H\o7AROLD\f7 \o7PINTER\f7, perhaps Britain's greatest modern playwright and winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature, presented his Nobel lecture last month. Despite his reputation as a master of dark, absurdist comedy, Pinter's speech -- which has since been widely reprinted -- can only be described as tragic.
The first tragedy of Pinter's speech was that he could not deliver it in person. Pinter has been battling throat cancer for some time. A week before the award presentation, doctors refused to give him permission to travel to Sweden, so he recorded the lecture in a London television studio. The video was shown for the Swedish Academy at a ceremony on Dec. 7.
The day before the ceremony, Pinter was admitted to the hospital. Rumors about his deteriorating health have only increased since the playwright was awarded the Nobel Prize on Oct. 13. Thanks to makeup, Pinter looks better on camera than he did back in October, when he wore bandages on his face and walked with a cane while speaking to reporters outside his London home; but the video (which can be downloaded on the Nobel Prize website) forces one to acknowledge the severity of Pinter's illness. He delivers the lecture to a camera while seated in a wheelchair. His voice is hoarse and his speech is labored. Getting words out, to say nothing of breathing or swallowing, seems to be a major task.
This is sad, not simply because it confirms fears about Mr. Pinter's health, but also because Harold Pinter is not just a fine playwright, he is also a fine stage actor. He has a commanding stage presence and an equally commanding use of spoken English. Had Pinter's health allowed him to deliver this lecture in person in Stockholm, there is no doubt that it would have been a performance to remember -- even though the text of Pinter's lecture did not approach the power or subtlety of his plays.
This is the second tragedy of Pinter's Nobel lecture: that after seven minutes of talking about his work in an illuminating fashion, Pinter devotes the following 39 minutes to a rant against U.S. foreign policy.
To anyone familiar with Pinter's politics, this anti-Americanism is no surprise. Indeed, he hinted back in October that he might use the Nobel podium to "address the state of the world," and his lecture titled "Art, Truth, and Politics" contains many of the same issues (U.S. policy in Nicaragua, the use of cluster bombs, the war in Iraq) that Pinter has been speaking out against for years.
