名人轶事:William Faulkner,Part One

（单词翻译）

Broadcast: December 5, 2004

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VOICE ONE:

I'm Faith Lapidus.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember with People in America in VOA Special English. Today, we

begin the story of the life of a famous Southern writer, William Faulkner. He

wrote about an imaginary¹ place and described changes in the American South.

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VOICE ONE:

William Faulkner was born at the end of the nineteenth century. It was a time

when there were two Souths in the United States. The first was the South

whose beliefs had existed from before the American Civil War which began in

eighteen sixty-one. This South did not question rules, even when those rules

did not satisfy human needs. It was a South filled with injustice² for black

people. It held the seeds of its own destruction³.

The other South was a land without any beliefs. It was a place where success

was measured by self-interest. This was a South where each person had lost

his place in the group. It was a place where people owned things that they

did not know how to use.

Faulkner 

Faulkner saw that the old beliefs were not right or even worth believing. And

he saw that they could not provide justice because they were based on

slavery. Yet he felt that even with their lies and half truths the old

beliefs were better than the moral⁴ emptiness of the modern South.

VOICE TWO:

In Faulkner's story called "The Bear" a group of men are talking after the

day's hunt. One man reads from a poem by the English writer, John Keats:

"'She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss⁵, Forever wilt⁶ thou love, and

she be fair. '

"He's talking about a girl," one man says.

The other answers, 'He was talking about truth. Truth is one. It doesn't

change. It covers all things which touch the heart -- honor⁷ and pity and

justice and courage and love. Do you see now. '"

The American writer, Robert Penn Warren says about Faulkner, "The important

thing is the presence⁸ of the idea of truth. It covers all things that involve

the heart and define⁹ the effort of man to rise above the mechanical¹⁰ process

of life. "

VOICE ONE:

Faulkner has been accused of looking back to a time when life was better.

Yet, he believes that truth belongs to all times. But it is found most often

in the people who stand outside what he calls "the loud world. "

One of the people in his story "Delta¹¹ Autumn" says, "There are good men

everywhere, at all times. "

Faulkner's great-grandfather accepted the old beliefs. He was one of the men

who had helped build the South, but his time was gone. Now money had replaced

the old order of honor. What Faulkner saw was that there could be no order at

all, no idea of doing what is right, in a world that measured success in

terms of money.


VOICE TWO:

This is the changing South that Faulkner describes in the area he created. He

named it Yoknapatawpha County¹². He describes it as in the northern part of the

state of Mississippi. It lies between sand hills covered with pine trees and

rich farmland near the Mississippi River. It has fifteen-thousand-six-

hundred-eleven people, living on almost four-thousand square kilometers. Its

central city is Jefferson, where the storekeepers, mechanics¹³, and

professional men live.

The rest of the people of Yoknapatawpha County are farmers or men who cut

trees. Their only crops are wood and cotton. A few live in big farmhouses¹⁴,

left from an earlier time. Most of them do not even own the land they farm.


The critic Malcolm Cowley says, "Others might say that Faulkner was not so

much writing stories for the public as telling them to himself. It is what a

lonely child might do, or a great writer. "

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VOICE ONE:

William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, in eighteen-ninety-

seven. His father worked for the railroad¹⁵. William's great-grandfather had

built it. His grandfather owned it. When the grandfather decided¹⁶ to sell the

railroad, William's father moved his family thirty-five miles west to the

city of Oxford¹⁷.

Growing up in Oxford, William Faulkner heard stories of the past from his

grandmother and from a black woman who worked for his family. He heard more

stories from old men in front of the courthouse, and from poor farmers

sitting in front of a country store. #p#副标题#e#

You learn the stories, Faulkner says, without speech somehow from having been

born and living beside them, with them, as children will and do.

VOICE TWO:

Faulkner was a good student. Yet by the time he was fifteen he had left

school. Except for a year at the University of Mississippi at the end of

World War One, that was the last of his official education.

He took a number of jobs in Oxford, but did not stay with any of them. He

began to think that he was a writer. Then in nineteen-eighteen the woman he

loved married another man. Faulkner left Mississippi and joined the British

Royal Flying Corps¹⁸. He was sent to Canada to train to fight in World War One.

The war ended before he could be sent to Europe. He returned to Oxford,

walking with difficulty because of what he said was a "war wound. "

VOICE ONE:

At home Faulkner again moved from one job to the next. He wrote bad poetry,

drew pictures that looked like other men's pictures, and wrote uninteresting

stories. A book of his poetry, The Marble Faun, was published in nineteen-

twenty-four.

A year later he went to the Southern city of New Orleans, Louisiana. There he

met the American writer, Sherwood Anderson. They became friends. Anderson

told Faulkner to develop his own way of writing, and to use material from his

own part of the country. He also told Faulkner he would find a publisher for

the novel Faulkner was writing. But Anderson also told Faulkner that he would

not read the book.

VOICE TWO:

The book was called “Soldier's Pay.” It would not be remembered today if it

were not for Faulkner's later work. The same could be said of Faulkner's next

book, “Mosquitoes.”

Money from these books made it possible for him to travel to Europe. He

educated himself by reading a large number of modern writers. Among them was

the Irish writer James Joyce. From him, Faulkner learned¹⁹ to write about

people's inner²⁰ thoughts. He also read the books of the Austrian doctor,

Sigmund Freud. From him, Faulkner learned some of the reasons people act in

the strange way they often do.

Instead of remaining in Paris, as many American writers did, Faulkner

returned to Mississippi and began his serious writing. "I was trying," he

said, "to put the history of mankind in one sentence. " Later he said, "I am

still trying to do it, but now I want to put it all on the head of a pin. "

He created Yoknapatawpha County and its people, and gave them a meaning far

beyond their place and lives.

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VOICE ONE:

In nineteen-twenty-nine Faulkner married Estelle Oldham, the woman he had

loved since they were in school together. Her earlier marriage had failed.

She had returned to Oxford with her two children.


They bought an old ruined house and began the costly²¹ work of repairing it.

Faulkner also took on the job of supporting the rest of his family. His

letters from this time on are often full of talk about what he must do to

support his family and to continue the repairs to his house.


VOICE TWO:


Faulkner's next book, “Sartoris,” presents almost all the ideas that he

develops during the rest of his life. First, however, the book Faulkner wrote

had to be cut by about twenty-five percent.


Faulkner resisted. He said, if you grow a vegetable, you can cut it to look

like something else, but it will be dead. Yet, when Faulkner read the book

after his editor cut it, he approved. He even cooperated²² in more re-shaping

of the book.


In “Sartoris,” Faulkner found his subject, his voice, and his area. He

writes about the connection between an important Southern family and the

local community. He describes how the Sartoris family seems to help in its

own destruction.

VOICE ONE:

In the next seven years, between nineteen-twenty-nine and nineteen-thirty-

six, he seemed to re-invent the novel with every book he wrote. "Get it

down," he said. "Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can

do anything good. "

At that time, most novels about the South described a land that never

existed. After Faulkner, few northerners were brave enough to write about a

South they did not know. And no serious Southern writer was willing to

describe a South that did not exist.

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VOICE TWO:

This program was written by Richard Thorman. It was produced by Lawan Davis.

I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Faith Lapidus. Join us again next week for the rest of the story

about William Faulkner on People in America in VOA Special English.

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