Art, Truth and Politics

Art, Truth and Politics
Produced byLinda Zuck
Executive Producers: John Wyver and Michael Kustow
StarringHarold Pinter
Distributed byIlluminations[1]
Release date
  • March 2006 (2006-03)
Running time
46 minutes

Art, Truth and Politics is the Nobel Lecture delivered on video by 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature Harold Pinter (1930–2008), who was hospitalized at the time and unable to deliver it in Stockholm in person.[2][3] The lecture was critical of United States global policy, and attracted much debate over his stance against the Iraq War.

The 46-minute videotaped lecture was projected on three large screens in front of the audience at the Swedish Academy, in Stockholm, on the evening of 7 December 2005.[3] It was simultaneously transmitted on British television channel More 4, with an introduction by Pinter's friend and fellow playwright David Hare.[4] Soon after its videotaped delivery and simulcast, the full text and streaming video formats were available on the Nobel Prize and Swedish Academy websites.

A privately printed limited edition, Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture, was published by Faber and Faber on 16 March 2006.[5] It was also published in The Essential Pinter, by Grove Press on 10 October 2006 (Pinter's 76th birthday); in the "Appendix" of Harold Pinter, the revised and enlarged edition of Pinter's official authorized biography by Michael Billington (Faber, 2007); and in the 3rd edition of Harold Pinter's collection Various Voices, published posthumously (Faber, 2009).[6] Many print and online periodicals have also published the full text of Pinter's Nobel Lecture, including Publications of the Modern Language Association (PMLA) in May 2006, with permission from the Nobel Foundation.

DVD and VHS video recordings of Pinter's Nobel Lecture (without Hare's introduction) are also produced and distributed by Illuminations. These recordings have introductions by writer Salman Rushdie, who is Pinter's close friend and chairman of PEN World Voices. As part of the fifth PEN World Voices Festival, they were shown publicly in the United States for the first time at the Harold Pinter Memorial Celebration, which took place on the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of CUNY Graduate Center on 2 May 2009.[7][8]

Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture

Speaking with obvious difficulty in the lecture while seated in a wheelchair, Pinter distinguishes between the search for truth in art and the avoidance of truth in politics (5–10).[5]

He describes his own artistic process of creating The Homecoming and Old Times, following an initial line or word or image, calling "the author's position" an "odd one" as, experiencing the "strange moment … of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence," he must "play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek" during which "the search for the truth … has to be faced, right there, on the spot." Distinguishing among his plays The Birthday Party, Mountain Language, and Ashes to Ashes, he segues into his transitions from "the search for truth" in art and "the entirely different set of problems" facing the artist in "Political theatre" to the avoidance of seeking "truth" in "power politics" (5–9).

He asserts:

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory [of the artist] 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-Qaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11, 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.

Charging the United States with having "supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War", leading to "hundreds of thousands of deaths," Pinter asks: "Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy?" Then he answers his own question: "The answer is yes, they did take place, and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it" (9–10).

Revisiting arguments from his political essays and speeches of the past decade, Pinter reiterates:

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.' (15)

In imagery recalling his description of "speech" as "a constant stratagem to cover nakedness", Pinter adds:

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. (16)

Toward the end of the lecture, after reading two poems referring to "blood in the streets", "deaths", "dead bodies", and "death" by fellow Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda ("I'm Explaining a Few Things") and himself ("Death"), in a whimsically humble gesture, Pinter offers to "volunteer" for the "job" of "speech writer" for President George W. Bush, penning a message of fierce aggression masquerading as moral struggle of good versus evil yet finally proffering the "authority" of his (Bush's) "fist" (17–22). Pinter demands prosecution of Tony Blair in the International Criminal Court, while ironically pointing out he would do the same for Bush had he not refused to "ratify" that Court (18).

Pinter concludes his Nobel Lecture with a call for "unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies" as "a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all," one which he regards as "in fact mandatory," for, he warns, "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" (23–24).

Critical response

Pinter's Nobel Lecture has been the source of much debate.[9][10] In an article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education on 11 November 2005, entitled "Pinter's Plays, Pinter's Politics," Middlebury College English professor Jay Parini observed that "In the weeks that have passed since Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize in Literature, there has been incessant chatter on both sides of the Atlantic, some of it unflattering," as "from the right, in particular, the American reaction to the Pinter award has been one of outrage," whereas "the reaction to the award from Pinter's peers––Michael Frayn, David Hare, Tom Stoppard, and others––has been uniformly positive". Parini concluded that "It may be true this time around that the Nobel Prize in Literature was given to the right man for the right reasons" due to Pinter's influence and attitude against oppression.

