stockholm and then go to Paris. Faulkner relented.
Faulkner was a raging alcoholic at the time, and his wife came up with another plan, this one to make sure he would be sober by the departure date. Faulkner intended to drink heavily in the days leading up to the trip. He was set to leave on a Wednesday, so the Friday before, his wife and daughter came into his bedroom and told him that it was Monday, time to start sobering up. He started to space out his drinks, but that afternoon he realized that he’d been tricked, and he drank for three more days. But he did manage to quit on Monday.
He flew to New York with his daughter on Wednesday and went to a party in his honor, where he drank Jack Daniels and came down with a fever. He and his daughter arrived in Sweden on Friday. He had continued working on his speech on the flight over. On the day of the award ceremony, he told the American ambassador that he’d never given a speech before and that he was afraid.
There was a formal dinner before the speeches. Faulkner wore a tuxedo with a white bow tie. But he hadn’t shaved, and he wore his ragged, oil-stained trench coat over his nice suit. When he got up to give his speech, he didn’t stand close enough to the microphone, and no one in the room was able to understand him. It wasn’t until the next day, when the text of the speech was printed in newspapers, that people realized what a brilliant speech he’d given.
And the speech:
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 one 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 so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and 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 because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong 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.
Let it be known that Hemingway was honored with the same prize 4 years later, at an age 2 years older than Faulkner was on the date of his (Faulkner’s) commemoration. No judgment is being passed, only an observation, only a bit known as a fact. In addition, I’ve just now looked back and realized how blandly written the Writer’s Almanac piece was; apologies are in order on behalf of Garrison Keillor. Though, after all, it’s to be expected…I’m not a huge fan.