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Home , Celebration (play), Harold Pinter, Moonlight (play), Mountain Language, Precisely (sketch), Silence (1969 play)

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Here is

SUBHASIS CHATTOPADHYAY

You wouldn’t understand my works. You wouldn’t have the faintest idea what they were about. You wouldn’t appreciate the points of reference. You’re way behind. All of you. There’s no point in sending you my works. You’d be lost. It’s nothing to do with the question of intelligence. It’s a way of being able to look at the world. It’s a question of how far you can operate on things and not in things. I mean it’s a question of your capacity to ally the two, to relate the two, to balance the two. To see, to be able to see. — Teddy in , Faber & Faber, Great Britain, 1991, pp. 61-62.

he in literature is avow- menace remains. This is the world of Pinter. edly given to a writer who enriches us This is Postmodernism, a discourse beyond Twith a piercing yet humane vision of and over the clichéd . mankind. Harold Pinter has become a Nobel This is the now famous Pinteresque (a rare Laureate for his plays deal with this all- tribute to a living playwright to have his important aspect of ‘seeing’. His plays are name passing into dramatic parlance) uni- turned into themselves, solipsistic and end- verse of silences articulating the damning lessly interrogating the nature of the ‘horror’ forces quietly gnawing at us. Pinter’s oeuvre which stares us in the face. Nietzsche had is the apotheosis of the existentialists’s ef- lost his mind over it; Sartre could not but forts to articulate their perceptions meaning- make Antoine Roquentin vomit at the banal- fully. The meaning is not in what they write ity of his world which never ends in a bang but rather in what they cannot or simply but only in a whisper; Wittgenstein was ap- miss out. Pinter’s plays are not plays about palled at our linguistic inabilities to mean- action, speech and ideas. They are about si- ingfully articulate anything at all of any last- lences, the narratives of keeping quiet, of ing importance. Prufrock gave up trying to blank ideological, political, social and theo- be , Kurtz could only shudder logical spaces. They are indeed about noth- at the horror, Didi and Gogo can only go on ing that we know of. They cannot be ‘under- ritually reenacting their stale lives. This stood’; we can only let the sink in. same emptying horror was ‘seen’ by the Buddha and he had declared to the world in I can sum up none of my plays. I can de- scribe none of them, except to say: That is joy ‘Nibbana, nibbana’; it is all in the ‘see- what happened. That is what they said. That ing’, the representation. The world of the is what they did.1 Buddha has passed away forever and we can no longer look into the heart of things for Harold Pinter was born in Hackney, there remains no heart to look into, only the , on 10 October 1930. He was SUBHASIS CHATTOPADHYAY

educated at Hackney Downs Grammar now neglected world of pure literature. School and trained at the Royal Academy of Though the meaning of the purity of litera- Dramatic Art and Central School of Speech ture can be debated and whether such a and . His plays include thing is any longer possible to find, yet we (1957), The Birthday Party (1958), The must for a few moments see Pinter as a prac- Dumb Waiter (1959), (1960), titioner of the craft of literature than of any- (1962), The Homecoming (1965), thing else. What does he add to our under- No Man’s Land (1975), standing of literature? And we are not look- (1988), (1993), ing for postmodern-jargon-filled critiques (1996) and (2000), first per- which more often than not serve only to be- formed with The Room at the Almeida The- fuddle the senses and pander to the intellec- atre in London. His adaptation of Marcel tual elite far removed from the joys Proust’s novel Remembrance of Things Past (jouissance!) of seeing a drama as a drama. was performed at the National Theatre in It was his fellow-countryman Thomas Hardy London in 2000. He has adapted many of his who first interiorized in his novels the idea stage plays for radio and television and he of a malevolent though mechanistic force has written the screenplays of a number of dampening all man’s efforts. Hardy’s Imma- films including The Servant (1963), The nent Will is then the true literary antecedent Quiller Memorandum (1965), The Go-Be- to Pinter’s unnameable machinations tween (1970), (1974) and which intrude to destroy his characters. (1989), adapted Baudelaire’s poetry, Proust’s sense of time- from Ian McEwan’s novel. He has directed less time in his novels, and Camus’s The many productions of his own plays as well Outsider—all influenced Pinter. His charac- as plays by other writers, including James ters are memorably outside the realms of Joyce, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, civilization. In The Birthday Party, the tru- and , and has culent hero, Stanley, has hidden away in acted on stage, and in film, television and dingy seaside digs from which he is forcibly radio. He is an accomplished poet too. He removed by two visitors, Goldberg and was awarded a CBE in 1966, the German McCann, who represent an unnamed organi- in 1970, the Austrian zation. In Stanley’s recollections of his days State Prize for European Literature in 1973 as a concert pianist, you hear the characteris- and the David Cohen Prize tic Pinter note: a yearning for some lost in 1995, and holds honorary degrees from Eden as a refuge from the uncertain present. the Universities of Reading, Glasgow, East But the play is also clearly a political meta- Anglia and Bristol, among others. In 2001 phor for the oppression of the individual by he was awarded the S. T. Dupont Golden the state; and it’s no accident that Pinter had PEN Award by the English Centre of Inter- himself earlier risked imprisonment for con- national PEN. scientious objection. In this play, Pinter Investigating the antecedents of Pinter shows us Stanley’s insecurity and immatu- we find that much has been made of his in- rity followed by chaos, loss and abduction. debtedness to other Absurd / Existentialist We are prevented by Pinter’s deliberate ar- writers, playwrights and philosophers. With- rangement of events from holding to tradi- out denying those influences, it would do us tional moral values: even those characters well to search for his predecessors in the who are faithful and hardworking come to

