Harold Pinter  Nobel Lecture, December 2005
Art, Truth & Politics
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 peopleâ€?  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_
(http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1971/index.html) , '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!_*_
(http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html#not)
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.