Harold Pinter - Nobel Lecture
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 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".

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