562 December HERE IS HAROLD PINTER

catastrophic ends. Such a manipulation of The Caretaker at least, does not completely destiny implies a fixed set of attitudes on the reject them. There is something that re- part of the playwright. In The Room no ex- sembles a plot, though one might find it puz- planation is offered for the evil that enters zling, and there are characters who have Bert Hudd other than that he provides a suit- some connexion with reality even though it ably hollow receptacle for it, so that we are might be difficult to understand their actions led to consider the nature of evil in the uni- and motivations. verse rather than the psychology or circum- Pinter’s major dramatic innovation was stances peculiar to one man. in his use of language. A standard response The Caretaker was first produced in to his drama has been to say it is about ‘the London in 1960 and was Harold Pinter’s breakdown in communication’. However, in first major success as a dramatist. It has conventional drama, what is striking is how three characters, the brothers Aston and amazingly effective language is as a means Mick and the tramp Davies. Aston, who it is of communication. In contrast to this, revealed has suffered from mental illness Pinter’s characters often speak in broken and undergone electric shock treatment, in- sentences, utter non sequiturs, repeat them- vites Davies into his house after rescuing selves, pause for no apparent reason, don’t him when he’s about to be beaten up. Mick, listen to what is said to them or appear to a builder and sadistic type, who has diffi- understand it. It could be argued this is a culty communicating with his brother, ap- break with the artificiality of conventional pears to resent this intrusion and virtually dramatic language in favour of realism. Yet terrorizes Davies. However, Davies is even- realism is insufficient as an explanation of tually invited to take up the position of the Pinter’s language. At certain points the lan- caretaker, but his selfish and inconsiderate guage becomes highly stylized. The play behaviour towards Aston leads to his being may expose the artificiality of speech and told by him to go. An attempt to gain the plot in conventional drama but it’s doubtful support of Mick fails and the play ends with that it does so in the interests of dramatic Davies appealing to Aston to be allowed to realism as such. stay, an appeal that looks doomed to fail. Pinter is at once postmodern and at the The play resembles other Pinter in same time infinitely transcendental. Perhaps which conflict is created by outsider fig- the key to having some grasp of how The ures—for example, Teddy in The Homecom- Caretaker works is to focus on the relation ing and Spooner in No Man’s Land—gain- between language, meaning and psychology. ing entry into another’s home, trying to es- Here we have to use Freud, Jung, Laçan and tablish themselves, but eventually being Baudrillard, to say nothing of Derrida to forced to leave. successfully interpret him. In Pinter’s drama This is a play that destabilizes such fun- meaning is not necessarily revealed in the damental elements of dramatic structure as words a character uses. It is thus not enough plot, character and the conventions govern- to say ‘what do these words mean?’ Rather ing the use of language, but it does not do so one should ask questions like: ‘why does in as radical a way as ’s this character say this at this time?’ or ‘what Waiting for Godot. Whereas Beckett’s is the character’s motive for saying this?’ or drama virtually discards conventional dra- ‘what are the underlying interests that gov- matic forms and theatrical devices, Pinter, in ern this speech or exchange?’ This severs

