《品彻·马丁》的生死浮沉
Pincher Martin, Faber&Faber
《品彻·马丁》（Pincher Martin）是威廉·戈尔丁的第三部小说，我选这部小说来作为学科论文的研究对象，其实还是有点偶然的。先是，我选择了戈尔丁的《蝇王》作为老黄的外国文学学科论文，国内对这个作家的研究资料比较少（专题研究基本上就没有了，NND），很多参考资料都是英文。为了更好地了解这个作家，我很不容易地在淘宝上一次过找齐了他早期的三本小说（也是国内唯一译本），分别是《品彻·马丁》、《教堂尖塔》以及《金字塔》，都是快十年前的断货书了；后来我又买了一本他后期的作品《黑暗昭昭》，再加上原来已经买了的《蝇王》（龚志成译），一共是五本，这也是这位作家小说的所有中译本了。
在读完了《蝇王》后，我本要选择《黑暗昭昭》（Darkness Visible）来做我比较文学的学科论文研究对象，但在阅读的过程中，我发现这部作品比较复杂，里面的象征、隐喻和寓言实在太多，短时间之内难以把握。写篇2000字的读后感是一点问题都没有，但要做成论文的话目前好像还有点难度。说我知难而退或者是畏缩不前都未尝不可，因为最后的结果是我选择了另一部作品，那就是《品彻·马丁》。记得当时我是先扫了一眼书本封背上的作品简介，知道这部小说大概的意思，觉得是相当于荒岛求生记一类的小说，不同的就是主角比较混账而已，和原来的荒岛题材联系一下，一篇论文就出来了，比较文学嘛，就是得比呗。于是，我就这样糊里糊涂地选择了他，克里斯托弗·哈德莱·马丁，一个混账。
小说的开篇先是写这位海军的低级军官在大海中浮沉，挣扎求生，原因是他所在的舰艇被鱼雷击中沉没了。他在冰冷的海水中和海浪抗争，吹胀了身上的救生带，在漂浮。他先是大声叫喊，叫喊他好友的名字，叫喊妈妈，不过没有任何人出现，在黑暗的海水中只有他一个人，孤独，恐惧，席卷心头。他一直在坚持，随着海水的漂浮，他遇到了一块巨大的礁石，他像任何一个落水的人抓住了救命稻草一样，死命不放。他挣脱了沉重的防水靴，艰难地爬上了这块礁石上。这就是这部小说的开端部分，一个对生存极为执着的人，没有放弃一丝生存的机会，并且暂时地获救了。
他爬到礁石上之后已经筋疲力尽，躺了好久才恢复了点体力。他在礁石上找到了一个积存淡水的地方，他又发现崖石上爬着很多贻贝和海葵，他就用随身携带的小刀把这些东西翘起来生吞下去，这就是他所有的食物——当然，还有一些不时浮上来的带着腐败气味的水草。在解决了生存问题之后，他就像任何一部荒岛小说的主人公一样，开始筹划着怎样离开这个岛。他的思考能力极佳，就如《蝇王》中的Piggy一样，或者应该比他更强。在岛上无法生烟来引起海平线上船只的注意，他也不能一天到晚地站在礁石顶上来吸引注意，于是他想到了一个办法。他把几块大小不一的石块推上了高点，然后垒出了一个假人，这样过往船只上瞭望台的人看到的话就会把他救走。他甚至还把兜里找到的巧克力锡纸铺平了，压在了假人的头上，这样在太阳的照射下假人就会发出闪光。他还考虑到了高空上经过的飞机，便用尝试用海草在礁石的裂缝上叠出一个十字的形状。及至后来便秘加食物中毒，他为了让自己好点，专门将救生带充满了水，然后把冰冷的海水挤进自己的菊花中（囧rz！）来完成一次排便。（看到此处我不禁菊花一紧啊！）强烈的求生意志和自我认同感让他像个英雄般获得了读者们内心的认同，因为他所做的事与鲁宾逊、拉尔夫等人相比没有任何的区别，甚至他所处的环境更为艰苦。
一九八三年诺贝尔文学奖的风波——董鼎山
刚才在查资料，找到了一篇1983年的文章，挺有意思的，就转载一下。文章来源：CNKI
关键词：威廉·戈尔丁，诺贝尔
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戈尔丁的获奖，对英美文学批评界说来，确是一个意外。英美严肃小说家中有得奖资格的多得很，单是英国作家中，比戈尔丁更有名望的至少有两个:格雷厄姆·格林(GrahomGreene)与安东尼·波吉斯(AnthonyBorgess)。可是某文学批评家说得好:格林与波吉斯的作品易读易懂，特别是格林，他拥有大批读者，于是作品便不免被误认为具有通俗作品的成份，瑞典文学院也许要自命清高，选了戈尔丁，因为戈尔丁的作品有较多的寓言性，神话性，好似含有更深奥的意义。
瑞典文学院把戈尔丁的小说形容为“以清楚的写实主义叙事手法，以及多样性、普及性的神话方式，阐明了今日世界的人类情况。”
戈尔丁是自从一九O一年诺贝尔文学奖金颁发以来的第七个英国籍获奖者。他的最著名小说当然是《蝇王》(或译《蝇神》)(LordoftheFlies)。
瑞典文学院共有院士十八人，其中最有权力者乃是学院的常任秘书拉斯·尤仑斯坦(LarsCyllensten)。尤仑斯坦自称自从于三十年前初读《蝇王》后，即对戈尔丁甚为拜服。与他意见不同者是七十七岁的老院士亚德·仑奎斯特(ArturLundkviot)，后者是位拉丁美洲文学专家，他说戈尔丁的作品虽不错，但尚不能入诺贝尔奖之林。
瑞典文学院评选委员会的讨论过程一向是秘密的，惯例是，在五十五年内不能公开。但是，老院士仑奎斯特却公开表示异见，打破了文学院传统。其后，常任秘书尤仑斯坦很生气，把仑奎斯特的多嘴斥为“鹊舌”。这类新闻引起了读者们对诺贝尔文学奖究竟如何选择得奖人问题的兴趣。
