The Nobel Prize

William Faulkner was not a man to make public pronouncements.  When asked to speak publicly, he once told those who asked that he was just a farmer who told stories.

In 1950, though, this stance was forced to change.  Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize and as custom dictated, he went to Stockholm to accept it.  This required a public speech.  The words he delivered are a mere five paragraphs, but as with his dense narratives, the oration is full of rich resonance.

In it he bemoans that the great human questions and universal longings had been replaced in the modern consciousness with the single question, "When will I be blown up?"  The atomic bomb had become the major question and it assumed that humanity would destroy itself.  Fear had become the defining feature of human existence in much fiction, he believed.

Interestingly, though his fiction can seem fatalistic, Faulkner argued that fear should not define the human experience.  The questions that matter are those of truth, love and justice.  Humanity will overcome no matter the problem.  He affirmed that there is a future.  There is hope.

The conclusion to his speech is pure poetry and promise.  It speaks to the true power of story.

"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."