19 pages • 38 minutes read
Invictus
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Background
Literary Context
“Invictus” seeks to teach. Whether instruction is what a poem ought to do is a debate as old as art itself: Is it enough for any artifact of the creative imagination—whether a poem or a symphony or a painting—to be beautiful, to move a person emotionally, or should that artifact serve a function? Should it inform and improve the moral and ethical lives of those who engage it? Should art be or should art mean?
The establishment poets of the Victorian Era, among them Henley certainly but also Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and Rudyard Kipling, regarded poetry as a moral force, which, given its wide readership at the time, should move readers to live better lives. It should also inspire them to regard life as an evolutionary process in which poetry could help direct them to more profitable, more rewarding lives by using the fetching forms of rhythm and rhyme to gift the reader with wisdom. Poetry was therefore a direct conversation with a wide audience.
There was, however, a formidable challenge to that imperative, a challenge that Henley, in his position as editor and critic, perceived as both immediate and dire. A school of younger poets, self-described aesthetes, rejected poetry as a moral force and regarded poetry as an opportunity to render rich emotions in exquisite and gaudy language they knew only few would relish. These “emo” poets embraced moments of heighted emotions, the experience of love, the reality of death, and, supremely, the impact of art itself. Because they dismissed the concept of market appeal or any cultural function for art, these poets, most notably Oscar Wilde, Christina Rossetti, and Algernon Swinburne, saw in the poem itself, in its use of language, complex symbols, elaborate syntax, and its sheer embrace of lexical excess, a celebration of art and the artist. Henley’s poem, then, can be appreciated as part of this battle of the books.
Cultural Context
The cultural conversation of countless eras includes poetic verse, even though the larger works from which the lines first appeared may have edged into obscurity: “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” (from “In Memoriam” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson); the “shot heard ‘round the world” (from “Concord Hymn” by Ralph Waldo Emerson); “the [road] less traveled” (from “The Road Not Taken” Robert Frost); “a little learning is a dangerous thing” (from “A Little Learning” by Alexander Pope); “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” (from Endymion by John Keats); or, “To err is human, to forgive divine” (from An Essay on Criticism Alexander Pope). William Henley, an otherwise obscure Victorian-era poet (when he died, his estate was valued at just over $1200), joined such august company by sounding an inspirational sentiment with these lines from “Invictus”: “I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul” (Lines 15-16). The lines found such wide resonance in both British and American cultures that “Invictus” became a singular cultural achievement in English language literatures.
Henley’s lines have been spoken at moments of tremendous challenge: Winston Churchill to the British people during the darkest days of the Blitzkrieg; Nelson Mandela to other apartheid opponents incarcerated on South Africa’s notorious Robben Island; Representative John Lewis to rally civil rights activists in the Deep South during the civil rights era; Senator John McCain to himself during years of brutal imprisonment by the North Vietnamese; and gay rights activist Harvey Milk to inspire the gay community during its fight for civil rights shortly before his assassination. More disturbing, domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh, the architect of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, quoted the lines just before his execution in federal prison. In addition, countless coaches, teachers, politicians, screenwriters, activists, songwriters, and even video game designers have echoed the lines.
Because Henley never makes specific the context of his own struggles, the poem has become a motivational message to hold strong and keep the faith in the darkest of times.
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