Invictus

It seems that this is the work the nineteenth-century English poet W. E. (William Ernest) Henley is best known for – and, in fact, that few people know anything else about him. Invictus (the Latin word for ‘unconquered’) was the inspiration for yet another of the Hollywood films in which well-known American (rather than local) actors act the parts of true-life figures from various parts of the world – in this case South Africa, with President Nelson Mandela and Springbok rugby captain François Pienaar played by Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon respectively. An impressive film, like many things by Clint Eastwood – but why so few South Africans in the main roles?

Anyway, I did already know a phrase from Invictus, for it has become a part of everyday English – only I had no idea of its origin. I guess I thought that like so many such phrases it came from Shakespeare or the King James version of the Bible. The phrase is ‘bloody, but unbowed’. And the whole wonderful poem turns out to read as follows:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Now I come to think of it, ‘the captain of my soul’ was also a familiar phrase, whose origin I was again unaware of. And yet I first came across Henley’s name in a very different context, which makes clear to me just how versatile a writer he must have been. Halfway through perhaps my all-time favourite book, Douglas Hofstadter’s Le Ton Beau de Marot (despite the title, largely written in English), I found a remarkably modern-sounding and to my mind stunningly successful English translation of a poem on dissolute mediaeval life, written by a fifteenth-century Frenchman – another François, in this case François Villon, who very likely ended up on the gallows. His poem – which modern French-speakers can still read almost as well as modern English-speakers can read Shakespeare – goes as follows:

Car ou soies porteur de bulles
Pipeur ou hasardeur de dés
Tailleur de faux coins et te brûles
Comme ceux qui sont échaudés
Traîtres parjurs, de foi vidés
Soies larron, ravis ou pilles
Où s’en va l’acquêt, que cuidez?
Tout aux tavernes et aux filles

Rime, raille, cymbale, luthes, 
Comme fol feintif, eshontés;
Farce, brouille, joue des flûtes
Fais, ès villes et ès cités, 
Farces, jeux et moralités
Gagne au berlan, au glic, aux quilles
Aussi bien va, or écoutez!
Tout aux tavernes et aux filles

De tels ordures te recules
Laboure, fauche champs et prés
Sers et panse chevaux et mules
S’aucunement tu n’es lettrés
Assez auras, se prends en grés
Mais, se chanvre broyes ou tilles
Ne tends ton labour qu’as ouvrés
Tout aux tavernes et aux filles

Chausses, pourpoints aiguilletés
Robes et toutes vos drapilles
Ains que vous fassiez pis, portez
Tout aux tavernes et aux filles

And here’s Henley’s mind-blowing translation (this, remember, is the same guy that wrote Invictus):

Suppose you screeve, or go cheap-jack?
Or fake the broads? or fig a nag?
Or thimble-rig? or knap a yack?
Or pitch a snide? or smash a rag?
Suppose you duff? or nose and lag?
Or get the straight, and land your pot?
How do you melt the multy swag?
Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

Fiddle, or fence, or mace, or mack;
Or moskeneer, or flash the drag;
Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack;
Pad with a slang, or chuck a fag;
Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag;
Rattle the tats, or mark the spot
You cannot bank a single stag:
Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

Suppose you try a different tack,
And on the square you flash your flag?
At penny-a-lining make your whack,
Or with the mummers mug and gag?
For nix, for nix the dibbs you bag
At any graft, no matter what!
Your merry goblins soon stravag:
Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

It’s up-the-spout and Charley-Wag
With wipes and tickers and what not!
Until the squeezer nips your scrag,
Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

‘The blowens’ are les filles, the girls (of easy virtue) – a word I’d never heard of, but surely perfect in this context. The rest I reckon we can pretty much work out by the sound of the verses – written just over 125 years ago.

No idea who Henley really was, but between them these two poems seem to sum up a man of wide-ranging passions and interests. And, again courtesy of the Internet, I’ve found yet another of his poems, which appears to have been written on the death of his own daughter at a very young age:

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies: 
And from the west, 
Where the sun, his day’s work ended, 
Lingers as in content, 
There falls on the old, grey city 
An influence luminous and serene, 
A shining peace. 

The smoke ascends 
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires 
Shine and are changed. In the valley 
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, 
Closing his benediction, 
Sinks, and the darkening air 
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night –
Night with her train of stars 
And her great gift of sleep. 

So be my passing! 
My task accomplish’d and the long day done, 
My wages taken, and in my heart 
Some late lark singing, 
Let me be gather’d to the quiet west, 
The sundown splendid and serene, 
Death.

Invictus indeed.