MANILA, Philippines – Vice President Sara Duterte showed up at the Senate on Tuesday, July 7, but not to attend her impeachment trial.

Before she met with her defense team, which was supposed to be the solepurpose of her surprise Senate trip, she delivered a single statement at what the media thought was a press conference: “In this bloodbath and bludgeoning, I will be bloodied but unbowed.”

This is a line from the widely known poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley.

It was the same poem her younger sister, Kitty, had quoted back in April when the International Criminal Court (ICC) affirmed its jurisdiction over the crimes against humanity case of their father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, who is detained in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Kitty had told the supporters of the Duterte patriarch that he wanted her to relay his response to the ICC’s confirmation of all his charges, and then proceeded to recite the whole poem — placing extra emphasis on the last two lines:

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.

A poem about resilience in the face of adversity

“Invictus” is the Latin term for “unconquered.”

Henley had written Invictus in 1875 as he was receiving medical treatment for tuberculosis of the bone, in an attempt to convey that he was still capable of remaining strong in the face of immense hardships. This very message has been used time and time again by different public figures to express and affirm how they feel.

Invictus is regarded as the favorite poem of Nelson Mandela, who was known for his fight against apartheid and discrimination. Mandela was jailed for 27 years on Robben Island for opposing the South African regime before he eventually became the country’s president in 1994.

The poem was said to have gotten Mandela through his time in prison.

Then-British prime minister Winston Churchill had also paraphrased the poem’s last two lines at the House of Commons in 1941 to lift the country’s morale in the midst of World War II: “The mood of Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this — a year ago our position looked forlorn, and well nigh desperate, to all eyes but our own. Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world, ‘We are still masters of our fate. We still are captain of our souls.’”

Referenced on both ends of the spectrum

But while Henley’s iconic literary piece has been quoted in the past by world leaders who had worthy causes, Invictus was also known to have been quoted by controversial figures who had perpetrated civilian killings.

For instance, Timothy McVeigh, who had bombed Oklahoma City in 1995, had used the poem as his final written statement before his execution in 2001. The bombing took the lives of 168 individuals.

In 2019, Australian-born man Brenton Tarrant gunned down and killed a total of 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The then-28-year-old man had plans to target a third mosque, but was detained before he could make his way to it.

Just before the attacks, Tarrant had published an 87-page manifesto titled “The Great Replacement.” Here, he described himself as a “regular white man,” and said that he “decided to take a stand to ensure a future for my people” — vowing to create an atmosphere of fear among Muslims. He had ended the manifesto with Henley’s Invictus.

It then begs the question: Why exactly do the Duterte siblings keep quoting Invictus? – Rappler.com