沙多里斯 (1929)

《沙多里斯》（英语：Sartoris）是威廉·福克纳的一部长篇小说，约克纳帕塔法系列小说的首部作品。1929年1月31日由哈考特-布雷斯公司出版，印数1998册。在扉页题词上，福克纳将这部作品献给了舍伍德·安德森。

情节

小说中沙多里斯的第一代人物是约翰·沙多里斯上校（1823-1876），他和弟弟巴耶德（1838-1862）在南北战争中的英勇故事成为家族的传说。约翰在南北战争中多次逃脱北军追杀，而巴耶德追随骑兵司令官斯图尔特。一次巴耶德到敌军餐桌上去取鱼，结果被躲着的北军炊事员击毙。内战结束后约翰在镇上修了铁路，杀了两个北方政客，然而竞选州议员时与原来的合作者雷蒙德闹翻，此时他已只求一死。约翰之子巴耶德（二世）成为银行家，他是个守成的人，老约翰的妹妹詹尼姑婆成为了真正的一家之主。詹尼本来远嫁北卡罗莱纳州，两年后便做了寡妇，七年后回来主持家务。第三代人物约翰（二世）曾参加美西战争，后死于旧伤和黄热病。第四代人物有约翰（三世）、巴耶德（三世），二人参加了第一次世界大战。约翰被德国空军击中跳离飞机身亡，巴耶德一直为此自责。

Sartoris is a Southern Gothic novel, first published in 1929, by the American author William Faulkner. It portrays the decay of the Mississippi aristocracy following the social upheaval of the American Civil War. The 1929 edition is an abridged version of Faulkner's original work. The full text was published in 2006 as Flags in the Dust (edited by Noel Polk, a Faulkner expert). Faulkner's great-grandfather William Clark Falkner, himself a colonel in the American Civil War, served as the model for Colonel John Sartoris. Faulkner also fashioned other characters in the book on local people from his hometown Oxford. His friend Ben Wasson was the model for Horace Benbow, while Faulkner's brother Murry served as the antetype for young Bayard Sartoris.

Synopsis

The novel deals with the decay of an aristocratic southern family just after the end of World War I. The wealthy Sartoris family of Jefferson, Mississippi, lives under the shadow of its dead patriarch, Colonel John Sartoris. Colonel John was a Confederate cavalry officer during the Civil War, built the local railroad, and is a folk hero. The surviving Sartorises are his younger sister, Virginia Du Pre ("Aunt Jenny" or "Miss Jenny"), his son Bayard Sartoris ("Old Bayard"), and his great-grandson Bayard Sartoris ("Young Bayard").

The novel begins with the return of young Bayard Sartoris to Jefferson from the First World War. Bayard and his twin brother John, who was killed in action, were fighter pilots.

Young Bayard is haunted by the death of his brother. That and the family disposition for foolhardy acts push him into a pattern of self-destructive behavior, especially reckless driving in a recently purchased automobile.

Eventually young Bayard crashes the car off a bridge. During the convalescence which follows, he establishes a relationship with Narcissa Benbow, whom he marries. Despite promises to Narcissa to stop driving recklessly, he gets into a near wreck with old Bayard in the car, causing old Bayard to die of a heart attack. Young Bayard disappears from Jefferson, leaving his now pregnant wife with Aunt Jenny. He dies test-flying an experimental airplane on the day of his son’s birth.

Background

In late 1926, William Faulkner, aged 29, began work on the first of his novels about Yoknapatawpha County. Sherwood Anderson had told him some time before that he should write about his native Mississippi, and now Faulkner took that advice: he used his own land, and peopled it with men and women who were partly drawn from real life, and partly depicted as they should have been in some ideal mythopoeic structure. A year later, on September 29, 1927, the new novel was completed. It was 596 pages long in transcript, and he called it Flags in the Dust. Full of enthusiasm, Faulkner sent Flags in the Dust up to Horace Liveright (who had published his first two novels) in New York. Liveright read it, disliked it, and sent it back with his firm recommendation that Faulkner not try to offer it for publication anywhere else: it was too diffuse, too lacking in plot and structure; and, Liveright felt, no amount of revision would be able to salvage it. Faulkner, crushed, showed Flags in the Dust to several of his friends, who shared Liveright's opinion.

Despite the adversity Faulkner had faced, he still believed that this would be the book that would make his name as a writer, and for several months he tried to edit it himself, sitting at his worktable in Oxford. Finally, discouraged, he sent a new typescript off to Ben Wasson, his agent in New York. "Will you please try to sell this for me?" he asked Wasson. "I can't afford all the postage it's costing me." In the meantime, convinced that he would never become a successful novelist, Faulkner began to work on a book that he was sure would never mean anything to anyone but himself: The Sound and the Fury.