War

Newsnight Review discussed the war poetry of Harold Pinter.

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(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

MARK LAWSON:
Bill Buford, will the poems give pause to war mongers?

BILL BUFORD:
I don't think they will give it a second look. I think that you flatter the poems and, alas Harold Pinter by giving it this much attention. I find this narcissistic. I get impatient with it. I don't know why you read this. Are you reading it for its wit, for its use of language, for its imagery? Are you reading the argument because you expect something to come up that you've not heard before? No. When there is a comparison between Nazi Germany, this becomes for me an hysterical rant. The point of the poems seem to me, that they are merely consolidating the views of the listeners who are agreeing with the author. Historically, war producing two kinds of responses. One is a response of witness. Which is so felt, so pained it often comes several years after the event. The other is propaganda. Propaganda can be a lovely form. It is not literal. But it is witty in form. Vietnam produced great propaganda literature and a lot of authors came to the fore, but this is not going to be remembered.

MARK LAWSON:
Germaine Greer, I think that the reason we are talking about this is that it's such a curious decision. This is a playwright who has been very careful in letting plays out every few years, he seems to have abandoned that and put out these instant words quickly, what did you make of it?

GERMAINE GREER:
I am distressed by it. I don't want to go to town on it. What Pinter says is that he writes poetry all the time. That it's not safe to leave him with a notebook or he will uttered a poemoid. But these are not poems, really. The problem is that strong feeling does not create a poem. A poem is a living entity in itself. It has its own biology, it's on laws. As Emily Dickinson used to say, "Do the poems live, breathe?". Well they don't. They are clenched-teeth imprecations. There is a point in imprecation when you feel completely outwitted by the machinery of information. But the notion that poets are for peace, is itself bizarre. Because they are not. It's "Arma virumque cano":
I sing arms in the man. If there had not been a Trojan war, there would not have been Homo. Plato said "If we didn't have war there wouldn't be arts." Suddenly there is a body of poets saying...

MARK LAWSON:
There have been anti-war poets?

GERMAINE GREER:
Not really. There have been anti-war poems. The songs of the victims, the laments for the dead boys, but all of those are based upon the glorification for the boy that dies in war. He is lovely afar from the man he would have grown into it.

MARK LAWSON:
Let's concentrate on Harold Pinter's War? Mark Kermode?

MARK KERMODE:
I think when you said you didn't want to go to town on it, I think one should do. I think this is infantile facile waffle of the highest order. The worst thing about it is that it tars the people who have a completely legitimate, intelligent, sensible grievance against Bush and the war, and this is what it comes down to. Sixth-form poetry. This is the school magazine. The essay, the Turin Speech:
"The nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence. Tony Blair is responsible for gas attacks." That to me, reads like a Private Eye pastiche of Harold Pinter doing anti-war . This is so bad it actually does the anti-bush camp harm. What it does is make them look like ridiculous teenage fools.

MARK LAWSON:
It says Tony Blair could be responsible. Clearly, there are two different types of poems here. There are clearly the anti- American lyrics which we have heard some of. But closer to the plays there are two or three quieter poems, one called "Death At The End"

BILL BUFORD:
That is a good poem. I would have liked to have heard that read by Harold Pinter. But Germaine was raising another question, which is that there is a self-righteous purpose in this. Because Harold Pinter is a playwright, a poet, there is the self- justification that somehow their statement against the war will mean anything at all. It doesn't. Not unless they make it seem something.. It's just a feeling. It's put out there. There is no reason to me why Harold Pinter's view is more important than anyone else's view.