A Song on the End of the World (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Czesław Miłosz
- First Published: 1945
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: Snakes, 1940’s, Reality, Birds, End of the world, Poland or Polish people, Fishing or fishermen, Bees, Dolphins
The Poem
Divided into four stanzas, this twenty-six-line poem with its portentous title turns out to be wryly quiet, an ironic contrast to the dramatic events some have expected would accompany the end of the world. Concentrating on a description of vivid yet commonplace, daily realities, Czesław Miłosz fashions a deliberately simple, naive narrative of events.
The first stanza is devoted to descriptions of what might be called miniature worlds: “a bee circles a clover,” describing quite literally the circumference of its world. Similarly, the fisherman mending a...
[The entire page is 1371 words long]
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