A SINE QUA NON

Harold Pinter opened his 2005 lecture for the Nobel Prize in Literature with the following words: "There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false." He went on to say that he believed that these assertions made by him in 1958 still made sense and still applied to the exploration of reality through art. He said that as a writer he stood by these ideas, but as a citizen he could not do so. As a citizen, he said, he had to ask: What is true and what is false? And so do I. And as a citizen I ask the question and I answer: the Baha'i teachings. We all have to answer that question in our own way, eh Harold?

Truth in drama as in poetry is forever elusive. You approach it, but you never quite find the whole of it. The search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly one of the major forces that drives the artistic endeavor. The search is a major task both in life and in art. Sometimes you stumble upon the truth in the dark, sometimes in the light; sometimes you collide with it or just glimpse an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art, as Pinter concluded or in poetry as I must conclude after more than 40 years of writing. There are many facets, angles, views or perspectives on truth. These perspectives on truth challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.-Ron Price with thanks to Harold Pinter, "Nobel Lecture: December 7th 2005," The Nobel Foundation, 2005.

I have often been asked
how my poetry came about.
I have tried to answer this,
but I cannot say. Nor can
I ever sum up my words.
I often try, again, again.
I have often said that
such and such is what
happened. That is what
these poems have said,
what I think they have done.

I believe that despite the odds
against us, we need unflinching,
unswerving, fierce intellectual,
determination to define the truth
of our lives and our societies.
It is a crucial obligation which
devolves upon us all.
It's mandatory, compulsory,
a sine qua non of our lives.
If such a determination is
not embodied in our vision
we have no hope of acquiring
human dignity: thanks Harold
for your life and work.(1)

1 Harold Pinter, "Nobel Lecture: December 7th 2005," The Nobel Foundation, 2005.


Ron Price
January 2nd 2006.