福克纳诺贝尔获奖致辞

On Accepting Nobel Prize

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.

我感到这份奖金不是授予我个人而是授予我的工作的,授予我一生从事关于人类精神的呕心沥血工作.我从事这项工作,不是为名,更不是为利,而是为了从人的精神原料中创造出一些从前不曾有过的东西.因此,这份奖金只不过是托我保管而已.为这份奖金的钱找到与奖金原来的目的和意义相称的用途并不难,但我还想为奖金的荣誉找到承受者.我愿意利用这个时刻,利用这个举世瞩目的讲坛,向那些听到我说话并已献身同一艰苦劳动的男女青年致敬.他们中肯定有人有一天也会站到我现在站着的地方.

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.

我们今天的悲剧是人们普遍存在一种生理上的恐惧,这种恐惧存在已久,以致我们能够忍受下去了.现在再没有精神上的问题了.唯一的问题是：我什么时候会被炸得粉身碎骨?正因为如此,今天从事写作的男女青年已经忘记了人类内心的冲突.然而,只有接触到这种内心冲突才能产生出好作品,因为这是唯一值得写,值得呕心沥血地去写的.

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.

他一定要重新认识这些问题.他必须使自己明白世间最可鄙的事情莫过于恐惧.他必须使自己永远忘却恐惧,在他的工作室里除了心底古老的真理之外,不允许任何别的东西有容身之地.缺了这古老的普遍真理,任何小说都只能昙花一现,注定要失败;这些真理就是爱情,荣誉,怜悯,自尊,同情,牺牲等感情.若是他做不到这样,他的力气终归白费.他不是写爱情而是写情欲,他写的失败是没有人感到失去可贵东西的失败,他写的胜利是没有希望,甚至没有怜悯或同情的胜利.他不是为有普遍意义的死亡而悲伤,所以留不下深刻的痕迹.他不是在写心灵而是在写器官.

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.