学院的评选委员会经常得有一张候选人的名单。在一九八三年的名单中，两个最常出现的名字是英国作家格雷厄姆·格林与阿根廷作家豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯(JoTgeLuisBorges)。可是博尔赫斯近年来因在政治上的原因很使诺贝尔奖金评选委员会起反感。
至于格林为何多次没有中选呢?据瑞典作家拉斯·福赛尔(LarsForssell)说，虽然一般舆论都认为格林应有资格中奖，但瑞典文学界都知道，评选委员会中两个最有势力的委员尤仑斯坦与仑奎斯特都对他不中意。
英国作家已有三十年没有中奖。上次是一九五三年的邱吉尔(这又是另一个有趣故事。邱吉尔原来要的是诺贝尔和平奖，给他一个文学奖是折衷办法)。其他得过诺贝尔文学奖的有吉泼林，萧伯纳，高尔斯华绥，T.5.艾略特，罗素。戈尔丁其实上了候选人名单只不过三年。这次他的中选，显然表明格林将永无希望，因为以后儿年的评选目标将移向其他国籍。瑞典文学界对格林的落选，一般都觉得很失望。
能够获得诺贝尔奖是西方一般作家的最高奢望。因此，每年十月一到，斯德哥尔摩城内便谣言纷纷，甚至出租汽车司机也对各国文学家发表一些意见。在今年，有的专家甚至预言中奖者可能是女作家。有资格的女作家当然也有，例如法国的玛格丽特·尤西娜(MargueriteYoureenar)，罗得西亚出生的陶立丝·莱辛(DorisLessing)，南非作家娜婷·高狄默(NadineGordimer)。在以往八十个文学奖获得者中，有五个是女性，包括赛珍珠。当然，目前世界文学界已公认当时对赛珍珠的作品评价过高了。
中奖作家不但能得到一百五十万瑞典克郎(约值美金十九万二千元)的奖金，而且也能造成他的作品的畅销。戈尔丁的名字一经宣布后，世界各国书店将仓库中所藏的《蝇王》及其他戈尔丁作品取出来，抹去灰尘，又在橱窗中摆起来。
引人注意者是公开蔑视戈尔丁创作艺术的仑奎斯特。仑奎斯特又是何许人也?
这位年已七十七岁的诗人、翻译家、批评家是瑞典文学界一名元老。他不但在记者招待会中表明戈尔丁的作品不值诺贝尔奖，而且拒绝参加瑞典文学院在宣布中奖者后的传统性午宴。他的倔强态度很使瑞典文学院难堪，但他们对这位老前辈的行为也无可奈何.，
仑奎斯特是位西班牙文学、法国文学、意大利文学的权威。由于他对西班牙文字的熟悉，也深深地爱上了拉丁美洲文学。去年哥伦比亚作家加布利哀·力田西亚·马尔克斯(GabrielGareiaMarquez)的得奖，一九七七年西班牙超现实主义诗人文生·亚力山德(VincenteAleix“ndr”)的得奖，以及一九七一年智利诗人帕勃洛·聂鲁达(P“b肠Neruda)的得奖，都显然靠仑奎斯特一手相援。他对格雷厄姆·格林的反对，注定了格林的命运。他今年所中意的人是法国作家保尔·西蒙(PaulSimon)，可是他的论点也露出了本人的偏见:在评选委员会中，他指出，西蒙的作品对拉丁美洲作家有“福克纳式”的影响。
仑奎斯特对记者招待会说，九月二十九日的评选委员会中，经过热烈争辩，结果是七票投戈尔丁，五票投西蒙。戈尔丁取胜。但是学院常任秘书尤仑斯坦却说，评选委员会以“极大多数”通过戈尔丁，会议很平静，仑奎斯特虽参予了意见，但并不反对戈尔丁的品质云云。
内情到底如何，外界人恐怕不能详悉。但是戈尔丁究竟配不配得诺贝尔文学奖?英国文学批评界对戈尔丁的评价又如何?则是公众可以与闻的。
戈尔丁曾于一九八O年获得英国最具声望的波格·麦克康乃尔小悦奖(BookerMeC。nnellPrize)。文学界常将他与美国小说家J.D.塞林格(J.D.Sahnge，)相比。因为两人都是在五十年代初期出名，而且写的都是少年的题材。多年以来，戈尔丁的《蝇王》与塞林格的《麦田里的守望者》都已成为英美大中学的英文课的必读书。塞林格是遁世者，著作很少，戈尔丁却著作甚多。一九五四年出版的《蝇工》是他的第一部、也是最有名的作品，当时他年已四十三岁。《蝇王》形容一群英国学童在一荒岛上受困。首先，这批天真纯洁的学童组成了一个真正的民主政府，慢慢地这些孩子露出了人类处于野蛮状态时的面目。戈尔丁寓言的中心思想似乎是与孟子相反的“人之初，性本恶”。这部小说出版后，震惊了读书界，戈尔丁立时成名。英国著名批评家泼列却特(V.5.Prichett)当时把戈尔丁称扬为“我们近年作家中最有想象力、最有独创性者之一。”
戈尔丁自己谈他如何得到写《蝇王》的灵感，似乎更有意义:
他于一九四O年参加皇家海军。第二次大战的经验使他对人类的本性起了疑惑。战后他回学校教书，某晚他对妻子说，“我看厌了将儿童形容为天真清白的《金银岛》那类小说。我何不写一本形容在荒岛上儿童如何作乱的暴露人的真面目的小说!”以后他就每天写二千字，结果便是《蝇王》那本书。一九五四年因《蝇王》成名后，戈尔丁继续写有一九五五年的《继承者》(TheInheritors)，一九五六年的《品契·马丁》(PineherMartin)，一九五九年的《自由降落》(FreeFall)，一九六四年的《教堂顶》(TheSPire)，一九六七年的《金字塔》(ThePyramid)，一九七一年的《蝎神》(TheScorPionGod)，一九七九年的《可见的黑暗》(DarknessVisible)，与一九八O年获得了波格奖的《航道的仪式》(RitesofPassage)。
在《航道的仪式》中，他又采用了《蝇王》的主题，借十九世纪一艘自英国驶往澳大利亚的大帆船作为微缩的世界，形容了人类为了争权夺利所露出的残暴本性。此外他也写过剧本与短篇小说。于一九八二年，他出版了一本文学批评集《活动的标的》(AMovingT‘rgeo。他的新小说《纸人》(ThePaPerMen)将于一九八四年出版。
