福克納諾貝爾獎致辭(William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech)

不管在什麼地方，只要談到美國文學，人們都認爲威廉·福克納是二十世紀最偉大的作家之一。他是美國“南方文學”派的創始人，也是整個西方最有影響的現代派小說家之一。他的代表作品有《喧譁與騷動》、《八月之光》等等。

福克納從小生長在美國南方，年輕時曾在當地郵政局做過一陣不太負責任的局長，後因玩忽職守而被辭退。他遊歷過許多地方，但最終依然回到美國南方，並且所有的作品都以南方爲背景。1949年，因爲“他對當代美國小說作出了強有力的和藝術上無與倫比的貢獻”，福克納獲諾貝爾文學獎。

本片演講的內容，是福克納在一九四九年度諾貝爾文學獎獲獎時所作的答辭。這是一篇膾炙人口的演講詞。然而，由於福克納本人對語言運用的獨特性和精深性。對初學者來說，這篇美文也許頗有些難度。

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.

我感覺，這個獎不是授予我這個人，而是授予我的工作，它是對我嘔心瀝血、畢生從事的人類精神探索的工作的肯定。我的這項工作不爲名，更不圖利，而是要從人類精神的原始素材裏創造出前所未有的東西。

演講全文：Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech / William Faulkner

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 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.