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Faulkner's War Stories: World War I and the Origins of Yoknapatawpha
Mississippi Quarterly Pub Date : 2021-03-10 , DOI: 10.1353/mss.2020.0008
David A. Davis

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Faulkner's War Stories:World War I and the Origins of Yoknapatawpha
  • David A. Davis

In June 1918, William Faulkner wrote to his parents with exciting news. "I have got an [sic] chance to join up with the British and get a commission as second lieutenant—leftenant they call it—in about three months after I am sent to training camp," he writes. "It's a wonderful chance, for there is no thing [sic] to be had in the U. S. Army now, except a good job stopping boche bullets as a private" (Watson, Thinking of Home 63). Like many of the young men of his generation, he aspired to join the war in Europe, preferably as a fighter pilot, the most heroic figure of the era. Faulkner's jubilant tone and his optimistic plans for a career as an officer belied his deep insecurity about his future. "At the rate I am living now," he writes later in the letter, "I'll never be able to make anything of myself, but with this business I will be fixed up after the war is over" (63–64). When Faulkner wrote this letter, his life was in crisis. His love, Estelle Oldham, had married another man, he had left Mississippi to live with a friend in Connecticut, and he was working as a clerk in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, but he had no promising career prospects. Meanwhile, dashing soldiers in uniforms attracted the attention of both young women and young men fascinated with military glory. He had attempted to enlist in the US Army, but had been rejected for being too small.1 At the suggestion of a Canadian recruiting officer, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force, eager to live out his dreams of heroism, but the war ended before he finished training, so he returned to Mississippi with "nothing to show for my six months except my 18 pounds I've gained" (Watson, Thinking of Home 135). [End Page 17]

Faulkner, however, did not let his disappointment stand in the way of a good story. When he returned to Mississippi, he wore a British pilot's uniform and told outrageous tales of his exploits in the war, even suggesting that he had a metal plate in his head from a terrible plane crash. His embellishments of his actual experience were his first war stories, fictions of his own creation that would eventually develop into his lifetime literary project, the narrative of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. The war was his first muse, allowing him to make something of himself in his imagination. His first novel, Soldiers' Pay (1926), tells the story of a southerner who served in the RAF returning home to die. For his third novel, Sartoris (1929), he comes back to the theme of the disillusioned veteran with the story of Bayard Sartoris, a pilot who saw his twin brother shot down in a dogfight, who returns to Yoknapatawpha county after the war and struggles to reintegrate with the community. He extends the theme with several short stories written in the late 1920s set in Europe during the war, some of which describe Bayard's experience in France. Faulkner's war was a fiction, and several critics have defined it as a vicarious experience.2 Donald M. Kartiganer claims that "Faulkner's warrior pose became a not quite reconciled meeting between emulation and parody, as if he were struggling to construct a gesture with a solidity of its own" (631). James G. Watson writes that "the theatrical artifice inherent to the war became a staple of the written world Faulkner set about making" ("Faulkner and Theater of War" 25). And David Minter states that "his only recourse was to experience [the war] indirectly—through what he had heard and could read, through what he could feel, project, and express" (32).

Faulkner's war was imaginary. It was based on his experience as an aviator manqué, on the stories he heard from people who served in the war, and on the books inspired by the war that he read. Richard T. Dillon argues that Faulkner borrowed from Elliott White Springs, particularly his 1926 novel War...



中文翻译:

福克纳的战争故事:第一次世界大战和约克纳帕托法的起源

代替摘要,这里是内容的简要摘录:

  • 福克纳的战争故事:第一次世界大战和约克纳帕托法的起源
  • 戴维·戴维斯(David A.Davis)

ñ Ĵ UNE 1918年,W威廉· ˚F aulkner写信给他的父母与令人振奋的消息。“我有一个[原文]机会与英国的加盟,并得到了一个委员会作为少尉,leftenant他们叫它,在三个月左右,我送到训练营之后,”他写道。“这是一个好机会,因为没有东西[原文]在美国军队将不得不现在,除了做好停止博凯子弹私人”(华生,家庭的思考63)。像他这一代的许多年轻人一样,他渴望参加欧洲战争,最好是作为战斗机飞行员,这是该时代最英勇的人物。福克纳欣喜若狂的语气和他对担任军官职业的乐观计划掩饰了他对未来的深深不安全感。他在信中晚些时候写道:“以我现在的生活速度,我将永远无法做出自己的任何事情,但是通过这项业务,我将在战争结束后得到解决”(63-64) 。福克纳写这封信时,他的生活处于危机之中。他的爱人埃斯特尔·奥尔德汉(Estelle Oldham)已婚,他离开了密西西比州,与一位朋友在康涅狄格州住在一起,他还在温彻斯特重复武器公司担任文员,但他的职业前景并不乐观。同时,身着制服的勇敢士兵吸引了年轻女性和对军事荣耀着迷的年轻人。他曾试图参加美军,但因人数太少而被拒绝。1在加拿大征兵官的建议下,他加入皇家空军,渴望实现自己的英雄主义梦想,但是战争在他完成训练之前就结束了,所以他回到密西西比州,“我六个月都没有表现除了我已经增加的18磅之外”(沃森,《想回家》 135)。[完第17页]

但是福克纳并没有让他的失望成为一个好故事的阻碍。当他回到密西西比州时,他穿着英国飞行员的制服,讲述了自己在战争中的功绩的荒唐故事,甚至暗示他因一次可怕的飞机失事而脑袋里挂着一块金属板。他的实际经历是他的第一个战争故事,是他自己的创作的小说,这些小说最终发展成为他一生的文学计划,即密西西比州约克纳帕托法县的叙述。战争是他的第一个缪斯女神,使他得以在自己的想象中有所作为。他的第一本小说《士兵的薪水》Soldiers'Pay, 1926年)讲述了一个在皇家空军服役的南方人返回家乡的故事。对于他的第三本小说,Sartoris(1929年),他回到了幻灭的退伍军人的主题,讲述了贝亚德·萨托里斯(Bayard Sartoris)的故事,他的飞行员看到他的双胞胎在打架中被击落,战后回到了约克纳帕塔波法县,并努力与社区融合。他通过在战争期间在欧洲创作的1920年代末期的几则短篇小说来扩展主题,其中一些故事描述了拜亚德在法国的经历。福克纳(Faulkner)的战争是虚构的,一些批评家将其定义为替代经历。2个唐纳德·M·卡蒂格纳(Donald M. Kartiganer)声称:“福克纳的战士姿势在模仿和模仿之间变得不太协调,就好像他在努力构建自己的坚固姿势一样”(631)。詹姆斯·G·沃森(James G. Watson)写道:“战争固有的戏剧手段成为福克纳着手制作的书面世界的主要内容”(“福克纳与战争剧院” 25)。大卫·敏特(David Minter)指出:“他唯一的求助方法就是通过他所听到和所读的东西,通过他所能感觉到的,投射出来的和表达出来的东西,间接地体验[战争]”(32)。

福克纳的战争是虚构的。它是基于他作为飞行员经验manqué,在他从谁在战争中担任,并通过他读的战争激发了书的人听到的故事。理查德·狄龙(Richard T. Dillon)辩称,福克纳从艾略特·怀特斯普林斯(Elliott White Springs)借来,尤其是他1926年的小说《战争》。

更新日期:2021-03-16
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