上面所列的多部小说，主题与写法各有不同，因此，历年来戈尔丁有了多种不同的称号:有的称他是写实主义者，也有的称他是寓言作家，讽喻家，“编谎者”，神话作家等。其他小说虽都赶不上第一部著作《蝇王》的销路及它所带来的荣誉，但他创作想象力范围的广泛却令读者钦佩。他描写的题材包罗万象:石器时代的尼安德特人;紧抱着岩石垂垂待毙的海员脑海中的幻觉;战俘的幻想.中古时代大教堂夹顶的竖立;十九世纪航海对发育期间青年的影响，等等;都大大的刺激了读者的想象力。
可是戈尔丁创作艺术的多样性虽有长处，也有弱点:有的时候，他在启发了读者的想象力后，却不能满足他们。有时他因为太着重了主题的象征，写作不免牵强，做作。文学批评家对他的作品意见，当然并不是一致的。
戈尔丁自己说:“批评我的书儿乎比我自己所作的书还多，这很使我引以为荣。但我只读了他们所写的十分之一，因为我越看越觉得我与他们笔下的戈尔丁毫不相干。但是书评家至少有了一项职业。”他说他的职责是写小说，让那些书评家去作善恶象征的探索与分析吧。
戈尔丁的获得诺贝尔文学奖，使英国文学批评界觉得出乎意外。伦敦《泰晤士报》文学编辑菲力浦·霍华德(PhiliPHoward)说:“格雷厄姆·格林的未能获选确令人奇怪。但这并不是说威廉·戈尔丁不配获奖。当代英国伟大小说家中，这两位都有份，第三位是安东尼，波吉斯”。
历年来的诺贝尔文学奖金获得者，很有几个不能经受时间的考验。上面所提的赛珍珠便是一例。有些获奖作家的名字，我们已根本记不起来了。
从另一个角度看。二十世纪已故文学大师中有资望而未获诺贝尔奖的也多得很。随便举几个名字:普鲁斯特，康拉德，乔埃斯，亨利·詹姆斯，纳布考夫，甚至瑞典本国的剧作家斯特林堡，挪威的剧作家易卜生等。所以，得不到诺贝尔奖，也并不有损真正伟大的文学巨人们的成就。
一九八三年十月九日于纽约
《第九区》中的权力批判——从卡夫卡的《变形记》说起
由Neill Blomkamp执导的DISTRICT9（中译《第九区》）尽管充满了暴力元素和自然主义的血腥画面，但埋藏在外星人自卫反击战下的深刻主题和导演的人道主义情怀却使这部影片得到了质的提升，成为一部发人深思的佳作。其中主角威库斯的变形是推动整部电影情节发展的关键，由其变形所引发出来的种种思考使其无法撇清与卡夫卡《变形记》的深层联系，由此切入影片的主题还是比较合适的。
上世纪初卡夫卡《变形记》的面世无疑是文学界的大事，其荒诞的风格中隐含着对社会和人性的深刻批判，成为西方二十世纪现代文学的经典模板。《变形记》的主题无需赘述，因为在古罗马时期，奥维德的《变形记》已经使“变形”成为西方文学的一个母题，影响了一代又一代的作家。只是到了卡夫卡这里，“变形”这一母题才真正具有了现代的批判意义。在卡夫卡的《变形记》中，其主角格里高尔某天醒来发现自己变成了一只沉重的巨型甲虫，变成怪物使他和这个世界格格不入，他失去了一切。到最后更是被家庭抛弃，被亲人杀死。这样的结局具有深刻的社会批判意义，对任何一个为金钱而丧失了基本价值观的国家都适用。
至于《第九区》则沿袭了“变形”的母题，让主人公威库斯变成他自己都厌恶的外星人“大虾”，从而引发了一些列的纷争，但批判的意识始终存在。和格里高尔的突变相比，威库斯身体上与思想上的变化都是渐进的。他原本充其量是个“拆迁办”的主任，负责把外星人从第九区迁往其他地区加强控制，对此他尽忠尽责，工作十分认真。但是一次意外的遭遇，他接触了外星人的燃料物质，身体开始逐渐地发生变化，开始流黑水，掉指甲。到他的左手变成了跟“大虾”们一样的时候，政府把他抓走了。这个时候主角被带到了地下实验室进行实体试验，这时候他才知道原来人类联盟接纳外星人并不是出于人道的考虑而只是垂涎他们强大的武器，这种武器只有拥有“大虾”DNA的生物才能启动，而威库斯则很“幸运”地成为了这样一个人，他的身价甚至飙升到“几十亿”。此后的剧情就围绕着对他的追捕而展开，MNU为了活抓他而用尽一切手段，包括通缉、监听和舆论操控，极具讽刺意义。
相对于威库斯为了变回人（重新寻找自我价值认同）而努力，克里斯多夫们为了回家（难民归乡）而奋斗，MNU的目的与做法就显得龌龊无比了。很多人对这部电影的外星人被设计得如此丑陋和恶心而感到不解，其实这样的形设目的是要加强影片的批判效果——到了影片的结尾，主角奋不顾身地去协助克里斯多夫父子逃离地球甚至不惜牺牲自己，这体现了他对丑陋的大虾们的认同，也使他成为了一个“异类”。宁愿成为丑陋的大虾而不愿与权力同流合污，这无疑极大地提升了影片的批判力度，也使得从卡夫卡那里承袭来的“变形”主题由社会批判转到了权力批判。
到了影片的最后，太空船飞走了，谁也不知道克里斯多夫是否会遵守三年的承诺回来帮助威库斯变回人形。但相关人员受到法律的制裁，而威库斯得到了许多人的认可，他的妻子依然爱着他。单从权力批判的方面来看，至少是获得了阶段性的胜利；但从威库斯个人的角度来看，未来依然是虚无缥缈。不过影片最后的那朵“玫瑰花”似乎在告诉我们，只要我们的人类的爱还在，希望则长存。
Hemingway
Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway is a giant of modern literature. Among twentieth-century American fiction writers, his work is most often compared to that of his contemporaries William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Combined with his outstanding short stories, Hemingway’s four major novels—The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952)—comprise a contribution to modern fiction that is far more substantial than Fitzgerald’s and that approximates Faulkner’s.
Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature a few years before Hemingway received this recognition, but their respective approaches to fiction are so dissimilar that this belated receipt says little or nothing about Hemingway’s stature relative to that of Faulkner. When set alongside Faulkner’s Mississippi novels, Hemingway’s major works feature simpler structures and narrative voices/personae.
As or more important, Hemingway’s style, with its consistent use of short, concrete, direct prose and of scenes consisting exclusively of dialogue, gives his novels and short stories a distinctive accessibility that is immediately identifiable with the author. Owing to the direct character of both his style and his life-style, there is a tendency to cast Hemingway as a “representative” American writer whose work reflects the bold, forthright and rugged individualism of the American spirit in action.
His own background as a wounded veteran of World War I, as an engaged combatant in the fight against Fascism/Nazism, and as a “he-man” with a passion for outdoor adventures and other manly pursuits reinforce this association.
But this identification of Hemingway as a uniquely American genius is problematic. Although three of his major novels are told by and/or through American men, Hemingway’s protagonists are expatriates, and his fictional settings are in France, Italy, Spain, and later Cuba, rather than America itself.
While Hemingway’s early career benefited from his connections with Fitzgerald and (more so) with American novelist Sherwood Anderson, his aesthetic is actually closer to that shared by the transplanted American poets that he met in Paris during the 1920s; T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and, most crucially, Gertrude Stein. In this context, we must realize that Hemingway’s approach to the craft of fiction is direct but never blunt or just plain simple.
