Speak What You Know To Be True

Last week I went to see A Celebration of Harold Pinter, Directed by John Malkovich, and ‘Performed’ (although this is hardly the right word) by Julian Sands.  At times speaking in Pinter’s voice, Sands shared anecdotes, selections from Pinter’s poetry and lectures, and snippets from Lady Antonia Fraser’s deftly titled memoir Must You Go?  Above all, Sands shared his esteem for the one of the 20th Century’s greatest playwrights.  It is a very personal account, delivered in an intimate and effusive style that has brought mixed criticism.  I loved it....  

Moreover, it prompted me to watch Pinter’s nobel prize acceptance speech, which Sands quotes from in the piece.

“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.”

Pinter recorded his lecture as he was too ill (with cancer) to travel to Sweden to deliver it.  His physical frailty and the strain in his voice are obvious and poignant.  But his wit is razor sharp; his prosody engaging; his words piercing; his passion irrepressible.  His views (especially on American foreign policy) are uncompromising, and no doubt discomforting to many.  He was not afraid to speak up.

And of course, Pinter understood the power of speech and the undercurrents of quiet.  His plays are renowned for his use of silence; and the Pinter pause.  

Pinter himself described two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when “a torrent of language is being employed”. Beneath both of these silences, there may be things unsaid.

Today human rights activists across the world mourn the death of Troy Davis, executed after 21 years in prison in Georgia, USA.  The silent vigils held just before his killing by lethal injection shout loudly of outrage.  The obfuscating rationales for not granting clemency conceal a moral vacuum; and the twittering debates about when it is and isn’t OK to kill, only obscure.

As Pinter said, “So often, below the word spoken, is the thing known and unspoken.”  What do I know?  That this was wrong.  

To speak, clearly, what we know to be true - surely that is our obligation.