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Pinter´s speech at the Swedish Academy

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Flowerdk4

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I am a wee bit amased that, as far as I can see, no one has talked about Harold Pinter´s speech at the Swedish academy, when he got the nobel prize. I mean this is a book site and it is the nobel prize in litterature he won.

Anyone care to comment??

Flower
 
Flowerdk4 said:
I am a wee bit amased that, as far as I can see, no one has talked about Harold Pinter´s speech at the Swedish academy, when he got the nobel prize. I mean this is a book site and it is the nobel prize in litterature he won.

Anyone care to comment??

Flower
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I hadn't heard about this. I know of the 'no politics' rule, but can someone just outline what he said? Or post a good link?
 
Well...I'm not into either politics or Harold Pinter ... But that speech was amazing and uplifting... I'm surprised 'they' haven't had him disposed of!

Maybe they knew no-one would listen.

You really should.
 
Minniemal said:
his speech
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Thank you for the link, Minniemal.

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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Thank you for this thread, Flowerdk4!

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.
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We are able to speak about Harold Pinter and the Nobel Prize in literature in a civilized manner, I am assuming?
 
Wauuu, I turn my back and then I realize that I have stepped in something touchy here. :eek:

I dont have the speech in English (shall check out the link), but I thought he had several good points and his speech had a lot of good observations and I am glad that such a writer got the award.
Somehow I think, his mention of Bush, also has to do with language in general and the use of words.

And yes, StillIlearn, I believe that we are allowed to talk about the speech in a civillized manner. ;)

Flower
 
I don't see how you can talk about it without going heavily into politics, which is a no no on this forum.:confused: that's why i don't want to get any more involved.

All I'm going to say on the subject is that I don't like his writing, and his 'poems' are the kind of thing an angst-ridden 14 year-old might come up with.
 
And we are civilized people, are we not? I vow to keep things light and cheerful -- on my part, anyhow. :)

It has been my experience that we humans are able to find humor in almost any circumstance you can imagine:

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.
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We can discuss the man and his works. Why do you feel he is crap, CDA? I'm here to learn.

(I've found this, so far.)

Harold Pinter is one of England's or, to be more exact, one of the world's, most renowned living playwrights. His complex themes and distinctive cryptic style have added the terms Pinteresque and Pinter Pauses to our contemporary lexicon. His career encompasses stage, screen and radio and his accomplishments include acting and directing as well as writing.

Pinter was born in 1930 in Hackney, a working-class neighborhood in London's East End, the son of a Jewish tailor. Growing up in this largely non-Jewish area influenced the feelings of alienation that pervade much of his work, as did the advent of World War II when he was an early adolescent. He went to Grocers' Academy School, a grammar school subsidised by the City of London Livery Company, the Grocers. This school decades later became Hackney Downs, a comprehensive school.

He received a grant to study at the London Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts but left after two years. When called to do his national service in 1949, he risked jail as a conscientious objector (but was fined instead). A year later he started to publish poems under the name Harold Pinta and began working as a bit-part actor on a BBC Radio program. He resumed formal studies for a short time at the Central School of Speech and Drama. His strongest early literary influences were Kafka and Hemingway, the former quite evident in some of his writing.
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Still I learn and others,
I have printed the english speech and shall read it and get back to you soon.

Hope there may be other who care to talk about this speech in a civil manner. And I DO believe its possible to talk about it without getting into politics.

Flower
 
jaybe said:
that speech was amazing and uplifting...
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I'm very glad I read the speech, but I can't call it "uplifting." It made me feel like I'd been punched in the stomach...and also as if I'd punched someone in the stomach. :(
 
StillILearn said:
We can discuss the man and his works. Why do you feel he is crap, CDA? I'm here to learn.

(I've found this, so far.)
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I had to study him for my degree. Bored me senseless. Just not my thing. I realise that he's considered the bee's knees. As for the 'poetry' have a look at this:

The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

(from haroldpinter.org)
 
Which poem brings to mind Pablo Neruda's poem, which Pinter quotes in his speech:

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!*
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StillILearn said:
Which poem brings to mind Pablo Neruda's poem, which Pinter quotes in his speech:
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Well at least it hasn't got the word 'pong' in it. PONG? It's such a comedy word.

:)
 
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