Hemingway’s text is the result of a painstaking selection process, each word performing an assigned function in the narrative. These choices of language, in turn, occur through the mind and experience of his novels’ central characters whether they serve explicitly as narrators of their experience or as focal characters from whose perspectives the story unfolds. The main working corollary of Hemingway’s “iceberg principle” is that the full meaning of the text is not limited to moving the plot forward: there is always a web of association and inference, a submerged reason behind the inclusion (or even the omission) of every detail.
We note, too, that although Hemingway’s novels usually follow a straightforward chronological progression as in the three days of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway does make use of summary accounts of the past, of memories related externally as stories, and of flashbacks. These devices lend further depth to his characters and create narrative structures that are not completely straightforward chronicles.
Hemingway is direct. But he is also quite subtle, and subtlety is not a trait that we ascribe to the American way. In the end, Hemingway is an international artist, a man who never relinquished his American identity but who entered new territories too broad and too deep to fit within the domain of any national culture.
William Faulkner’s writing and awards
On writing, Faulkner remarked, “Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him”, in an interview with The Paris Review in 1956. Another esteemed Southern writer, Flannery O’Connor, stated that, “The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down.”
Faulkner’s most celebrated novels include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and The Unvanquished (1938). Faulkner was also a prolific writer of short stories: His first short story collection, These 13 (1932), includes many of his most acclaimed (and most frequently anthologized) stories, including “A Rose for Emily,” “Red Leaves”, “That Evening Sun,” and “Dry September.” Faulkner set many of his short stories and novels in Yoknapatawpha County—based on, and nearly geographically identical to, Lafayette County, of which his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi is the county seat.
Additional works include Sanctuary (1931), a sensationalist “pulp fiction”-styled novel, characterized by André Malraux as “the intrusion of Greek tragedy into the detective story.” Its themes of evil and corruption, bearing Southern Gothic tones, resonate to this day. Requiem for a Nun (1951), a play/novel sequel to Sanctuary, is the only play that Faulkner published, except for his The Marionettes, which he essentially self-published as a young man. Faulkner also wrote two volumes of poetry which were published in small printings, The Marble Faun (1924) and A Green Bough (1933), and a collection of crime-fiction short stories, Knight’s Gambit.
Faulkner received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 for “his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel”. Faulkner won two Pulitzer Prizes for what are considered as his “minor” novels: his 1954 novel A Fable, which took the Pulitzer in 1955, and the 1962 novel, The Reivers, which was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer in 1963. He also won two National Book Awards, first for his Collected Stories in 1951 and once again for his novel A Fable in 1955.
Reading William Faulkner’s short stories is an excellent way to approach his major works. Although his novels are better known and more widely read, many of the same characters and ideas found in them are introduced in his stories.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897, but soon thereafter his family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, a site he would rename Jefferson in his fiction and would use as the setting for almost all of his novels and short stories.
Faulkner came from an old, proud, and distinguished Mississippi family, which included a governor, a colonel in the Confederate Army, and notable business pioneers. His great-grandfather, Colonel William Clark Falkner (the “u” was added to Faulkner’s name by mistake when his first novel was published, and he retained the misspelling), emigrated from Tennessee to Mississippi during the first part of the nineteenth century. Colonel Falkner, who appears as Colonel John Sartoris in Faulkner’s fiction, had a distinguished career as a soldier, both in the Mexican War and the American Civil War. During the Civil War, his fiery temper caused him to be demoted from colonel to lieutenant colonel.
Falkner was heavily involved in events taking place during Reconstruction, the twelve years following the end of the Civil War in 1865, when the Union governed the secessional Confederate states before readmitting them. He killed several men during this time and became a rather notorious figure. With a partner, he oversaw the financing and construction of the first post-Civil War railroad in the South; then, after quarreling with his partner, the relationship dissolved. When this former business associate ran for the state legislature, Falkner ran against him and soundly defeated him.
Once asked how much he based his characterization of the genteel Colonel Sartoris on his great-grandfather, Faulkner responded:
“That’s difficult to say. That comes back to what we spoke of—the three sources the writer draws from—and I myself would have to stop and go page by page to see just how much I drew from family annals that I had listened to from these old undefeated spinster aunts that children of my time grew up with. Probably, well, the similarity of raising of that infantry regiment, that was the same, the—his death was about—was pretty close, pretty close parallel, but the rest of it I would have to go through to—page by page and remember, did I hear this or did I imagine this?”
What does not appear in Faulkner’s fiction is that during all of his great-grandfather’s projects and designs, the colonel took time to write one of the nation’s bestsellers, The White Rose of Memphis, which was published in book form in 1881. He also wrote two other novels, but only The White Rose of Memphis was successful.
Falkner was finally killed by one of his rivals, and his death was never avenged. Today, a statue of him stands in the Oxford, Mississippi, cemetery. Dressed in a Confederate uniform, he looks out over the region for which he fought so desperately and so valiantly. Only William Faulkner, of all the Falkner clan, is as distinguished and, ultimately, became more distinguished than his great-grandfather.
