Tras la muerte de Harold Pinter, el Nobel rojo
Tony Jones y Chris Moncrieff
The Independent
Traducido por Manuel Talens
Harold Pinter, uno de los dramaturgos más importantes que ha dado Gran Bretaña después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, era un radical que no temió nunca decir lo que pensaba o enfrentarse a la injusticia allá donde estuviese.
Atravesó los mundos del cine y de la escena y en ambos géneros produjo clásicos que han resistido la prueba del tiempo. Pero su talento fue mucho más allá del mundo teatral. Era también actor, poeta, guionista y director de cine… y apasionado del cricket.
Las obras de Pinter, que ya se representaban a finales de los años cincuenta, se hicieron famosas por sus pausas frías y amenazadoras.
Era un hombre politizado que rechazó la oferta de John Major de concederle el título de sir y que arremetió contra Tony Blair cuando la OTAN bombardeó Serbia. También criticó acerbamente la invasión de Iraq, calificándola de “acto de bandidaje, acto de ostensible terrorismo de Estado, que demuestra un desprecio absoluto del concepto de Derecho internacional".
Recibió muchos premios por sus obras, el más importante de los cuales fue el Nobel de Literatura el 13 de octubre de 2005. La nota de concesión decía que "en sus obras desvela el precipicio que hay en cualquier plática cotidiana y fuerza la entrada en los cerrados aposentos de la opresión”.
Se ganó muchas críticas por las posiciones que defendió a lo largo de su vida, pero una vez dijo en una entrevista: "Cualquier escritor que asoma su cabeza por encima de las trincheras y se atreve a hablar en este país se convierte en un indeseable”.
Escribió más de veinticinco obras de teatro y unos doce guiones cinematográficos, pero su primera obra, The Room, ya contenía muchos de los elementos que caracterizarían a sus obras posteriores, en particular una situación ordinaria que gradualmente se va llenando de amenazas y misterio por medio de la omisión deliberada de un motivo o explicación para cada uno de los actos.
Una vez dijo: "¿Cómo podría escribir una obra feliz? Todo drama trata de conflictos y grados de perturbación, de desorganización. Nunca he sido capaz de escribir una obra feliz, pero en cambio mi vida siempre lo ha sido.”
Era sobre todo conocido por sus obras maestras del teatro del absurdo The Caretaker, The Homecoming y Betrayal. También escribió en colaboración los guiones cinematográficos de Accident y The Servant, dos clásicos del cine británico.
Nació en Hackney en 1930, hijo único de una pareja de judíos inmigrantes que regentaban una sastrería en Stoke Newington. Fue un niño introvertido y tranquilo con un entorno familiar muy numeroso y bien avenido. Pero el hecho de ser hijo único alimentó su imaginación y entre sus recuerdos estaba el de haber creado una pequeña banda de amigos imaginarios con los que pasaba las horas jugando en el jardín trasero de su casa.
El idilio de su infancia se vio interrumpido por la guerra en 1939, cuando fue evacuado de su hogar en Hackney y enviado al Cornwall rural. La traumática separación de sus padres fue para él otra fuente de imaginación e introspección. Tenía 14 años cuando regresó a Londres. En aquel momento ya había desarrollado su amor por las obras de Franz Kafka y Ernest Hemingway.
Su primer gran amor fue el arte dramático y, tras haber actuado en varias producciones escolares de la Hackney Downs Grammar, aceptó una beca para estudiar en la London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Pero su corazón no estaba en los estudios y dos años más tarde abandonó el prestigioso centro.
En 1949 ya demostró su negativa a someterse y un juez lo condenó a una sanción económica por negarse a completar el servicio militar. Con alivio, dijo: "Podría haber ido a la cárcel, de hecho, me llevé el cepillo de dientes a la corte, menos mal que el juez era simpático y en vez de eso me puso una multa”
En 1950 había empezado a publicar poesía, pero continuó actuando en la escena teatral hasta 1957. Fue durante este periodo cuando un frustrado Pinter empezó a escribir para la escena y The Room apareció publicada en 1957. Un año después su primera obra de larga duración, The Birthday Party, fue producida en el West End y, a pesar de haberse cancelado después de sólo una semana de reseñas desastrosas, continuó escribiendo de forma prolífica.
