University of Virginia Library

Three years after William Faulkner's death, Random House published in 1965 what was intended to be a complete compilation entitled Essays, Speeches, & Public Letters by William Faulkner, edited by James B. Meriwether. However, the volume failed to include a formal acceptance speech Faulkner had delivered on Thursday morning, April 6, 1961, in Caracas, Venezuela: a three-paragraph address acknowledging receipt of the Order of Andrés Bello, that country's most prestigious civilian award.

This omission would go unredressed until 1974 when two separate publications would attempt to complete the record. The first of these, appearing in March 1974, was Joseph Blotner's two-volume Faulkner: A Biography. In his chapter containing a detailed description of Faulkner's two-week sojourn in Venezuela in April 1961, and referring to Faulkner's receipt of the Order of Andrés Bello, Blotner recorded that as Faulkner "began to read from a sheet of paper, the audience listened intently. He was reading a Spanish translation of his one-page acceptance speech."[1]

Without suggesting that the Spanish translation, its words, its phraseology, might have been attributable to anyone other than William Faulkner, Blotner concluded his account with a lengthy excerpt in English of Faulkner's climactic third paragraph, the origin of this English version not being identified.[2] For a reader to assume Faulkner's authorship of the Spanish translation might be only too plausible since Faulkner had made a similar gesture in New Orleans when he delivered, entirely in French, his acceptance speech in November 1951 on the occasion of receiving the Legion of Honor award. In thus himself penning his Legion of Honor speech directly into French,

Faulkner not only bypassed the assistance of an intermediary, but, more significantly, had transmitted his thoughts originally and unalterably into foreign-language patterns of written speech. Indeed although only approximating competency in both written and spoken expression, Faulkner's command of French was far superior to that of Spanish for which he demonstrated no aptitude in written form and little more in verbal fluency. To accomplish in Caracas a result comparable to that he had effected in New Orleans, Faulkner actually required a translator to take his words from English into an equivalent Spanish text which might approximate his desired expressions and from which he might read in the native language of his presenters: the ultimate goodwill gesture.

In August 1974, following Blotner's biography, James B. Meriwether added the complete English translation from the Spanish made by Muna Lee (from which Blotner had quoted[3]) to an otherwise exclusive gathering of essays and articles previously published in Summer "Faulkner" numbers of the Mississippi Quarterly. This Faulkner Miscellany in fact printed on pp. 164-166 two distinct versions, one in Spanish and the other the Lee English version. The accompanying headnote included the following information, all that was known at the time:

Had it not been for the very recent recovery of Faulkner's original single-page holograph draft of his Andrés Bello Acceptance Speech, Faulkner's authentic words, specific turns of phrase, his measures, and sensibility itself would perhaps never have been known.

While visiting Victoria Fielden Johnson, daughter of William and Victoria Franklin Fielden, Faulkner's son-in-law and step-daughter, his hosts on that 1961 trip to Caracas, Venezuela, I discovered among family effects

various documents relating to that two-week period in Faulkner's life.[5] Of particular significance was a typed letter dated April 4, 1961, bearing the official seal of "The Foreign Service of the United States" on its letterhead. Written by Cultural Attaché Cecil L. Sanford to Faulkner, it accompanied a package delivered to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Fielden where Faulkner was staying; the package, as the letter stated, contained various Faulkner titles in Spanish translation which the author might wish to present personally to Sr. Romulo Gallegos. On the verso of this letter was Faulkner's three-paragraph pencil holograph draft of the speech he subsequently delivered two days after the date affixed to the letter.

