Fine Canvas Art Blog

Invictus, by William Ernest Henley, 1875

American / British / Caperton / Inspirational prints / Paintings (Reproductions) - 2 years ago - troycapc

This inspiring poem was written in 1875 by English poet William Ernest Henley. Henley was ravaged by tuberculosis at a young age and overcame severe disabilities to emerge as one of the most notable English poets of his era. Invictus is his most celebrated work.

Click here for more information

When he was nineteen years old, Henley’s father died; around this time, his left leg was also amputated below the knee, sacrificed to tuberculosis. Henley faced myriad physical and financial difficulties, but soldiered onward, ultimately passing the difficult Oxford Local Schools’ Examination in 1867. In the early 1870’s he received a diagnosis that an amputation of his right leg was also necessary to save his life. Henley contested this and placed himself under the care of the radical surgeon Joseph Lister; by 1875 Henley was discharged with his right leg intact. It was in that year that he wrote and published Invictus.

The poem has often been cited as a source of inspiration for various figures: from Nelson Mandela in his imprisonment from 1962 to 1980, to Franklin Roosevelt during his bout with polio in 1921. It was featured in the 1942 film classic King’s Row and has recently become the title of a new film.

While the popular image of the poem has been inspirational, many have seen it as the epitome of Stoicism. At the time of its publication, there was a movement among Victorian literati to cast off the traditional reliance on Christianity to meet the vicissitudes of life. They aimed instead at the type of hard-won self-reliance that this poem celebrates. Henley dismisses divine help as irrelevant in the line “whatever gods may be,” and declares his determination to stand solidly against the “bludgeoning of chance.”

After the publication of Invictus, Henley continued to write and publish and in 1889 became editor of the Scots Observer, a literary journal in Edinburgh. He moved to London two years later and was widely known through literary circles. His daughter Margaret became an inspiration for J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan before her death at the age of five years. Henley himself died in 1903.

Valid criticisms, however, have been made of the text and thrust of the poem. Some have complained that the sentiments are anti-Christian, as they seem to renounce a reliance on God. In stating “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul” Henley may have been attributing to himself divine powers, in that “I am” in Hebrew is the basic word for the deity himself. The poem can be interpreted as an early cry of secular humanism which seeks to answer the eternal questions of life without recourse to traditional religious sources.