Fue con su segunda obra de larga duración, The Caretaker (1960) con la que Pinter se creó una reputación como uno de los dramaturgos teatrales más importantes del país. Siguieron varias obras más en rápida sucesión y, en 1965, publicó una de sus obras más famosas, The Honeycoming. Trataba de un hijo pródigo que traía a casa a su nueva esposa para que conociese a su familia. La obra ganó diversos premios, entre ellos un Tony y el Whitbread Theatre Award.
También escribió mucho para el cine. Destacan sus guiones de las películas The Servant (1963), The Last Tycoon (1974) y The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981).
Nunca tuvo una buena relación con los críticos y una vez se preguntó para qué servían: "Me parece que los críticos en general son una tropa bastante innecesaria”.
Su vida privada saltó a los titulares cuando en 1980 se casó con su biógrafa Antonia Fraser después de abandonar a su primera esposa, la actriz Vivien Merchant, con la que se había casado en 1956 y de la que tuvo un hijo. Poco después de la separación ella falleció de alcoholismo y su hijo Daniel renegó de él. Pinter se sintió muy culpable.
En los años sesenta tuvo una aventura con la presentadora de televisión Joan Bakewell. Su obra de 1978 Betrayal se basó en parte en dicha aventura, que duró siete años y término de 1969.
A partir de los años ochenta sólo escribió media docena de obras, algo que quizá se debiese a que Pinter estaba esperando la llamada de las musas, ya que siempre insistió en que él no escribía sus obras, sino que ellas se las dictaban.
Pero en 1995, cuando recibió el premio literario David Cohen a toda su trayectoria, resumió así su carrera: "En pocas palabras, mi vida como escritor ha sido un placer, un reto y una excitación". En 2000, su 70 aniversario coincidió con la reposición de varias de sus obras. En marzo de 2005, a los 74 años, Pinter reapareció para anunciar que había escrito la última de ellas. "Creo que he dejado de escribir para el teatro, pero no de escribir poemas. He escrito 29 obras. ¿Acaso no es bastante? Para mí sí lo es. Ahora he encontrado otras maneras de expresarme."
Poco a poco la poesía fue ganando terreno en su escritura. En 2003 publicó un poemario, War, que expresaba su posición contra la guerra de Iraq. "Hay quien ni siquiera los considera poemas", dijo. "Los hay que piensan que son porquerías de niño de escuela... pero yo voy a seguir escribiendo lo que escribo hasta el día de mi muerte." También había decidido dar un uso político a sus capacidades de oratoria y escritura. Fustigó a Tony Blair llamándolo "idiota iluso", mientras que al presidente George Bush lo calificó de "asesino de masas”.
El 2002 le diagnosticaron un cáncer del esófago y recibió un tratamiento con quimioterapia, que calificó de "pesadilla personal". Tras éste, dijo: "Ahora soy más viejo y la complicada operación que me hicieron el año pasado fue como atravesar el valle de la sombra de la muerte. Aunque en muchos aspectos sigo siendo el mismo, también soy un hombre muy cambiado. Pero no creo que pueda decir con precisión en qué."
En 1966 fue nombrado miembro de la Orden del Imperio Británico y en 2002 Companion of Honour.
A principios de este mes debía recibir un doctorado honoris causa de la Central School of Speech and Drama in London, pero su enfermedad le impidió asistir al acto.
