Harold Pinter, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature, is too ill to travel to Stockholm for the ceremony. But in a recorded lecture he makes what can fairly be called a savage attack on Tony Blair for his part in the war in Iraq, calling for him to be put on trial as a war criminal.
When one speaks in one’s own person—that is, not through one’s art—to denounce some politician or other, using the rhetoric of the agora, one embarks on a contest which one is likely to lose because it takes place on ground where one’s opponent is far more practised and adept. “Of course Mr Pinter is entitled to his point of view”, it will be replied. “After all, he enjoys the freedoms of a democratic society, freedoms which we are this moment endeavouring to protect against extremists.”
So it takes some gumption to speak as Pinter has spoken. Who knows, perhaps Pinter sees quite clearly that he will be slickly refuted, disparaged, even ridiculed. Despite which he fires the first shot and steels himself for the reply. What he has done may be foolhardy but it is not cowardly. And there come tunes when the outrage and the shame are so great that all calculation, all prudence, is overwhelmed and one must act, that is to say, speak.