مسيرة المبدع الإنكليزي:هارولد بينترHarold Pinter كاتب مسرحي وكاتب سيناريو ومخرج وممثل

The Harold Pinter Theatre, London


In September 2011, British Theatre owners, Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) announced it was renaming its Comedy Theatre, Panton Street, London to become The Harold Pinter Theatre. Howard Panter, Joint CEO and Creative Director of ATG told the BBC, "The work of Pinter has become an integral part of the history of the Comedy Theatre. The re-naming of one of our most successful West End theatres is a fitting tribute to a man who made such a mark on British theatre who, over his 50 year career, became recognised as one of the most influential modern British dramatists."^[187]

Honours

Further information: Honours and awards to Harold Pinter
An Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and an Honorary Fellow of the Modern Language Association of America (1970),^[188][189] Pinter was appointed CBE in 1966^[190] and became a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2002, having declined a knighthood in 1996.^[191] In 1995, he accepted the David Cohen Prize, in recognition of a lifetime of literary achievement. In 1996, he received a Laurence Olivier Special Award for lifetime achievement in the theatre.^[192] In 1997 he became a BAFTA Fellow.^[193] He received the World Leaders Award for "Creative Genius" as the subject of a week-long "Homage" in Toronto, in October 2001.^[194] In 2004, he received the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry for his "lifelong contribution to literature, 'and specifically for his collection of poetry entitled War, published in 2003'".^[195] In March 2006, he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in recognition of lifetime achievements pertaining to drama and theatre.^[196] In conjunction with that award, the critic Michael Billington coordinated an international conference on Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics, including scholars and critics from Europe and the Americas, held in Turin, Italy, from 10 to 14 March 2006.^{[116][163][197]}

In October 2008, the Central School of Speech and Drama announced that Pinter had agreed to become its president and awarded him an honorary fellowship at its graduation ceremony.^[198] On his appointment, Pinter commented: "I was a student at Central in 1950–51. I enjoyed my time there very much and I am delighted to become president of a remarkable institution."^[199] But he had to receive that honorary degree, his 20th, in absentia owing to ill health.^[198] His presidency of the school was brief; he died just two weeks after the graduation ceremony, on 24 December 2008.

In 2013, he was posthumously awarded the Sretenje Order of Serbia.^[200][201]

Nobel Prize in Literature

Main article: 2005 Nobel Prize in LiteratureLégion d'honneur


On 18 January 2007, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin presented Pinter with France's highest civil honour, the Légion d'honneur, at a ceremony at the French embassy in London. De Villepin praised Pinter's poem "American Football" (1991) stating: "With its violence and its cruelty, it is for me one of the most accurate images of war, one of the most telling metaphors of the temptation of imperialism and violence." In response, Pinter praised France's opposition to the war in Iraq. M. de Villepin concluded: "The poet stands still and observes what doesn't deserve other men's attention. Poetry teaches us how to live and you, Harold Pinter, teach us how to live." He said that Pinter received the award particularly "because in seeking to capture all the facets of the human spirit, [Pinter's] works respond to the aspirations of the French public, and its taste for an understanding of man and of what is truly universal".^[202][203] Lawrence Pollard observed that "the award for the great playwright underlines how much Mr Pinter is admired in countries like France as a model of the uncompromising radical intellectual".^[202]

Scholarly response

Main article: Harold Pinter and academia
Some scholars and critics challenge the validity of Pinter's critiques of what he terms "the modes of thinking of those in power"^[204] or dissent from his retrospective viewpoints on his own work.^[205] In 1985, Pinter recalled that his early act of conscientious objection resulted from being "terribly disturbed as a young man by the Cold War. And McCarthyism ... A profound hypocrisy. 'They' the monsters, 'we' the good. In 1948, the Russian suppression of Eastern Europe was an obvious and brutal fact, but I felt very strongly then and feel as strongly now that we have an obligation to subject our own actions and attitudes to an equivalent critical and moral scrutiny."^[206] Scholars agree that Pinter's dramatic rendering of power relations results from this scrutiny.^[207]

Pinter's aversion to any censorship by "the authorities" is epitomised in Petey's line at the end of The Birthday Party. As the broken-down and reconstituted Stanley is being carted off by the figures of authority Goldberg and McCann, Petey calls after him, "Stan, don't let them tell you what to do!" Pinter told Gussow in 1988, "I've lived that line all my damn life. Never more than now."^[208] The example of Pinter's stalwart opposition to what he termed "the modes of thinking of those in power"—the "brick wall" of the "minds" perpetuating the "status quo"^[209]—infused the "vast political pessimism" that some academic critics may perceive in his artistic work,^[210] its "drowning landscape" of harsh contemporary realities, with some residual "hope for restoring the dignity of man."^[211]

As Pinter's long-time friend David Jones reminded analytically inclined scholars and dramatic critics, Pinter was one of the "great comic writers":^[212]
His dramatic conflicts present serious implications for his characters and his audiences, leading to sustained inquiry about "the point" of his work and multiple "critical strategies" for developing interpretations and stylistic analyses of it.^[214

Pinter research collections

Further information: Harold Pinter Archive
Pinter's unpublished manuscripts and letters to and from him are held in the Harold Pinter Archive in the Modern Literary Manuscripts division of the British Library. Smaller collections of Pinter manuscripts are in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin;^[15] The Lilly Library, Indiana University at Bloomington; the Mandeville Special Collections Library, Geisel Library, at the University of California, San Diego; the British Film Institute, in London; and the Margaret Herrick Library, Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.^[215][216]