Heated critical debate about Pinter spiked in the public media and throughout the blogosphere. Such criticism of Pinter encompassed thousands of commentaries and focused mostly on his political activism, particularly around his purported "anti-Americanism" and generally "leftist" views.[9][10][11]

Pinter's authorised and official biographer, Michael Billington said reactions were "fascinating" and "overwhelmingly positive," though he thought that "it is worth picking out the few negative ones" as examples. He claimed "the most startling fact was that Pinter's Nobel Lecture on 7 December was totally ignored by the BBC", adding: "You would have thought that a living British dramatist's views on his art and global politics might have been of passing interest to a public service broadcaster"; yet "There was ... no reference to the speech on any of BBC TV's news bulletins that night or indeed on its current affairs programme, Newsnight".[12]: 424 

The biography also gave rebuttals to arguments from the press, such as Scottish journalist Johann Hari characterizing the speech as a rant and "claimed that Pinter would have refused to resist Hitler". Billington wrote that Pinter "has repeatedly said that, had he been of age, he would have accepted conscription in World War II".[12]: 424–25  He also stated that "More predictably, Christopher Hitchens was wheeled out to dismiss Pinter as 'a bigmouth who has strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage for far too long' ", and, finally, Billington cites Scottish historian Niall Ferguson's "attack" on the Lecture in The Daily Telegraph, quoting in part Ferguson's statement that in his Nobel Lecture Pinter " 'pretend[s] that [US] crimes were equivalent to those of its Communist opponents ...' " which was charactarised as an distorion by both Billington and Pinter.

Being Harold Pinter

Main article: Belarus Free Theatre § Subsequent international support and performances

Pinter's Nobel Lecture is excerpted in a dramatic work developed and performed by the politically dissident Belarus Free Theatre, which has been censored, its members arrested and prevented from performing their work publicly in their own country. Being Harold Pinter is "a collation of six Pinter plays, excerpts from his Nobel Prize speech, and letters written by political prisoners in Belarusian jails," which was performed with Pinter in the audiences in Leeds, England, during the Artist and Citizen: 50 Years of Performing Pinter, an international conference celebrating Pinter on the occasion of the awarding of an honorary degree to him by the University of Leeds, in April 2007;[13] and in London, premiering there from 11 to 23 February 2008.[14]

The piece received appreciative press reviews in both Leeds and London,[15] including 5 stars from Pinter's official biographer Michael Billington, in his Guardian review,[16] and 4 stars from the Times reviewer Sam Marlowe, who observes that "Drama doesn't come more urgently political than in the work of the Belarus Free Theatre."[17] Also to critical acclaim, it premiered in New South Wales, Australia, beginning on 8 January 2009, two weeks after Pinter's death,[18][19] and there are plans to bring the troupe over to perform Being Harold Pinter in New York City, as part of the Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, according to its director Mark Russell.[20][21]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Illuminations".
  2. ^ "Harold Pinter Taken to Hospital". BBC News. BBC. 30 November 2005. Retrieved 7 May 2009.
  3. ^ a b For an example of an illustrated contemporaneous news account, see Lyall (2005), which appeared in both The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune; other national newspapers featured similar photographs of the audience watching these screens.
  4. ^ "Harold Pinter – Nobel Prize For Literature Speech – Art, Truth & Politics (HQ)", introduced by David Hare, More 4, Channel 4 (UK), 7 December 2005, Google Video, (posted) 16 November 2008. [Video clip posted by "Skylight Pictures" ("49:35 – Nov 16, 2008").]
  5. ^ a b Pinter's "Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth & Politics" is posted online on the official website of the Nobel Prize, nobelprize.org. All in-text parenthetical references are to the Faber and Faber publication, Art, Truth & Politics.
  6. ^ For publication details, see Harold Pinter, Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948–2008, Faber and Faber, 7 May 2009. Archived 24 July 2009 at the Wayback Machine.
  7. ^ "Events: PEN World Voices Festival: Harold Pinter Memorial Celebration: Updated Schedule", PEN World Voices Festival: The New York Festival of International Literature, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, CUNY Graduate Center, 29 April 2009. Retrieved 7 May 2009. Archived 14 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
  8. ^ Cf. "May 2, 2009: Tribute to Harold Pinter", The Fifth Annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, 27 April – 3 May 2009, PEN American Center (pen.org), 29 April 2009. Retrieved 7 May 2009. Archived 14 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
  9. ^ a b As a sample of published accounts, see articles by Allen-Mills, Anderson, Billington, Chrisafis and Tilden, Eden and Walker, Hari, Hitchens, McDowell, Riddell, N. Smith, and Traub. Pinter replied to such criticism in his post-Nobel Prize Interviews with Billington, Koval, Moss, Rose, and Wark, among others. Paul Bond, Donald Freed, David Hare, John Pilger, Tom Stoppard, and others have defended Pinter's views and the artistic integrity of his work against widespread critical assaults, as hyperlinked in various news reports covering responses to Pinter's Nobel Lecture in the Guardian.co.uk and other news sites.
  10. ^ a b For critical responses and letters, see Merritt, "Harold Pinter Bibliography" 336–42.
  11. ^ For a critical discussion of the contexts of Pinter's Nobel Lecture, see Merritt, "(Anti-)Global Pinter."
  12. ^ a b Billington, Michael (2007). Harold Pinter. Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-23476-9 – via Google Books.
  13. ^ Michael Billington, "The Importance of Being Pinter: A New Production by the Belarus Free Theatre Reinforces the Global Resonance of the British Playwright's Political Works," Guardian, Arts blog – Theatre, Guardian Media Group, 16 April 2007, retrieved 8 May 2009.
  14. ^ "Belarus Gala Evening", Soho Theatre, London, Soho Theatre Company Ltd, n.d.. Retrieved 15 January 2008. Archived 13 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine.
  15. ^ "Belarus Free Theatre": "Soho Theatre in association with English PEN presents Belarus Free Theatre: 11–23 February 2008", Soho Theatre, London, Soho Theatre Company Ltd, [Feb. 2008]. (Includes excerpts from press reviews of London premiere of Being Harold Pinter and Generation Jeans.) Retrieved 29 January 2009. Archived 13 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine.
  16. ^ Michael Billington, "Being Harold Pinter/Generation Jeans: 5 Stars Soho, London", Guardian.co.uk, Culture: Stage: Theatre, Guardian Media Group, 18 February 2008, retrieved 8 May 2009.
  17. ^ Sam Marlowe, "Being Harold Pinter/Generation Jeans at Soho Theatre", Times Online, Stage: Theatre, News Corporation, 20 February 2008, retrieved 30 January 2009.
  18. ^ "An Arresting Performance – Literally", Sydney Morning Herald, Fairfax Media, 15 December 2008, retrieved 7 May 2009.
  19. ^ "Free Theatre's Performance Was Watched by Militia", "News from Belarus", Charter '97 Press Center, 8 November 2007, retrieved 7 May 2009. (About "The Free Theatre's performance Being Harold Pinter ... shown in Minsk 7 November.")
  20. ^ John Del Signore, "Mark Russell, Under the Radar Festival", interview with Mark Russell, Gothamist (Blog), Gothamist LLC, 10 January 2008. Retrieved 10 January 2008. Archived 14 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine.
  21. ^ John Del Signore, "Pencil This In: Theater", Gothamist (Blog), Gothamist LLC, 11 January 2008. Retrieved 12 January 2008. Archived 14 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine.

