Art is something that we all require, whether we admit it or not. It can be an expression of beauty or of hideousness. It can be described in silly self-indulgent phrases—“condensed thought,” or “pure self-expression.” The best art, though, is something more than any of those. The best art goes beyond human description; it probes our unconscious and renders us speechless. The best art does not merely capture beauty or address the human condition. The best art changes lives.
Art has been prevalent in my life since I was born. I was raised in a house that gave me art in many forms: books, music, poetry, movies, paintings and photography. My experience has been varied and comprehensive. More than most, though, I have been granted a deep love for the power of words. There is some divine music hidden in these strange black sticks that we use to represent our thoughts and feelings, and poetry is a pure dance with those odd figures. There is a simple magic in the rhymes of Edward Lear. There is meditative stillness in the haikus of Basho and thick philosophical power in Neruda’s odes. And yet, for all the complex thought of poetry’s titans, their work has not affected me half so much as one small poem. It was written by a man named William Ernest Henley—a man more or less forgotten by the world. It is called “Invictus,” Latin for “unconquered.” It is simple: four stanzas of four lines, 103 words, and some punctuation. But the thought that makes up that simplicity is unparalleled. It is a call to arms to the entire world! The tone is defiant, the conclusion ringing. The words stand like a proud warrior: “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.” What power, what pride, what beautiful magic the words weave!
I could rhetorically analyze the poem here. I could point out the sturdy word choice. I could wonder at the triumphant ending after the descent into “the horror of the shade.” I could pick apart the words and strip the letters bare, beat them and force their secrets from them. But to do so is to destroy something fragile in the poetry itself. To understand stained glass, you break it and look at the lead—but is the destruction worth the knowledge?
Henley died more than a century ago, and has been more or less completely forgotten. He had no effect on my past. He didn’t really change the world that I live in. But a legacy is a difficult thing to quantify anyway. What makes anyone remembered? How many masterworks were lost when Christians burned the library at Alexandria? How many great artworks were lost to Viking greed, to Roman looting, to violence across the entire world? Perhaps it is enough to be remembered by one person for even one moment. Perhaps it is enough that I wake up every morning and think of Henley. After the alarm clock finishes screaming, I look up into the pre-dawn darkness and through my lips come his words, dusty but shining after two centuries:
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,”
—And here I pause, affirm within myself the pledge made in the next lines, take a breath…
“I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”