Faulkner’s personal life fits seemingly into the romantic cliché of what a writer’s life is like, and he often contributed deliberately to the various stories circulating about him. For example, in 1919, during the final months of World War I, he was rejected for service in the U.S. Armed Forces because he was too short. Not easily deterred, he went to Canada and was accepted into the Royal Canadian Air Force, but World War I ended before he finished his training. Returning to Oxford, he adopted an English accent and walked around his hometown in a Royal Canadian Air Force uniform, which he had purchased, along with some medals to adorn the uniform.
To write about Faulkner’s personal life is to put oneself at risk of not being able to separate the facts from the imaginary life he conceived for himself. Critics generally agree that he did not graduate from high school, and that he dropped out of the University of Mississippi after a couple of years. He moved to New York City’s Greenwich Village at the invitation of an established Mississippi writer, Stark Young, who used his influence to get Faulkner a position as a bookstore clerk, but he returned to Oxford after a few months. He then traveled to New Orleans, where he got a job running a boat that carried bootleg liquor. There, he met the established American writer Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio. Observing the leisurely life Anderson led, Faulkner decided that he wanted to become a writer, and Anderson helped get his first novel, Soldiers’ Pay (1926), published—with the promise that he would never have to read it.
Because Soldiers’ Pay was not successful commercially, Faulkner again was forced to find employment. This time, however, he found an ideal job: He shipped out as a deck hand on a freighter bound for Europe, where he spent many weeks loafing about the Mediterranean, especially in France and in Italy. His own imaginative reports of his life abroad have never been corroborated.
In 1929, Faulkner married Estelle Oldham Franklin, a high-school sweetheart who had been married previously, and he began a period of serious writing. Over the next few years, three of his greatest novels-The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), and Light in August (1932)-were published. Despite his numerous publications, however, he still did not earn enough money to support his and Estelle’s lifestyle. In 1933, a daughter, Jill, was born, and by the mid-1930s, Faulkner was deeply troubled with debt: In addition to his own family and servants, he supported his brother Dean’s children after Dean died in a plane crash, in a plane Faulkner had bought for him.
Mounting financial problems forced Faulkner to publish short stories as quickly as he could, and he finally capitulated to the monetary rewards of working as a screenwriter in Hollywood for a thousand dollars a week. He hated the work, but he returned to it off and on during the 1930s, working long enough to pay off his significant debts, and then returning to Oxford, where he wrote at least three novels—Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Wild Palms (1939), and The Hamlet (1940), in addition to several short stories.
Despite Faulkner’s having produced some of the finest twentieth-century novels, his early works were never commercial successes; the exception is Sanctuary (1931), at first thought to be a sensational potboiler but later viewed otherwise. He struggled financially until the 1948 publication of Intruder in the Dust. The novel was made into a movie, filmed in Oxford, and Faulkner found himself an important figure in and around the town, the same town that earlier had spurned him, calling him such names as “Count No ‘Count.”
When Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949, only one of his novels was in print. Almost overnight, he was acclaimed by critics, writers, teachers, and reporters. From being an obscure, backwoods country writer, he was catapulted suddenly to the highest echelons of literary achievement. He took advantage of this newfound acclaim by encouraging young writers not to quit their craft. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he seized the spotlight of worldwide attention “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.”
In 1957, Faulkner accepted a position as writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia. There, in informal class settings, he answered many questions about his novels and his artistic vision. Although he sometimes confused aspects of one novel with another, his answers attest to his characters’ vibrant personalities and expand on his panoramic vision for the Yoknapatawpha saga.
In June 1962, Faulkner was thrown from his horse and injured his back. He suffered intense pain and was admitted to Wright’s Sanitarium, in Byhalia, Mississippi, on July 5. The next day—ironically the date of the old Colonel’s birthday—he died, leaving behind him a body of work unsurpassed in twentieth-century literature.
Faulkner uses new techniques to express man’s position in the modern world. The complexity of his narrative structures mirrors the complex lives we lead. Most of his novels and short stories probe into the mores and morals of the South, which he was not hesitant to criticize. In his early fiction, Faulkner views despairingly man’s position in the universe. He briefly voices this same sense of futility and defeat in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “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?” Man is a weak creature incapable of rising above his selfish needs.