Fuente: Pinter was never afraid to attack injustice
Coda añadida por el traductor: "La invasión de Iraq fue un acto de bandidaje, un acto de ostensible terrorismo de Estado que demuestra un desprecio absoluto del concepto de Derecho internacional. La invasión fue un acto militar arbitrario inspirado por una serie de mentiras sobre mentiras y burda manipulación de los medios y, por lo tanto, de la opinión pública; un acto destinado a consolidar el control militar y económico usamericano de Oriente Próximo que, en última instancia, se disfrazó de liberación una vez que todas las demás justificaciones habían fracasado. Un formidable despliegue de fuerza militar responsable de la muerte y la mutilación de miles y miles de personas inocentes. Hemos llevado tortura, bombas de racimo, uranio empobrecido, innumerables actos de asesinato a diestro y siniestro, desgracia, degradación y muerte al pueblo iraquí, y a eso le llamamos libertad y democracia en Oriente Próximo. (palabras pronunciadas por Harold Pinter, miembro honorario del Tribunal BRussells, durante su discurso de aceptación del premio Nobel de Literatura el 7 de diciembre de 2005).
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Harold Pinter
Manuel Talens pertenece al comité consultivo del Tribunal BRussells y a los colectivos de Cubadebate, Rebelión y Tlaxcala, la red de traductores por la diversidad lingüística. Esta traducción se puede reproducir libremente a condición de respetar su integridad y mencionar a los autores, al traductor y la fuente.
December 25, 2008
Harold Pinter was one of Britain's greatest post-war playwrights, a radical who was never afraid to speak his mind or attack injustice wherever he found it.
He traversed the worlds of cinema and stage, producing classics in both genres that have stood the test of time.
But his talents extended far beyond play-writing. He was also an actor, poet, screenwriter and director - as well as having a passion for cricket.
Pinter's plays, which were first staged in the late 50s, became renowned for their cool menacing pauses.
He was a politically conscious man who turned down John Major's offer of a knighthood and strongly attacked Tony Blair when Nato bombed Serbia.
Pinter also attacked the invasion of Iraq as "a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the conception of international law".
He won many awards for his plays, the greatest of which was the Nobel Prize for Literature on October 13 2005. The citation said that "in his plays he uncovers the precipice in everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms".
He earned criticism for the stands he made throughout his life, but the playwright once said in an interview: "Any writer who pops his head over the trenches and dares to speak in this country is really placed outside the pale."
Pinter wrote more than 25 plays and around a dozen film scripts but his first work, The Room, contained many of the elements that would characterise his later works - namely a commonplace situation gradually invested with menace and mystery through the deliberate omission of an explanation or motivation for the action.
Once he said: "How can you write a happy play? Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I've never been able to write a happy play, but I've been able to enjoy a happy life."
The writer was probably best known for his absurdist masterpieces The Caretaker, The Homecoming and Betrayal. He also co-wrote the screenplays for Accident and The Servant, classics of British cinema.
Pinter was born in Hackney in 1930, the only son of immigrant Jews, who ran a tailor's shop in Stoke Newington.
As an introverted and quiet child he was brought up as part of a large and loving extended family.
But being an only child fuelled his imagination and he recalled creating a small band of imaginary friends with whom he would spend hours playing with in his back garden.
The idyll of his childhood was interrupted by the outbreak of the war in 1939 when he was evacuated from his Hackney home to rural Cornwall.
The separation from his loving parents, while traumatic, proved another source for his active imagination and introspection.
He was 14 before he returned to London; by which point he had developed a love of the works of Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway.
Pinter's first love was acting and after appearing in several school productions at Hackney Downs Grammar, he accepted a grant to study at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
But his heart was not in his studies and two years later he left the prestigious college.
Demonstrating his refusal to conform he was fined by magistrates in 1949 for refusing to complete his National Service.
Expressing his relief he said: "I could have gone to prison - I took my toothbrush to the trials - but it so happened that the magistrate was slightly sympathetic, so I was fined instead."
By 1950 Pinter had begun to publish poetry but continued to appear on the stage in repertory theatre until 1957.
It was during this period that the frustrated Pinter began to write for the stage and The Room was published in 1957.
A year later his first full length play, The Birthday Party, was produced in the West End and despite closing after just one week to disastrous reviews, Pinter continued to write at a prolific rate.
