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International Relations
in aN ASYMMETRIC Multi Lateral World
Art, Truth & Politics
Harold Pinter,
2005 Nobel Prize Winner for
Literature,
Nobel Lecture - 7 December 2005
"I believe that despite
the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving,
fierce intellectual
determination, as citizens, to define
real truth
of our lives and our societies
is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact
mandatory."
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.
© THE NOBEL FOUNDATION
2005 General permission is granted for the publication in
newspapers in any language after December 7, 2005, 5:30 p.m.
(Swedish time). Publication in periodicals or books
otherwise than in summary requires the consent of the
Foundation. On all publications in full or in major parts
the above underlined copyright notice must be applied.
* 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.
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