In response to Mr. Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which can be found at at http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html:
Perhaps one day, when I am an embittered old woman, I too will make patently false statements like, "There are no longer problems of the spirit." Hopefully, however, I will not be so embittered that I see the present as a bleak and empty era punctuated only by the thought of "When will I be blown up?" It's sad that Faulkner felt as if we writers of the future did not understand that there is truly only one subject to be written about: the complexities of the human heart.
What interests me most about his speech is the closing sentence:
"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."
Is Faulkner implying that the poet's voice is the soul of humanity? Then it logically follows that man is made immortal by his very soul; in essence, through his poetry. Poetry is the soul; the soul is poetry. An interesting proposition.