In his latter works, however, Faulkner’s tone changes, and he emphasizes humankind’s survival. He believes human beings to be potentially great, affirming that “man shall not only 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.” Penetrating deeply the psychological motivations for human beings’ actions, Faulkner concludes that hope remains for our salvation from despair
A brief introduction to William Faulkner
1897–1962, American novelist, b. New Albany, Miss., one of the great American writers of the 20th cent. Born into an old Southern family named Falkner, he changed the spelling of his last name to Faulkner when he published his first book, a collection of poems entitled The Marble Faun, in 1924. Faulkner trained in Canada as a cadet pilot in the Royal Air Force in 1918, attended the Univ. of Mississippi in 1919–20, and lived in Paris briefly in 1925. In 1931 he bought a pre–Civil War mansion, “Rowanoak,” in Oxford, Miss., where he lived, a virtual recluse, for the rest of his life. As a writer Faulkner’s primary concern was to probe his own region, the deep South. Most of his novels are set in Yoknapatawpha county, an imaginary area in Mississippi with a colorful history and a richly varied population. The county is a microcosm of the South as a whole, and Faulkner’s novels examine the effects of the dissolution of traditional values and authority on all levels of Southern society. One of his primary themes is the abuse of blacks by the Southern whites. Because Faulkner’s novels treat the decay and anguish of the South since the Civil War, they abound in violent and sordid events. But they are grounded in a profound and compassionate humanism that celebrates the tragedy, energy, and humor of ordinary human life. The master of a rhetorical, highly symbolic style, Faulkner was also a brilliant literary technician, making frequent use of convoluted time sequences and of the stream of consciousness technique. He was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known novels are The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Unvanquished (1938), The Hamlet (1940), Intruder in the Dust (1948), Requiem for a Nun (1951), A Fable (1954; Pulitzer Prize), The Town (1957), The Mansion (1959), and The Reivers (1962; Pulitzer Prize). In addition to novels Faulkner published several volumes of short stories including These 13 (1931), Go Down, Moses (1942), Knight’s Gambit (1949), and Big Woods (1955); and collections of essays and poems.
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angle in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world; the paragon of animals; and yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?
Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare
“Not of an age, but for all time”
William Shakespeare – Born 23rd April 1564 – Died 23rd April 1616
Born at Stratford Upon Avon in the county of Warwickshire, it is likely he was educated at Stratford Grammar School.
He probably began writing plays around 1592 and of the 38 plays that comprise the Shakespeare Canon, 36 were published in the First Folio of 1623. Shakespeare wrote for nearly 20 years and at his height he probably completed as many as two or even three plays a year. Shakespeare probably retired from writing plays in 1613.
He died in 1616 at the age of 53 and was buried in the Church of the Holy Trinity. His gravestone which is thought to be the last thing he wrote bears the inscription –
Good friend, for Jesus sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here!
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
As copyright laws did not exist at this time, playwrights often borrowed plots and dialogues from other sources. It is thought that Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra were taken from Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans. There was no hesitation on the part of some playwrights including Shakespeare to take events, characters or lines from previous works. Partly to overcome this it wasn’t uncommon for plays not to be published until after the performances had finished. The versions sold were called quartos. About half of Shakespeare’s plays were first published in this way. The texts often differ from those of the First Folio; the variations may represent performance practise.
Shakespeare’s reputation grew steadily after his death. His plays are regularly performed all over the world in many different languages. His work is considered integral to the development of German literature and culture. In the U.K. we have the Royal Shakespeare Company dedicated to his work, and Shakespeare forms part of the national curriculum. Other playwrights have also used the plays as a basis for writing their own material. Because Shakespeare’s works are so widely known audiences are able to recognise politial allusions, coded into productions, and enjoy parodies and plays which are spin-offs from the originals such as Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
Words of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 127 pictured above
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
In 1609 a collection of Shakespeare’s private sonnets was published, probably without his permission. They have led to speculations about his life, as they are addressed to at least one man and one woman.
The sonnets show a relationship with a younger man, probably of higher rank than Shakespeare, urge the young man to marry and breed, but become increasingly warm and affectionate.
The sonnets to the young woman show a passionate physical relationship, but one which Shakespeare also regrets:
‘The better angel is a man right fair
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill…’
(Sonnet 144).
The young man seems to have become involved with the woman, causing Shakespeare great pain.
There has been much speculation about their identities; the most likely candidates for the young man being the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron, or William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. A. L. Rouse proposed Emilia Lanier, of a family of Italian Jews, mistress of Lord Hunston, patron of Shakespeare’s company to 1596 as the Dark Lady.
Shakespeare regularly visited his wife and family in Stratford, and may also have been involved with the wife of a tavern owner in Oxford, on the route from London. Her playwright son, Sir William Davenant, claimed Shakespeare as his father.
The Language of Shakespeare
To enjoy Shakespeare it is a good idea to not only read the play but to see it acted or to listen to it on an audio tape. The Shakespeare collection includes copies of most films of Shakespeare’s plays on videos, DVDs and sound recordings. Shakespeare used words not only to explain the plot but to create images and help us to understand the feelings of his characters.
For example a lot of the imagery used in Macbeth is concerned with blood -
“It will have blood, they say.
Blood will have blood.” III. iv. 122
Many of his words have now become part of our everyday speech.
“leapfrog”
“barefaced”
“lonely”
Probably everyone could quote from at least one of Shakespeares Works.
” There’s a method in my madness ” Hamlet, II. ii. 207-8
“Well the world’s your oyster now.” The Merry Wives of Windsor, II. ii. 4-5
Some words that he used have a different meaning today such as
“defend” meant to forbid
“fig” meant to insult
“sad” meant serious
Shakespeare usually wrote in blank verse so the lines do not have to rhyme. Those that do, tend to mark the end of the scene as there were no curtains on the stage. He used a lot of metaphors and similies. Some of the earlier plays are particularly lyrical; Romeo and Juliet includes whole sonnets in the text. The language and blank verse of his later plays became increasingly fluid, with his increased mastery of dramatic possibilities. Shakespeare was famed, in his own time, for his lyrical and passionate poems, particularly the Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis.