It was his second full-length play, The Caretaker (1960) with which Pinter secured his reputation as one of the country's foremost dramatists and playwrights.
Several more works followed in quick succession and in 1965 one of his most famous plays, The Homecoming was published.
It told the story of an estranged son who brought home his new wife to meet his family.
The work won a host of awards including a Tony and the Whitbread Theatre Award.
Pinter also wrote extensively for the cinema including The Servant (1963), The Last Tycoon (1974) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981).
He never enjoyed a good relationship with the critics and once questioned why they existed.
"I find critics on the whole a pretty unnecessary bunch of people," he said.
The writer's private life made headlines when he married biographer Antonia Fraser in 1980 after leaving his first wife, actress Vivien Merchant, whom he wed in 1956, and with whom he had a son.
Soon after their parting she died of alcoholism and their son Daniel effectively disowned his father. Pinter was stricken with guilt at the death of his first wife.
In the 1960s Pinter had an affair with broadcaster Joan Bakewell.
The 1978 play Betrayal was partly based on his affair, which lasted seven years and ended in 1969.
From the 1980s onwards he wrote only around half a dozen plays, something that might have been due to Pinter waiting for the muse to strike as he insisted he did not write the works, they wrote him.
But in 1995 when he received the David Cohen Literature Prize for lifetime achievement Pinter summed up his career.
"Quite simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement," he said.
His 70th birthday in 2000 saw a number of plays revived to mark the occasion.
In March 2005, at the age of 74, Pinter appeared to suggest he had written his last play.
"I think I've stopped writing plays now, but I haven't stopped writing poems.
"I think I've written 29 plays. Isn't that enough? I think it's enough for me. I've found other forms now," he said.
Pinter had increasingly turned to poetry as his preferred genre.
He published a collection, War, in 2003, which expressed his opposition to the Iraq conflict.
"Some people do not regard them as poems at all," he said. "Some people regard them as schoolboy rubbish... I shall continue to write what I write until the day I die."
He had also been throwing his speech-writing skills into more political use.
Pinter raged against Tony Blair, calling the former prime minister a "deluded idiot", and US President George Bush a "mass murderer".
In 2002, Pinter was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus and underwent a course of chemotherapy, which he called a "personal nightmare".
He said afterwards: "I'm now older and I've been through a major operation in the past year so I've been through the valley of the shadow of death.
"While in many respects I have certain characteristics that I had then, I'm also a very changed man. But I don't think I can define precisely how I've changed."
Pinter was appointed CBE in 1966. In 2002 he was appointed a Companion of Honour.
Earlier this month Pinter was due to pick up an honorary degree from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, but was forced to withdraw from the event due to illness.
He traversed the worlds of cinema and stage, producing classics in both genres that have stood the test of time.
But his talents extended far beyond play-writing. He was also an actor, poet, screenwriter and director - as well as having a passion for cricket.
Pinter's plays, which were first staged in the late 50s, became renowned for their cool menacing pauses.
He was a politically conscious man who turned down John Major's offer of a knighthood and strongly attacked Tony Blair when Nato bombed Serbia.
Pinter also attacked the invasion of Iraq as "a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the conception of international law".
He won many awards for his plays, the greatest of which was the Nobel Prize for Literature on October 13 2005. The citation said that "in his plays he uncovers the precipice in everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms".
He earned criticism for the stands he made throughout his life, but the playwright once said in an interview: "Any writer who pops his head over the trenches and dares to speak in this country is really placed outside the pale."
Pinter wrote more than 25 plays and around a dozen film scripts but his first work, The Room, contained many of the elements that would characterise his later works - namely a commonplace situation gradually invested with menace and mystery through the deliberate omission of an explanation or motivation for the action.
Once he said: "How can you write a happy play? Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I've never been able to write a happy play, but I've been able to enjoy a happy life."
The writer was probably best known for his absurdist masterpieces The Caretaker, The Homecoming and Betrayal. He also co-wrote the screenplays for Accident and The Servant, classics of British cinema.
