Harold Pinter
"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."
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| Nagasaki after the bomb - google image |
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| Hiroshima: The Aftermath - google image |
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| Vietnamese woman holding her 'agent orange' deformed child - credit google |
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.
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.
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.
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 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.'
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.
Source: nobelprize.org
1 comment:
That child is a GI's son.
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