Harold Pinter - Nobel Lecture

If you read only one thing this week, read this. -J

Harold Pinter - Nobel Lecture

Art, Truth & Politics

(c) THE NOBEL FOUNDATION 2005

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-

lecture-e.html

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what

is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A

thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both

true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still

apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a

writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a

citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it

but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly

what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More

often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark,

colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which

seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising

that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never

is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art.

There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil

from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease

each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you

have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips

through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot

say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this

is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they

did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an

image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image.

I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out

of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by

me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of

The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The

first line of Old Times is 'Dark.'

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of

scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else

he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew

that the person addressed didn't give a damn about the

scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.

'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair

of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I

found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened

visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a

stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on

an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that

A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof.

This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later

to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do

you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you

something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it?

What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog

cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So

since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume

that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook

and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did

this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I

told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

'Dark.' A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to

become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate),

sitting with drinks. 'Fat or thin?' the man asks. Who are

they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a

woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of

light, her back to them, her hair dark.

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who

up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is

fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it

can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an

odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The

characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they

are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to

them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with

them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But

finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on

your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of

their own, made out of component parts you are unable to

change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a

quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way

under you, the author, at any time.

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop.

It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be

faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of

problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost.

Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to

breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and

constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or

prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a

variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of

perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally,

but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they

will. This does not always work. And political satire, of

course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does

precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range

of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before

finally focussing on an act of subjugation.

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It

remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play

do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that

torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to

keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by

the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts

only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on

and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again,

on and on, hour after hour.

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking

place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up

through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for

others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the

water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman

a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to

escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.

But as they died, she must die too.

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture

into any of this territory since the majority of politicians,

on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth

but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To

maintain that power it is essential that people remain in

ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the

truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a

vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the

invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly

dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which

could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling

devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true.

We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and

shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of

September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It

was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security

of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do

with how the United States understands its role in the world

and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at

the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy

since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is

obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some

kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will

allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and

throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the

systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless

suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully

documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same

period have only been superficially recorded, let alone

documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as

crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the

truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now.

Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence

of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout

the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte

blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been

America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what

it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity

conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than

if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means

that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish

a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the

populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same

thing - and your own friends, the military and the great

corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the

camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a

commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I

refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I

choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view

of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the

late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to

give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the

state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking

on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this

delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US

body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador,

later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in

charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners

built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have

lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the

parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health

centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers,

slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved

like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw

its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational,

responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly

respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then

spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you

something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was

a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case 'innocent people'

were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your

government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras

more money further atrocities of this kind will take place.

Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty

of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the

citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as

presented support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he

enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made

the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral

equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in

Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by

the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a

breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair

share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a

number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent,

rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable,

decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished.

Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were

brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given

title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite

remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the

country to less than one seventh. Free education was

established and a free health service. Infant mortality was

reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as

Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US

government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua

was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic

justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health

care and education and achieve social unity and national self

respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions

and do the same things. There was of course at the time

fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds

us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a

'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the

media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate

and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death

squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record

of torture. There was no record of systematic or official

military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in

Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the

government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The

totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador

and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the

democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it

is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of

successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were

viciously murdered at the Central American University in San

Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment

trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave

man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It

is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed?

They were killed because they believed a better life was

possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately

qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to

question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty,

disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their

birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista

government. It took some years and considerable resistance

but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally

undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were

exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved

back into the country. Free health and free education were

over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had

prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central

America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-

ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered

every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the

end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece,

Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines,

Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the

United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be

purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these

countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases

attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did

take place and they are attributable to American foreign

policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was

happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no

interest. The crimes of the United States have been

systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few

people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it

to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of

power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal

good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of

hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the

greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and

ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman

it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self

love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on

television say the words, 'the American people', as in the

sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray

and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the

American people to trust their president in the action he is

about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed

to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people'

provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't

need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may

be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties

but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to

the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2

million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of

prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity

conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or

even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or

favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United

Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it

regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own

bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the

pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have

any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very

rarely employed these days * conscience? A conscience to do

not only with our own acts but to do with our shared

responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look

at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge

for over three years, with no legal representation or due

process, technically detained forever. This totally

illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the

Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly

thought about by what's called the 'international community'.

This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which

declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we

think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the

media say about them? They pop up occasionally * a small item

on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from

which indeed they may never return. At present many are on

hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents.

No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or

anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your

throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the

British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has

the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not?

Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct

in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're

either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant

state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the

concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary

military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and

gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public;

an act intended to consolidate American military and economic

control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort -

all other justifications having failed to justify themselves

- as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force

responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and

thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium,

innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and

death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and

democracy to the Middle East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be

described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred

thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore

it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the

International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been

clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court

of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that

matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned

that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified

the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can

let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is

Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair

place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000

Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the

Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their

deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even

recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the

American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the

front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the

cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the

caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph,

on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms.

His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only

survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story

was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms,

nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of

any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and

tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are

transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are

unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their

beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the

mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm

Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning, one morning the

bonfires leapt out of the earth devouring human beings

and from then on fire, gunpowder from then on, and from

then on blood. Bandits with planes and Moors, bandits

with finger-rings and duchesses, bandits with black

friars spattering blessings came through the sky to kill

children and the blood of children ran through the

streets without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise stones that the

dry thistle would bite on and spit out, vipers that the

vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood of Spain

tower like a tide to drown you in one wave of pride and

knives.

Treacherous generals: see my dead house, look at broken

Spain: from every house burning metal flows instead of

flowers from every socket of Spain Spain emerges and from

every dead child a rifle with eyes and from every crime

bullets are born which will one day find the bull's eye

of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams

and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the

blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the

streets!*

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem

I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's

Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry

have I read such a powerful visceral description of the

bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally

frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case.

Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum

dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum

dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all

attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations

throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable

exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they

got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational

nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert,

ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is

developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker

busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to

replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder,

are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes?

China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this

infantile insanity * the possession and threatened use of

nuclear weapons * is at the heart of present American

political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the

United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no

sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United

States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered

by their government's actions, but as things stand they are

not a coherent political force * yet. But the anxiety,

uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the

United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent

speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job

myself. I propose the following short address which he can

make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair

carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling,

sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a

man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin

Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad,

except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not

barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in

freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the

democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy.

We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate

electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a

great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a

barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral

authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And

don't you forget it.'

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked

activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes

his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that

you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You

are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no

protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you

have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued,

become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I

shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found? Who found the dead body?

Was the dead body dead when found? How was the dead body

found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother Or uncle or

sister or mother or son Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned? Was the body abandoned?

By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead? Did you declare

the dead body dead? How well did you know the dead body?

How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body Did you close both its eyes

Did you bury the body Did you leave it abandoned Did you

kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts

us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes.

We are actually looking at a never-ending range of

reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror -

for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth

stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist,

unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination,

as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our

societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all.

It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political

vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to

us - the dignity of man.

* Extract from "I'm Explaining a Few Things" translated by

Nathaniel Tarn, from Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems, published

by Jonathan Cape, London 1970. Used by permission of The

Random House Group Limited.

= = = = =

Jennifer Loewenstein
amadea311@earthlink.net