Pinter was born in Hackney in 1930, the only son of immigrant Jews, who ran a tailor's shop in Stoke Newington.
As an introverted and quiet child he was brought up as part of a large and loving extended family.
But being an only child fuelled his imagination and he recalled creating a small band of imaginary friends with whom he would spend hours playing with in his back garden.
The idyll of his childhood was interrupted by the outbreak of the war in 1939 when he was evacuated from his Hackney home to rural Cornwall.
The separation from his loving parents, while traumatic, proved another source for his active imagination and introspection.
He was 14 before he returned to London; by which point he had developed a love of the works of Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway.
Pinter's first love was acting and after appearing in several school productions at Hackney Downs Grammar, he accepted a grant to study at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
But his heart was not in his studies and two years later he left the prestigious college.
Demonstrating his refusal to conform he was fined by magistrates in 1949 for refusing to complete his National Service.
Expressing his relief he said: "I could have gone to prison - I took my toothbrush to the trials - but it so happened that the magistrate was slightly sympathetic, so I was fined instead."
By 1950 Pinter had begun to publish poetry but continued to appear on the stage in repertory theatre until 1957.
It was during this period that the frustrated Pinter began to write for the stage and The Room was published in 1957.
A year later his first full length play, The Birthday Party, was produced in the West End and despite closing after just one week to disastrous reviews, Pinter continued to write at a prolific rate.
It was his second full-length play, The Caretaker (1960) with which Pinter secured his reputation as one of the country's foremost dramatists and playwrights.
Several more works followed in quick succession and in 1965 one of his most famous plays, The Homecoming was published.
It told the story of an estranged son who brought home his new wife to meet his family.
The work won a host of awards including a Tony and the Whitbread Theatre Award.
Pinter also wrote extensively for the cinema including The Servant (1963), The Last Tycoon (1974) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981).
He never enjoyed a good relationship with the critics and once questioned why they existed.
"I find critics on the whole a pretty unnecessary bunch of people," he said.
The writer's private life made headlines when he married biographer Antonia Fraser in 1980 after leaving his first wife, actress Vivien Merchant, whom he wed in 1956, and with whom he had a son.
Soon after their parting she died of alcoholism and their son Daniel effectively disowned his father. Pinter was stricken with guilt at the death of his first wife.
In the 1960s Pinter had an affair with broadcaster Joan Bakewell.
The 1978 play Betrayal was partly based on his affair, which lasted seven years and ended in 1969.
From the 1980s onwards he wrote only around half a dozen plays, something that might have been due to Pinter waiting for the muse to strike as he insisted he did not write the works, they wrote him.
But in 1995 when he received the David Cohen Literature Prize for lifetime achievement Pinter summed up his career.
"Quite simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement," he said.
His 70th birthday in 2000 saw a number of plays revived to mark the occasion.
In March 2005, at the age of 74, Pinter appeared to suggest he had written his last play.
"I think I've stopped writing plays now, but I haven't stopped writing poems.
"I think I've written 29 plays. Isn't that enough? I think it's enough for me. I've found other forms now," he said.
Pinter had increasingly turned to poetry as his preferred genre.
He published a collection, War, in 2003, which expressed his opposition to the Iraq conflict.
"Some people do not regard them as poems at all," he said. "Some people regard them as schoolboy rubbish... I shall continue to write what I write until the day I die."
He had also been throwing his speech-writing skills into more political use.
Pinter raged against Tony Blair, calling the former prime minister a "deluded idiot", and US President George Bush a "mass murderer".
In 2002, Pinter was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus and underwent a course of chemotherapy, which he called a "personal nightmare".
He said afterwards: "I'm now older and I've been through a major operation in the past year so I've been through the valley of the shadow of death.
"While in many respects I have certain characteristics that I had then, I'm also a very changed man. But I don't think I can define precisely how I've changed."
Pinter was appointed CBE in 1966. In 2002 he was appointed a Companion of Honour.
Earlier this month Pinter was due to pick up an honorary degree from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, but was forced to withdraw from the event due to illness.
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