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the conventional relationship between lan- is open to interpretations, unlike most guage and meaning. For example, there is a absurdist drama. In The Caretaker, does particularly fractured exchange between Mick’s leaving before Aston enters The Davies and Aston in the scene in the second Room indicate something about the nature of act after Aston suggests to Davies that he their relationship? Though Aston and Mick might be a caretaker. Looking at the lan- are brothers they do not seem capable of guage in conventional semantic terms might communicating. Could this be connected lead to the conclusion that it exemplifies with why Aston invites Davies to be the only bumbling inarticulacy. Yet if one looks caretaker? The possibility that there might beyond the semantics of language in ortho- be answers to such questions is a factor in dox linguistic terms in order to consider the keeping the audience involved in the action question of possible motivation, the ex- of the play and this, no doubt, contributed to change is open to interpretation: Davies does the play’s appeal to a wider audience and not want to commit himself to taking the job thus to its success on both sides of the At- of caretaker that Aston apparently offers lantic despite its dramatic innovations. The him; he’s playing for time; he can’t under- French dramatist Artaud, the so-called leader stand why anyone should want to do him a of the School of Cruelty drama, is more good turn; if he says yes he’s worried he aligned to Pinter than many other dramatists. may fall into a trap. In this play, therefore, Pinter’s universe is cruel, lonely and silently the language the characters use does not but slowly grinding all man’s sound and fury necessarily have any direct relationship to to nothing. To Pinter, the difference between what they might mean. Also, in Pinter’s appearance and reality is that the former rep- drama, the use of language cannot be easily resents man’s false view of the world as be- separated from the question of power as vir- nevolent, such a view being born of and sus- tually all relationships are depicted as power tained by human weakness: sympathy, struggles of one sort or another. Thus, we imagination, and intellection. Thus man fab- can view Pinter’s plays as exercises or mani- ricates an unreal world of appearances and is festations of Michel Foucault’s theses of the trapped within that world by his own illu- politics of power; the micro politics and sions and pretences, whereas in reality there macro politics of power. Pinter’s plays often is no benevolent force operating in the real become transformed into discourses on the world. In Pinter’s works, love, friendship, nature of the urge to dominate. This urge is happiness, pleasure, success, are all illusions expressed as negotiations of incoherent man has constructed to mask the ugly reality speech and the various narratives of silence. of existence. The ending of The Room and If one takes an absurdist view of The Birthday Party shows that there is no Pinter’s plays, associating him with such salvation, no redemption, no perfectibility, dramatists as Beckett and Ionesco, then there no real progress, but only surcease into may be no explanation for such happenings. death. Against the evil forces of the universe Alternatively, the audience is being chal- man has few weapons, and these are only lenged to interpret events in the same way defensive. Isolation is one, and others are that it is being challenged to interpret lan- escape, pretence and hiding. Man has the guage. One cannot be sure one’s interpreta- best chance of survival in this hostile world, tion is the right one, but at least the action but his is a triumph of ignorance. For man,

