16.10.05

Harold Pinter 今年的諾貝爾文學獎得主

From the New York Times

Pinter Wins Nobel for Dramas of Ominous Power Struggles
By SARAH LYALL
Published: October 14, 2005

LONDON, Oct. 13 - Harold Pinter, the British playwright, poet and political campaigner who uses spare and often menacing language to explore themes of powerlessness, domination and the faceless tyranny of the state, won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.

Mr. Pinter "uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," the Swedish Academy in Stockholm said in announcing the award, which is worth $1.3 million.

...
He is an overtly political writer, vehemently opposed to the Iraq war, to the British government under Prime Minister Tony Blair and to what he sees as bullying American imperialism in the Middle East and around the world. A recent poem, "The Special Relationship," refers to the alliance between the United States and Britain but is consumed with bombs exploding, limbs being blown off and the atrocities committed at places like Abu Ghraib.

The Swedish Academy occasionally presents awards with a political edge, and this is the second prize in a week that has gone to an honoree at odds with the Bush administration over the Iraq war. On Oct. 7, the peace prize was given to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, who in the weeks before the invasion of Iraq was skeptical of American accusations that Saddam Hussein had rebuilt a nuclear program.
...

I remember earlier I read that Pinter gave up poetry for politics... Anyway I've only read one play of his, I think...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I quite enjoy Pinter actually. I like the pause and the suspense in his play. But it's very difficult to put them on stage I think, I remember we once thought of carrying it out in the second year undergraduate.

impermissible wanyü said...

Wow, and why didn't you?

I think the play I've read by him is _the dumbwaiter_ but I totally forgot about it now... (or is that by a completely different playwright... :P