The Nobel Prize makes for unlikely bedfellows

Two individuals for whom I have admiration express a very similar set of values and hopes in their Nobel Prize acceptance speeches; this despite what arguably are backgrounds on opposite sides of the tracks.

William Faulkner (1897 – 1962) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1928 – 1968) both won Nobel Prizes. Faulkner won his in 1949 for Literature and King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 (the youngest ever to be so lauded). Faulkner spent most of his life (from age 4) in Oxford, Mississippi where his rearing was shared among his mother (Maud), his maternal grandmother (Lelia Butler), and an African-American caretaker named Caroline Barr. Faulkner was influenced greatly by these women in ways that have been cause for many biographies and literary criticisms.

King was the middle child of Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King and, by reports was a precocious child who doubted the bodily resurrection of Christ (at age 13) and skipped both ninth and twelfth grade of high school to enroll at Morehouse at age 15 (eventually earning his doctorate from Boston University in 1955 – although, there have been challenges to the authenticity of his dissertation).

The public celebrations of these two gentlemen are familiar – Faulkner, a prolific author of novels, short stories, poetry, essays, a stage play and screen plays – and King, the driving force for civil rights gained through Gandhi-inspired civil disobedience and his unmatched gift for oratory. Both were artists and both profoundly affected culture.

My cursory research hasn’t unearthed a record of their ever meeting. I would guess, however, that each likely was aware of the other at some point.

We are approaching our national day of honor for Dr. King – a recognition well earned.

Years ago, as part of my scrambling to pay for college, I served as chauffer/bar tender/waiter every chance I could. Rev. Ralph Abernathy was invited to speak at Hillsdale College and I was fortunate to be his driver. Abernathy had assumed leadership of the SCLC Poor People’s Campaign and led the 1968 march on Washington, DC after Dr. King’s assassination. While driving from Hillsdale, MI to Detroit’s Metro Airport (95 miles), Abernathy recounted the early days of the civil rights movement and his relationship with King to this wide-eyed college student. This was as close as I ever got to Dr. King.

While living in Memphis, TN, I took a “road-trip” to Oxford, Mississippi where I toured the “square” (the downtown) and took in the beauty of the Old Miss campus. I also wandered the grounds of Rowan Oak – Faulkner’s home. I admit to picking some leaves from one of the Magnolia trees that are still pressed in my edition of The Sound and the Fury; as close as I ever got to Mr. Faulkner.

You know, let me recant. I believe I’ve gotten even closer to both gentlemen through their words – specifically their Nobel acceptance speeches. Each expresses a hopefulness and belief in the human spirit that I wish more people acknowledged. Rather than let me prattle on, let me offer their words:

From William Faulkner ‘s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1950:

[T]he 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.
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 dingdong 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. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1964:

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I’m proud of these American laureates.






Sources for this blog post:

Martin Luther King - Acceptance Speech". Nobelprize.org. 15 Jan 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html

William Faulkner - Banquet Speech". Nobelprize.org. 14 Jan 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Faulkner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.  
 
http://imagespublicdomain.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/dr-martin-luther-king-jr/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Faulkner_1954_%283%29_%28photo_by_Carl_van_Vechten%29.jpg