Légion d’Honneur for Harold Pinter

On Wednesday 17 January, the French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, presented the insignia of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur to Mr Harold Pinter, at a reception held in the Residence de France in London.

(c) AFP Photo - London

French Prime Minister presented insignia of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur to Mr Harold Pinter

Speech by M. Dominique de Villepin, Prime Minister, at the ceremony for the award of the decoration of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur to Mr Harold Pinter at the Résidence de France, on 17 January 2007

Dear friends,

Dear Harold Pinter,

I am not here today to give you a prize. You have already received many prizes in your lifetime. I have come here today, dear Harold Pinter, to pay tribute to you as a man who knows the importance of words: for words can change lives.

1. My dear Harold Pinter, it would be an invidious task for me to attempt any literary criticism today. That is neither my purpose nor my vocation. Allow me, however, to talk quite simply as a reader, as a man influenced by your words, emotions and questions.

When I was 16, I read contemporary literature at the University of Nanterre. The first of my courses, which was also my first stroke of luck, was to spend a year studying your play The Caretaker. It was shortly after May 1968, at a time when one could still believe that words can shape destiny. Since then, your works have been with me. Always.

· I want to tell you of my profound emotion when I discovered your poem American football in 1992, published in a literary review, not unlike Zola’s J’accuse.

· 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. And this echoes the sound of another poem: The Bombs: “There are no more words to be said. All we have left are the bombs.” If we want the western world and especially Europe to be seen as a model of tolerance and peace, we have to change our minds and leave behind us anything but bombs.

Your words express the anguish and the torrent that is human life. As is the case in your theatrical works and indeed in all your works, they rest on silence. Dear Harold Pinter, your words are actions. Your words are a shout. They are rough, engaged in violent hand-to-hand combat that makes them talk, that makes them speak out. They are conveyed by a unique voice.

· First, the voice of the actor. Let us not forget that this is how you began your career.

· But also the voice of the theatre and film director, and of the film and television scriptwriter. You have made your mark in each of these fields.

2. Harold Pinter, what perhaps touched and affected me most in your work is your clear-sightedness.

Beyond your art, beyond your writing, it is in life itself that your works have affected me.

· At the heart of the life of mankind, at the heart of politics, precisely where you are not expected, in the middle of wars and conflicts, in a world about to catch fire, this is where you seek out the truth. For example in the characters of your plays. I am thinking of Rebecca, in the play "Ashes to Ashes", I quote again "The woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others”.

· And that truth is inseparable from freedom, when you refused to withdraw four words from your play "Landscape".

· Freedom, but also courage, the courage to defend your convictions and never to compromise on your principles. This is why, even if we do not always agree with you, we passionately respect your commitments. We can see that they are imbued with the passion that shapes destinies. In them we recognise the generosity and the greatness of Man.

3. Your talent and your commitment explain the special relationship that binds you to France and to the French people.

In the course of your career, you have won a special place in the hearts of our fellow citizens. You have been able to develop a special relationship with the French. A relationship based on admiration, friendship and complicity.

· First, because you are one of those rare authors whose works, during his lifetime, form part of the repertoire of the Comédie Française.

· But above all, because in seeking to capture all the facets of the human spirit, your works respond to the aspirations of the French public, and its taste for an understanding of man and of what is truly universal.

· This is why today, your works are performed over and over again in our country: in Paris alone, at least four of your plays could be seen in the last three months. You recently received a Molière d’honneur for your lifetime achievement. This was a just reward for work of such abundance, which never ceases to renew itself. It was also a recognition of the bonds of friendship that you have been able to form with us and with your country.

I would also like to express my profound respect and admiration to your wife Lady Antonia Fraser, whose works on Marie Antoinette or, more recently, on the women in the life of Louis XIV, are now reference works within the community of historians.

 

Dear Harold Pinter,

Dear Friends,

What you teach us is that we must look at what most people, and in particular political leaders, overlook. We must care about important things. But we should also care about things that seem unimportant. I would like to quote one of your favourite French writers, Marcel Proust: “Le poète reste arrêté devant toute chose qui ne mérite pas l’attention des hommes”. “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.

Harold Pinter, au nom du Président de la République, nous vous faisons Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur./.