我が運命を決めるのは我也我が魂を制するのは我也 waga unmei wo kimeru no wa ware nari, waga tamashii wo seisuru no wa ware nari I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul
我が運命を決めるのは我也我が魂を制するのは我也 (waga unmei wo kimeru no wa ware nari, waga tamashii wo seisuru no wa ware nari), what decides my fate is I; what governs my soul is I, renders the closing couplet of Henley's Invictus, dated 1875. Its one located Japanese address is the encyclopedia's article on the 2009 film, where Mandela repeats the lines; the one prewar translation named, of 1923, is out of reach.
Abstract
我が運命を決めるのは我也我が魂を制するのは我也, what decides my fate is I; what governs my soul is I, renders the closing couplet of Henley's poem of 1875 known as Invictus: I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul. Its one located Japanese address is the encyclopedia's article on the 2009 film Invictus, uncredited, with なり where this text writes 也. No book to 1946 in the National Diet Library carries it, and the one prewar translation the library's reference service names, of 1923, is out of reach.
Overview
The sense. Henley's couplet in classical Japanese, the two clauses parallel and each closed by the kanbun copula 也.
The words. 也 nari is the kanbun writing of the classical copula, and it is what makes the Henley line read as a vow rather than a sentence; the Japanese encyclopedia writes the same line with なり in kana [1]. 制する, a verb of control, stands for captain.
The text in English. The English is Henley's own couplet.
The historical record
1875, 1888, 1923, 2009. Henley's couplet. The poem is untitled by Henley, numbered IV in his Poems of 1904 under the dedication I. M. R. T. Hamilton Bruce, dated 1875 at its foot, first printed in Littell's Living Age on 28 July 1888, and titled Invictus by Quiller-Couch in the Oxford Book of English Verse [2]; its last two lines are I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul. The NDL's reference service, asked for Japanese translations, names one before the war, Urase Hakuu's in 『現代英米詩選』 of 1923 under the title 「打ち勝たれぬ心」, the heart that cannot be beaten, and calls it the only one known [3]; that book is on the library's restricted service, and its wording is unknown here. This rendering has no book behind it that is known: no book to 1946 in the National Diet Library carries it [4], and its one located address is the Japanese encyclopedia's article on the 2009 film Invictus, where Mandela repeats the two lines and the article gives them, uncredited, as 我が運命を決めるのは我なり、我が魂を制するのは我なり, what decides my fate is I; what governs my soul is I, with 制する, a verb of control, for captain [1]. This rendering uses 也 for なり.
Today. What a rendering must keep is the parallel clauses and the copula, which are what make the Japanese a vow.
A reading
Henley's couplet has no Japanese book behind it, and its one prewar translation is locked behind a library service. The Japanese that carries it now is an encyclopedia's, uncredited; written with 也, it reads as a vow.
Sources not seen
浦瀬白雨, 『現代英米詩選』, 紅玉堂, 1923, pp. 88–89. Held by the National Diet Library on its restricted service and not delivered through the digital viewer (pid 977428); the library's own reference service names it as the one prewar Japanese translation of Henley's poem it could locate, titled 「打ち勝たれぬ心」, the heart that cannot be beaten. A reading of it would settle whether the modern rendering now given for the couplet descends from Urase's wording or was made independently for the encyclopedia article.
A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.
References
- 「インビクタス」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/インビクタス
- William Ernest Henley, poem IV, Poems, 1904; first printed in Littell's Living Age, 28 July 1888; at Wikisource. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Poems_Henley.djvu/141 · https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Out_of_the_night_that_covers_me
- National Diet Library reference service, entry 1000235686. https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/detail?page=ref_view&id=1000235686
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 我が運命を決めるのは我なり, 0 books to 1946. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/