No matter where you go, as long as you talk about American literature, people think that William Faulkner is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He is the founder of the "Southern Literature" school in the United States and one of the most influential modern novelists in the entire West. His representative works include "The Sound and the Fury", "August Light" and so on.

Faulkner grew up in the South of the United States. When he was young, he worked as an irresponsible director of the local post office for a while, but was later dismissed for dereliction of duty. He traveled to many places, but eventually returned to the American South, and all of his works are set in the South. In 1949, Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his powerful and artistically unparalleled contribution to contemporary American fiction."

The content of this speech is Faulkner's answer when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. This is a popular speech. However, due to Faulkner's unique and sophisticated use of language. For beginners, this beautiful article may be quite difficult.

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.

I feel that this award is not awarded I am a person, but the work given to me is an affirmation of the work that I have devoted my whole life to exploring the human spirit. My work is not for fame, let alone profit, but to create something unprecedented from the raw materials of the human spirit.

Full text of the speech: 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 mensurate 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 fotten 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

t

eaching himself that

fet 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 passion 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 passion. 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 passion and sacrifice and endurment

ance.

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 passion 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.