Invictus

A baixo transcrevo o poema de William Earnest Henley (1849–1903). Intitulado “Invictus” por Arthur Quiller-Couch em 1900 aquando da sua inclusão no “The Oxford Book Of English Verse”. Aqui está o poema publicado em 1888:

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.

No filme Invictus (2009) de Clint Eastwood, este poema tem um papel muito importante, ao ser entregue por Mandela ao capitão da selecção nacional de Rugby Sul Africana e por inspirá-lo a ganhar o campeonato do mundo, carregando e unificando assim, uma nação dividida por diferenças culturais e raciais. No entanto o texto que, factualmente, Mandela entregou a Pienaar for um excerto do discurso de Theodore Roosevelt “The Man in the Arena” proferido em 1910 numa visita à Sorbonne em Paris. Abaixo segue o excerto que se considera o mais emblemático do dito discurso:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”