From the six minor strikeovers and only one circled five-word phrase Faulkner had shifted slightly from the beginning of one to the end of a contiguous sentence, it would appear that the composition had given its author very little difficulty. A plausible conjecture might suggest that having written this brief piece, Faulkner easily could have dictated from this clean draft to his interpreter Hugh Jencks the contents of what would become a speech translated with relative literalness into Spanish. Likewise, in a matter of a half hour, Jencks could have retyped his Spanish transcription into ribbon and multiple carbon copies and handed them over to Faulkner for study. Indeed, Jencks also might have coached Faulkner in his pronunciation prior to making his Thursday morning speech at the Ministry of Education. Having delivered his speech in Spanish, Faulkner could have passed along to El Universal's reporter in attendance for publication his own ribbon copy of the Spanish translation by Jencks from which he had just read. A carbon copy of this speech in Spanish was in the same group of effects containing the original Faulkner holograph, just one sheet below it in a massive stack of related documents.

The first complete and accurately transcribed Spanish version of the typescript of the text Faulkner delivered in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 6, 1961, appears below. Following it, making its debut in its original English version, is William Faulkner's own acceptance speech for the Andrés Bello Award.[6] I have placed in square brackets and set off by the notation "del." all

words which Faulkner deleted in pencil by means of strikeovers. Fortunately, English-language readers need rely no longer on a twice-removed rendition of this speech; its recovery and present publication assure a reliable text, one which its author would have delivered had he chosen to do so in English.[7]

El artista, quiéralo o no, descubre con el tiempo que ha llegado a dedicarse a seguir un solo camino, un solo objetivo, del cual no puede desviarse. Esto es: tiene que tratar por todos los medios y con todo el talento que tenga—su imaginación, su propia experiencia y sus poderes de observación—poner en una forma más duradera que su instante de vida frágil y efímero—en la pintura, la escultura, la música o en un libro—lo que él ha experimentado durante su breve período de existencia: la pasión y la experanza, lo bello, lo trágico, lo cómico del hombre débil y frágil, pero a la vez indómito; del hombre que lucha y sufre y triunfa en medio de los conflictos del corazón humano, de la condición humana. A él no le toca solucionar la disyuntiva ni espera sobrevivirla excepto en la forma y el significado—y las memorias que representan e invocan—del mármol, la tela, la música y las palabras ordenadas que, algún día, tendrá que dejar como su testimonio.

Esta es, sin duda, su inmortalidad, tal vez la única que le sea concedida. Quizá el mismo impulso que le condujera a esa dedicación, no era más que el simple deseo de dejar grabadas en la puerta del olvido, por la cual todos tenemos que pasar algún día, las palabras "Lalo estuvo aquí".

Así pues, estando yo aquí, en este día de hoy, siento como si hubiera ya tocado esa inmortalidad. Porque yo, un extraño aldeano que seguía en un lugar muy distante, esa dedicación, ese afán de intentar capturar y fijar así, por un momento en unas páginas, la verdad de la esperanza del hombre en el medio de las complejidades de su corazón, he recibido aquí en Venezuela la acolada que dice, en esencia: "Su dedicación no fué en vano. Lo que buscaba y encontró e intentó capturar fué la verdad".

The artist, whether he would have chosen so or not, finds that he has [become del.] been dedicated to a single course and one from which he will never escape. This is, he tries, with every means in his possession, his imagination, experience and observation, to put into some more durable form than his

own fragile and ephemeral life—in paint or music or marble or the covers of a book—that which he has learned in his brief spell of breathing—the passion and hope, the beauty and horror and humor [, del.] amid the conflicts of his own heart, in the human condition. He is not to solve this dilemma nor does he even hope to survive it save in the shape and significance, the memories of the marble and paint and music and ordered words which [to del.] someday he must leave behind him.

This of course is his immortality, perhaps the only one. Perhaps the very drive which has compelled him to that dedication was simply the desire to have [written del.] inscribed beside that final door into oblivion through which he first must pass, the words 'Kilroy was here.'

So, as I stand here today, I have already tasted that immortality. That I, a country-bred [w del.] alien [from thousands of miles away del.] who followed that dedication thousands of miles away, to seek and try to capture and imitate for a moment in a handful of printed pages, the truth of man's hope in the human dilemma, have received here in Venezuela the official accolade which (sic) says in effect—[Yes. What you del.] Your [search del.] dedication was not spent in vain. What you sought and found and tried to imitate, was truth.