Editing Mountain Language (section)

==Background==
According to a letter from Pinter to ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'', where it was first published and advertised, that publication's "advertisement ... stat[ing] that the play was 'inspired' by [Pinter's] trip to [[Turkey]] with [[Arthur Miller]] and is a "[[parable]] about [[torture]] and the fate of the [[Kurds in Turkey|Kurdish people]]" ... [are] ... assertions ...  made without consultation with the author [Pinter]"; he continues: "The first part of the sentence [that it was inspired by Pinter's trip to Turkey with Miller] is in fact true.  The play is not, however, 'about the fate of the Kurdish people' and, above all it is not intended as a 'parable'."<ref name=PinterLetter>Harold Pinter, Letter, ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'', 7–13 October 1988: 1109, as cited by Merritt 186 and Grimes 90.</ref> As Grimes points out, "Pinter evidently believes his political plays are too direct to be seen as metaphors or parables" (90).  As Pinter insists in that letter, the text has more universal relevance: "this play is not about the Turks and the Kurds.  I mean, throughout history, many languages have been banned––the Irish have suffered, the Welsh have suffered and the Urdu and the Estonians' language banned."<ref name=GrimesHP>Grimes 90, citing Pinter's official Website, ''[http://www.haroldpinter.org haroldpinter.org]''.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.haroldpinter.org/politics/politics_kurds.shtml|title=www.haroldpinter.org - Turkey and The Kurds|website=www.haroldpinter.org|access-date=2020-04-05}}</ref> The dialogue does contain some identifiably contemporary British or Western cultural references, thereby showing its applicability to the Great Britain of the present, but the text of the play contains no explicit geographical place setting and no explicit time setting, rendering its setting in place and time simultaneously indeterminate and thus also broadly relevant.<ref name=NYTimesRev/>