564 December HERE IS HAROLD PINTER

who must always be on his guard, the out- over is Pinter’s engagement with the ongo- side is at best indifferent but more often ac- ing Iraq crisis. We have to remember that his tively malevolent. As such, the universe is Nobel Prize award comes when the Western the principal instrument of evil against man- world is still engaged in the Iraq crisis. To kind. This is Thomas Hardy revisited, this is understand him fully we need to review his revisited, this is the world stance on this war. The following is from an of Artaud and T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock. interview2: In spite of Pinter’s bleak vision of the Ramona Koval : . . . obviously language human condition, we find that his own paci- has been your passion, really, all your life. fist efforts and vocalizations against war And then just relating the idea of war and atrocities are acknowledgements that yet all the use of words in war—and I know that is not lost for mankind. His vision when the abuse of language and meaning is some- analysed is truly redemptive. The pessimism thing that has incensed you over the years— is what we experience as a species for we you and George Orwell, actually—phrases have allowed ourselves to become through like ‘humanitarian intervention’ and ‘civi- violence who we are, but the truth is we can lized world’. And I wondered about the use become contented and happy if we give of the term ‘axis of evil’ over the last year— and one that we’ve all just begun to hear peace a real chance. According to Pinter, recently, and that’s ‘regime change’, which when we engage with the world meaning- I heard coming out of Washington a month fully, we are transformed. In a different con- ago or so, and I’ve heard again parroted by text one of his characters in , British politicians—almost like something Deeley, says: that has a ring of the force of nature about it—a new concept. So I wondered if you My work concerns itself with life all over, would share your thoughts about those you see, in every part of the globe. With things. people all over the globe. I use the word Harold Pinter : My favourite of them globe because the word world possesses all is the ‘freedom-loving people’. When I emotional political sociological and psycho- hear Bush say, ‘on behalf of all freedom- logical pretensions and resonances which I loving people,’ you know, ‘we are going to prefer as a matter of choice to do without, or continue to fight terrorists,’ and so on. I shall I say to steer clear of, or if you like to wonder what a freedom-hating people looks reject. . . . like. I’ve never actually met such a people — Faber & Faber, Great Britain, myself, or can’t even conceive of it. In other pp. 40-41. words, he’s talking rubbish, and that is the This can be taken as the credo of Pinter; his kind of rhetoric which you’re referring to, life’s work is with life itself and not mere which is commonplace, really, in what we abstract models of life or impressions of life. call the ‘Western World,’ isn’t it? It hap- His is a mimetic art: life is shown to us as it pens every day of the damn week. And our governments spout this all the time, not re- is. Life is indeed incoherent, filled with gaps ally considering seriously, what and yet startlingly beautiful. His dramas are they’re talking about. at one level deeply insightful and at other In other words, I think that when you levels they elude any pinning down to par- look at a man like our Prime Minister, who I ticular categorizations. gather is a very sincere and serious Chris- An area that we have to at least gloss tian, he, we understand, at the moment is

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considering another bombing of Iraq, which But that’s a very rare event, and what I actually would be an act of murder—of pre- find really dangerous and shall we say dis- meditated murder. Because If you bomb gusting, is where the kind of language used Iraq, you’re not just going to kill Saddam recently—humanitarian intervention—don’t Hussein—you won’t do that, anyway, he has forget freedom and democracy and all the his resources—but what you will do, is kill, rest of it—actually is justifying simply as- as usual, thousands of totally innocent sertive acts to control power and keep people. power. Maintain power. And actually the And how can work that one question of destroying human beings while out, morally, himself, as a Christian, is actu- that is happening seems to be, to the powers ally beyond me. I just wish he’d decide he that be, quite irrelevant. In fact it doesn’t was a Christian or he wasn’t a Christian. If even begin to operate, or, as you know, all you say, ‘I’m going to bomb these damn that happens is that the destruction of hu- people and I don’t give a shit,’ then you man beings—unless they’re Americans—is bomb them. But that’s not a Christian atti- called ‘collateral damage’. tude as far as I understand. If you take a Christian posture, you cannot say that. So When we return to Pinter’s works after read- therefore you can’t say, ‘I’m going to mur- ing this interview, we know why he deserves der thousands of innocent people,’ and say, the Nobel Prize. He got it not because he is ‘I remain a Christian,’ because that is not a a great philosopher, not because he is a great Christian stance, as I understand it. I’m not dramatist, neither because he is adept in the a Christian myself, so nevertheless. . . . But I think what we’re talking about restraint of language, but because he is a there is extraordinary, fundamental hypoc- Christian at heart. He follows Christ. He can risy and a misunderstanding of language al- cry with all humanity and this great possibil- together—or a distortion of language, or ity in him of genuine empathy makes his abuse of language—which is in itself ex- works relevant to our burdened times. tremely destructive, because language leads Pinter’s works finally liberate us from all hy- us, doesn’t it, politically it leads us into all pocrisy, all distractions. They follow the sorts of fields. It’s the rhetoric which does principles of similia similibus curantur, and that, and sometimes it works. It works in the they purge us in the very traditional sense of sense that when Churchill in the War said, ‘We will fight them on the . . .’ you know, tragedy being the calm of mind, all passion beaches and all that, I suppose the British spent. We can now sigh and say om shantih, public needed such a thing at the time, and om shantih, om shantih. The Waste Land it was quite useful—I suppose. I think it can now hope to be transformed into the was. Promised Land.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1 Harold Pinter on being awarded the German Shakespeare Prize in Hamburg 1970. http://www.curtainup.com/pinter.html (this site is a treasure house about all things Pinter). 2 See http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/stories/s1481248.htm

Sri Subhasis Chattopadhyay is a lecturer in English at Ramananda College, Bishnupur, Bankura.

566 December