The Brilliance of William Faulkners Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

The Brilliance of William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech      Ã‚  Ã‚   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?à ® 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.à ® 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... ... 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