2005年NPR美国国家公共电台五月-Literary Pilgrims Flock to Faulkner's Hom
时间：2007-07-17 06:20:47
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Over the weekend, the University of Mississippi rededicated the home of Nobel Prize novelist William Faulkner following a 1.3-million-dollar restoration. Faulkner bought the antebellum house in 1930 and named it Rowan Oak after the qualities of the 2 trees, Rowan for serenity1 and Oak for strength. It was built in 1848 and the house was in disrepair when William Faulkner bought it. He spent the rest of his life working on it and trying to pay for it by writing what many believed to be the greatest novels of American literature. Melanie Peeples reports from Oxford2, Mississippi.
The difference in going to see Haminway's house and Faulkner's home is that you take a trip to Key West, you make a pilgrimage to Oxford. There at the end of a long pea gravel3 drive, the columns of the white clapboard house peek4 out through a stand of cedars5. For Faulkner fans and formal English majors, you cross a threshold at Rowan Oak where the world falls away.
Inside, curator Willim Griface can spot the reverent6.
"Some are completely silent, yeah, when they go through. Some, in their write in the comment book, 'I can't believe I'm here. ' or 'This is fantastic!'"
They politely peek into the parlor7 and library, but it's the next room they've come to see.
"This is his office, this room was add-oned in 50s, probably around 1952. And while he was in this room, he was working on the first novel he wrote after he won the Nobel Prize. And this is the novel called though: "A Fable8"."
The book is set during holy week in World War One with a plot so complicated, Faulkner wrote the outline on the wall so he could refer to it while writing. It's kind of the Sistine Chapel9 of Rowan Oak.
"If you get a look at his handwriting, you can see he had very nice handwriting, very nice print."
By the window was Faulkner's writing desk and the old portable Underwood typewriter where he created more interesting people than God did, as he once put it. A remark out of character from his usual modest self, there is a half-scrolled ribbon in the typewriter and you can't help but wonder what words are hidden under there, and if anyone else has seen them. It's a moment stopped in time.
"There is just something about the character of the house in the way it smells, that, you know, he's just transported me back to a different era."
Buddy10 Handric is an arts teacher from A.
They say once you've seen someone's home, you see them differently. And Handric knows what this house meant to Faulkner, how would it seem to restore the prominence11 of his family's name.
"If you can't find him here, I don't know where you'd be able to find him. He is still here."
Geeny Anderson agrees.
"Definitely, there is a, no one say that there is a religious here too, because that's too somber12. But there is a remembrance here."
A judge in Alabama, Anderson reveres13 Faulkner for being the first southerner to write about the real South.
"The good and the bad, and you know, he was something one of the first writers who were really candid14 about a lot of issues in the South."
A former English major, Anderson's days of dreaming about being a great writer are behind her. Still, she says she wouldn't mind absorbing a little of Faulkner anyway. She feels him most where a lot of people do.
"The grounds, the grounds and the trees."
From the front porch, you can see lines of cedars and magnolia here and there. Nothing but Faulkner, everywhere you look on the 34 acres. It's easy to go back in time. He practically preached it. The past is never dead, it's not even past. If you think hard enough, you can just make him out round in the corner.
"Leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities15 and truths of the heart. The old universal truths ,lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed16: love and honor and pity and pride and compassion17 and sacrifice."
It's from his acceptance speech after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. He almost didn't go to Sweden, telling a journalist at first that he was just a farmer and couldn't leave his cows. He loved Rowan Oak. You remember hearing he was an intensely private man who once dug potholes18 in his driveway to keep gawkers at bay. And you resolve to pull yourself away, to stop intruding19. You resolve to, but your feets stand firm, then you realize it's quaint-essential Faulkner, the human heart against itself.
For NPR News, I'm Melanie Peeples in Oxford, Mississippi.
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