The Brilliance of William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

The Brilliance of William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

On December 10, 1950 , William Faulkner delivered his Nobel Prize acceptance

speech to the academy in a voice so low and rapid that few could translate his

murmurs. When his words were published in the newspaper the following day, they

were recognized for their brilliance; in later years, Faulkner's speech would be

lauded as the best speech ever given at a Nobel ceremony. His acceptance speech

is much like his literary life- he wrote many novels, poems, and short stories,

as many works as most writers produce in their lifetime in just over a decade,

but received little recognition for them until after he had retired. In both his

career and his speech, he was neither understood nor noticed until the next day,

the next decade- after the fact. As a young writer his sales sagged, and he was

largely unknown in America for much of his life. Was it because he refused to

write anything lacking what he considered the "old verities and truths of the

heart?î Faulkner's speech stressed the writer's duty to help man endure by

keeping alive these truths in his or her work. He did not wish to fuel the

American reader's shallow taste for tales of "lust and not love, defeats in

which nobody loses anything of value, victories without hope.î His tenth novel,

The Unvanquished, is indeed a compassionate, truthful story in which Faulkner

meets his own literary standards. Through his use of Bayard's innocent, childish

recollections as narration, John Sartoris as a minor character, and overall

beautiful language, Faulkner wrote a novel that preached the age-o...

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... his work. He wanted to

create something out of the human spirit that did not exist before. His world

view was optimistic- that man will not only survive, he will endure supported by

pillars that writers build to help him do so. Faulkner wanted to write of pride

and compassion, honor and sacrifice, the old verities and truths of the heart.

Through skillful narration, intelligent usage of the John Sartoris character,

and language of a superb quality, Faulkner not only wrote the way he said the

world needed to endure, he put aside profit and glory to sculpt his life's work

into something that never existed before. He wrote The Unvanquished with heart.

Works Cited:

William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech. Online. Available-

http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/lib_nobel.html