Works cited

Further information: Bibliography for Harold Pinter

Primary sources

  • Pinter, Harold. Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture. Presented on video in Stockholm, Sweden. 7 December 2005. Nobel Foundation and Swedish Academy. Published as "The Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth & Politics". NobelPrize.org. Nobel Foundation, 8 December 2005. Web. 2 October 2007. (RealPlayer streaming audio and video as well as text available). London: Faber and Faber, 2006. ISBN 0-571-23396-1 (10). ISBN 978-0-571-23396-0 (13). Rpt. also in The Essential Pinter. New York: Grove, 2006. (Listed below.) Rpt. also in PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association 121 (2006): 811–18. Print. Rpt. also in The Pinter Review: Nobel Prize/Europe Theatre Prize Volume: 2005 – 2008. Ed. Francis Gillen with Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 2008. 5–17. ISBN 978-1-879852-19-8 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-879852-20-4 (softcover). ISSN 0895-9706. Print.
  • –––. "Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture". Guardian. Guardian Media Group, 2 October 2007 and 8 December 2005 World Wide Web. 2 October 2007 and 7 May 2009. ["In his video-taped Nobel acceptance speech, Harold Pinter excoriated a 'brutal, scornful and ruthless' United States. This is the full text of his address"; features links relating to Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature. (Originally part of "Special Report: The Nobel Prize for Literature: 2005 Harold Pinter". Periodically updated and re-located since 2005.)]
  • –––. The Essential Pinter: Selections from the Work of Harold Pinter. New York: Grove, 2006. ISBN 0-8021-4269-9 (10). ISBN 978-0-8021-4269-6 (13). Print. [Inc. "Art, Truth & Politics: The 2005 Nobel Lecture"; 8 plays and the dramatic sketch "Press Conference"; and 10 poems.]
  • –––. Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948–2008. 3rd ed. 1998, 2005. London: Faber, 2009. ISBN 978-0-571-24480-5. Print.
  • Swedish Academy. "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2005: Harold Pinter". Nobelprize.org. Swedish Academy and Nobel Foundation, 13 October 2005. Web. 4 October 2007. [Hyperlinked account. Provides links to the official Nobel Prize announcement, Bio-bibliography, Bibliography, press release, press conference, and audio and video streaming media files of the press conference and related interviews and features. These resources are accessible on the official websites of both the Nobel Prize (Nobel Foundation) and the Swedish Academy; they are periodically revised and re-located.]
  • Wästberg, Per. "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2005: Presentation Speech". Nobelprize.org. The Nobel Foundation and The Swedish Academy, 10 December 2005. Web, 2 October 2007. [Full text; links to video clips of the Nobel Ceremony provided online.]

Secondary sources

External videos
Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter on YouTube
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