From Farce through to Tragedy
Since Shakespeare’s death, his plays have almost continually been performed, and examined by those trying to understand their timeless appeal. The appeal of his plays lies in the strength of his characterisation. Shakespearean characters are neither all good nor all bad, and face dilemas such as jealousy or love in ways which audiences can relate to.
Shakespeare’s plays had their roots in Roman drama, which he probably studied at school, along with classical texts such as the poems of Ovid. He may also have been influenced by the great Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe, who was killed shortly after Shakespeare came to London. His early reputation was made by the plays based on fairly recent English history; the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III, now known as the Wars of the Roses, and on light comedies which would have appealed to his aristocratic patrons. The tragic love story Romeo and Juliet was also written for this audience, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream may have been commissioned for a wedding.
In the Roman plays such as Julius Caesar and Coriolanus Shakespeare used a classical setting to comment on political issues. Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V consider the responsibilities and burdens of the ruler. Around 1601 it is speculated that some personal tragedy deepened Shakespeare’s appreciation of the human condition, and the great tragedies followed; Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello. Timon of Athens represents an extraordinarily misogynstic view, but was written at the same time as the great love story Antony and Cleopatra. Pericles and The Winter’s Tale, later plays, commonly known as Romances, have themes of reconciliation and re-discovery of lost wives and daughters, while The Tempest, is often seen as Shakespeare’s farewell to his art.
Shakespeare was also influenced by the change in fashion which followed the accession of King James I. James’s interest in witchcraft and Scottish background led to Macbeth; the masques and dance in Cymbeline and The Tempest were also a response to the demands of the Court audience.
Shakespeare drew on a number of different sources for his writing. The primary source for the History plays and Macbeth was Holinshed’s The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland. The source for the Roman plays was North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans. The text for the famous description of Cleopatra’s first meeting with Antony is drawn almost exactly from Plutarch:
Enobarbus:
‘…The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick…’
Shakespeare Lives On!
Birmingham has one of the world’s best collections of works by and about Shakespeare
including the remarkable Forrest Collection, the scrapbook collection acquired by
H. R. Forrest of Manchester in 1890, which includes The Tempest and Hamlet.
Birmingham Shakespeare Library was founded in 1864 by members of the local Shakespeare Club during celebrations to mark the quarter centenary of Shakespeare’s birth.
The aim, as stated by George Dawson, the President of the Club, was to build a collection containing as far as practicable
every edition and every translation of Shakespeare, all the commentators, good, bad and indifferent, in short, every book connected with the life and works of our great poet. I would add portraits and all the pictures etc. illustrative of his work
Almost a century and a half later, the Library contains copies of almost all the English language editions and criticism of the works of Shakespeare, background material on his life and times and on the theatre. There are also editions and criticism in 93 other languages. There is an extensive archive of production material including videos, DVDs and sound recordings, photographs, programmes, playbills, posters, printed music, reviews and scrapbooks of illustrations.
Hamlet is without question the most famous play in the English language. Probably written in 1601 or 1602, the tragedy is a milestone in Shakespeare’s dramatic development; the playwright achieved artistic maturity in this work through his brilliant depiction of the hero’s struggle with two opposing forces: moral integrity and the need to avenge his father’s murder.
Shakespeare’s focus on this conflict was a revolutionary departure from contemporary revenge tragedies, which tended to graphically dramatize violent acts on stage, in that it emphasized the hero’s dilemma rather than the depiction of bloody deeds. The dramatist’s genius is also evident in his transformation of the play’s literary sources–especially the contemporaneous Ur-Hamlet–into an exceptional tragedy. The Ur-Hamlet, or “original Hamlet,” is a lost play that scholars believe was written mere decades before Shakespeare’s Hamlet, providing much of the dramatic context for the later tragedy. Numerous sixteenth-century records attest to the existence of the Ur-Hamlet, with some references linking its composition to Thomas Kyd, the author of The Spanish Tragedy. Other principal sources available to Shakespeare were Saxo Grammaticus’s Historiae Danicae (circa 1200), which features a popular legend with a plot similar to Hamlet, and Francois de Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques, Extraicts des Oeuvres Italiennes de Bandel (7 Vols.; 1559-80), which provides an expanded account of the story recorded in the Historiae Danicae. From these sources Shakespeare created Hamlet, a supremely rich and complex literary work that continues to delight both readers and audiences with its myriad meanings and interpretations.
In the words of Ernest Johnson, “the dilemma of Hamlet the Prince and Man” is “to disentangle himself from the temptation to wreak justice for the wrong reasons and in evil passion, and to do what he must do at last for the pure sake of justice.?From that dilemma of wrong feelings and right actions, he ultimately emerges, solving the problem by attaining a proper state of mind.” Hamlet endures as the object of universal identification because his central moral dilemma transcends the Elizabethan period, making him a man for all ages. In his difficult struggle to somehow act within a corrupt world and yet maintain his moral integrity, Hamlet ultimately reflects the fate of all human beings.
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