Chapter - 21

Question- Harold Pinter as the Absurdist-Existentialist playwright. Explain it.

Or
Harold Pinter as a dramatist of 20th century of drama Discuss it.

Answer -

Harold Pinter (1930-2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A noble prize winner. Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best known plays include - The Birthday Party (1957), the Home - Coming (1964) and Betrayal (1978). Pinter was born and raised in Hackiney, east London, educated at Hackney Downs school. He was a printer and a keen cricket players acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course.

He continued training at the central school of speech and drama and worked in repertory theater in Ireland and England. In 1956 he married actress Viven merchant and had a son, Daniel born in 1958, He left merchant in 1975 and married author Lady Antonia Fraser in 1980.

As a dramatist: Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production of "The Room in 1957" His second play, "The Birthday Party", closed after eight performances. His early works were described by critics as "comedy of menace". Later plays such as "No man's Land" (1975) and Betrayal (1978) became known as "memory plays." he appeared as an actor in productions of his own work on radio and flims.

Pinter was the author of 29 plays and 15 dramatic Sketches and the co- author of two works for radio and stage. He was considered to have been one of the most influential modern British dramatists along with the 1967, "Tony award for Best play for the Home coming and several other American awards and awards nominations. His style has entered the English Language as an adjective" "Pinteresque" although Pinter himself disliked the term and found it meaningless. Harold Pinter is one of the most prominent living dramatists of the age. He is one of the early Practitioners of the Theater of the Absurd which started in fifties.

Absurd, which is one of the many aspects of his works, functions as a means of getting into the reality that is Pinter is main concern. In 1958 he wrote the following "There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, not between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessary either true or false. It can be both true and false; I believe that these assertions still make sense an so still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen. I cannot as a citizen I must ask: what is true? What is False?"

Many critics regard him as one of the prominent figures of the "Theatre of the Absurd" and his works have been approached in the light of the theories and doctrines. Absurd drama is a sub-genre of drama that focuses on the Absurdity of human existence. Absurdism in simple words means efforts of human beings to find the center or in other words the meaning of his life and his failure in doing so due to the limit of humanity.

Absurdism is different from existentialism and Nihilism as explained below -

"Nihilism holds that there is no meaning of life and creating a meaning is useless, Existentialism holds that do the world is observed one can create the meaning of his own to it. Absurdisom, on the other hand, believes that world is meaningless and should accept as well as well as repel against it."

Absurd drama are lyrical, like music, they describe an atmosphere and an experience of archetypal human situations. Absurd drama is not purposeful and specific as it solves one problem. It is like an abstract painting which does not convey a particular meaning. Eventually, Martin Esslin (1964) in his classification of the Absurdist writers in his book. The theatre of the Absurd..... in the English speaking world" The idea of the Absurd is one aspect of Existentialism. He wrote of "the caretaker" to delineate the idea of the Absurd.

Some critics claim that Printer is absolutely absurd as they see the first side while on the contrary, some other critics repudiate Pinter as being an absurdist writer because they see the other side, For instance, Philip Hope - Wallace (1986) regards Pinter's work as absolutely absurd, saying that these Pinter pieces, variously amusing according to taste and often fraught with fashionable commodity menace, are not really 'about' anything James Vinson states:

"Pinter has indeed absorbed the inseths of the absurdist's. He has peopled his physically limited world with incomplete characters whose internal like has been fully exteriorized. Yet for all that he is not an absurdist for, despite the self-mockery of his characters and the painful inadequacy of their personal resources - Pinter can still conceive of human qualities which are not merely ironic."

Similarly, martin Msslin (1964) placing Pinter among the other absurdist writers such as Adamov, Ionesco, Genet, Albee and Beckett limits. the notion to a certain point: "for Pinter, there is no contradiction between the desire for realism and the basic absurdity of the situations that inspire him. Like Ionesco, he regards like in its absurdity as basically funny - up to point." The paradox that the absurdist convention does not deny meaning must not be disregarded when speaking about Pinter's plays or about any other absurdist writer such as Adamov, Ionesco, Genet, Albee and Beckett, limits the notion to a certain point. Absurd originally means out harmony, in a musical context; hence its dictionary definition; "Out of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous, unreasonable, illogical, in modern sense plainly opposed to reason, and hence ridiculous, silly. In the theatre of Absurd writes Esslin,. (1964) "the human condition is presented to us as a concrete poetic image that has become flesh on the stage and that is at the same time broadly comic and deeply tragic."

In fact the absurd is gum aimed at a deeper target, namely a deeper perception of human existence. The theme of nothingness is one of the major themes discussed in existentialism which, while pervading the movement, shows a mutual tendency between the absurd and Existentialism rejecting all of the philosophies, sciences, political theories, and religions which fail to reflect man's essence as a conscious being. As Lavine states:

"Granted says the existentialist, I am my own existence but this existence as absurd. To Exist as a human being is inexplicable, and wholly absurd."

Existentialism discovers and discuses the themes and topics which present a living cruelly, darker and more hopeless than a naturalistic or modern one. Pinter, like existentialists is involved in the discard of living. His characterization figuratively reveals the some anguish apparent in existentialism. The characters in his early plays are mostly isolated people who have sought out refuge in a small room, trying to escape an unknown danger. As John Pesta reaffirms "In Pinter's drama there is typically a meaning "usurper", a figure who undermines Rose's existential security, while at the same time, his own security is undermined by Bert, Rose's husband. Dorfman belives that In Room" The audience feels that beneath this world with no apparent contradictions there is another reality which, submerged in the unconscious; is afraid to emerge"

"The Birthday Party" is another example of the essential drama is which the character's security is undermined. In the Dumb Writer," like many other Pinter plays, follows the same triangular human relationship by which the nature of the man to man connection analyzed. But like in Pinter's view, Like all other absurdist-existentialist writers, is a big game in which everything happens arbitraily, and gun thatn you have aimed at the other, may suddenly turn back at yourself. In all; the desire for knowledge and the inability to abstain the necessary knowledge have become real disasters in the world of existence. That is why the existential absurdity dominates the mind are soul of the modern life.

Pinter portrays human condition in its wider modern sense, with all its arbitrariness. Therefore, if we are looking for some common characteristics categorize him as an absurdist existentialist writer, there is enough evidence to trace these characteristics, especially in his earlier plays.

Nonetheless, categorizing and labeling his works, though, helpful to some readers in understanding them, do not and cannot limit Pinter's multi dimensional approach to modern life, an approach which is quintesstentially painteresque or pinterish. Some of the characteristics by which can cherish himself to call Pinter an Absurdist - Existentialist playwright.

...Prev | Next...