World Poetry Project: "A Song on the End of the World" by Czeslaw Milosz
For my project, I looked at the poem "A Song on the End of the World" by Czeslaw Milosz. The full text can be found here.
About the Poem:
Summary:
The speaker is omniscient and narrates the "story" of the poem in 3rd person. There doesn't seem to be a specific audience; rather, the speaker speaks to the world as a whole. Because the speaker is all-knowing, it is possible that the speaker is actually God. During the first two stanzas, the speaker describes the activities of people and animals on a day that he/she claims is the end of the world. The speaker goes on to describe these individuals' disbelief that the world is ending; their lives are normal, so they don't think that anything is wrong. The final stanza describes an old man, the only person who believes that the world is ending.
Imagery and Figurative Language:
"A Song on the End of the World" is filled with vivid imagery that describes the beauty of everyday life.
The speaker says, "A fisherman mends a glimmering net." This is an example of visual imagery. This phrase creates a mental image, and the word "glimmering" gives the stanza and this descriptive section of the poem a positive connotation. The act of fixing the net also implies continuity and a preparation for the future. This positive feeling of continuity is one of the reasons why the people mentioned in the poem do not believe the world is ending.
Other examples of imagery appeal to the sense of sound. For example, the speaker describes, "Vegetable peddlers shout in the street." This quote is important because it demonstrates how busy life is.
The poem also contains examples of personification and symbolism: " A yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island, the voice of a violin lasts in the air and leads into a starry night." Here, a violin is being personified as something with a voice that is capable of leading. The "starry night" could be a metaphor for the future. This quote may be a symbol for human progress, which is important to the poem's main focus on the beauty of everyday life and consequent unlikeliness of the end of the world.
In the third stanza, the speaker says, "As long as rosy infants are born no one believes it is happening now." The birth of infants may symbolize rebirth and continuity. We associate the birth of babies with beginnings, rather than endings.
Tone:
Throughout the poem, the tone builds, starting very simply and adding levels of intensity. The tone of the first two stanzas is content and vibrant, describing the pleasant, lively everyday activities of humans and animals. During the third stanza, the tone of the poem becomes slightly mocking as the speaker shifts to describing people's disbelief that the world could be ending while they lived their normal lives. In the last stanza, the poem takes on slightly foreboding undertones as the speaker describes the would-be-prophet who does believe that the end of the world is occurring.
Theme:
The main theme of the poem is that the end of the world is entirely subjective. What seems like the end of the world for one person may have little to no effect on the life of another. Everything depends on perception. In the world of the prophet of the last stanza, the world may have been ending; however, this end had no effect on the world of the fisherman, the infant, or the other individuals mentioned in the first two stanzas. This concept can also be applied on a larger scale: even if life on earth ends, life will continue on somewhere else in the universe.
Other Elements:
Repetition of ideas within and between stanzas makes up a large part of this poem. Within stanzas, the speaker reiterates themes in multiple different ways. The first stanza deals with normal life activities; the normal states of bees, fishermen, porpoises, sparrows, and snakes are all addressed. The second stanza also contains a recurring theme, in this case continuity. All of the activities mentioned, from women walking through a field, to a drunkard becoming sleepy, to a boat nearing an island involve moving towards an end destination that has not yet been reached. In the third stanza, the speaker gives multiple similar reasons why people don't believe the end of the world is occurring, repeating the specific phrases "And those who," and "As long as." In the last stanza, the line, "There will be no other end of the world" is repeated. Finally, both the first and second stanzas begin with the line, "On the day the world ends." The theme of the poem deals with the idea of there being multiple worlds and perceptions of those worlds; the slightly varied reiteration of ideas may support this theme of the variety of life.
Imagery and Figurative Language:
"A Song on the End of the World" is filled with vivid imagery that describes the beauty of everyday life.
The speaker says, "A fisherman mends a glimmering net." This is an example of visual imagery. This phrase creates a mental image, and the word "glimmering" gives the stanza and this descriptive section of the poem a positive connotation. The act of fixing the net also implies continuity and a preparation for the future. This positive feeling of continuity is one of the reasons why the people mentioned in the poem do not believe the world is ending.
Other examples of imagery appeal to the sense of sound. For example, the speaker describes, "Vegetable peddlers shout in the street." This quote is important because it demonstrates how busy life is.
The poem also contains examples of personification and symbolism: " A yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island, the voice of a violin lasts in the air and leads into a starry night." Here, a violin is being personified as something with a voice that is capable of leading. The "starry night" could be a metaphor for the future. This quote may be a symbol for human progress, which is important to the poem's main focus on the beauty of everyday life and consequent unlikeliness of the end of the world.
In the third stanza, the speaker says, "As long as rosy infants are born no one believes it is happening now." The birth of infants may symbolize rebirth and continuity. We associate the birth of babies with beginnings, rather than endings.
Tone:
Throughout the poem, the tone builds, starting very simply and adding levels of intensity. The tone of the first two stanzas is content and vibrant, describing the pleasant, lively everyday activities of humans and animals. During the third stanza, the tone of the poem becomes slightly mocking as the speaker shifts to describing people's disbelief that the world could be ending while they lived their normal lives. In the last stanza, the poem takes on slightly foreboding undertones as the speaker describes the would-be-prophet who does believe that the end of the world is occurring.
Theme:
The main theme of the poem is that the end of the world is entirely subjective. What seems like the end of the world for one person may have little to no effect on the life of another. Everything depends on perception. In the world of the prophet of the last stanza, the world may have been ending; however, this end had no effect on the world of the fisherman, the infant, or the other individuals mentioned in the first two stanzas. This concept can also be applied on a larger scale: even if life on earth ends, life will continue on somewhere else in the universe.
Other Elements:
Repetition of ideas within and between stanzas makes up a large part of this poem. Within stanzas, the speaker reiterates themes in multiple different ways. The first stanza deals with normal life activities; the normal states of bees, fishermen, porpoises, sparrows, and snakes are all addressed. The second stanza also contains a recurring theme, in this case continuity. All of the activities mentioned, from women walking through a field, to a drunkard becoming sleepy, to a boat nearing an island involve moving towards an end destination that has not yet been reached. In the third stanza, the speaker gives multiple similar reasons why people don't believe the end of the world is occurring, repeating the specific phrases "And those who," and "As long as." In the last stanza, the line, "There will be no other end of the world" is repeated. Finally, both the first and second stanzas begin with the line, "On the day the world ends." The theme of the poem deals with the idea of there being multiple worlds and perceptions of those worlds; the slightly varied reiteration of ideas may support this theme of the variety of life.
About Czeslaw Milosz:
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| Czeslaw Milosz |
- Born June 30, 1911 in Seteiniai, Lithuania. His family had moved there to escape political upheaval in their home country of Poland
- Spent most of his childhood in tsarist Russia (his father worked there), then moved back to Poland after WWI.
- Made his writing debut in 1930, then published two volumes of poetry during the 1930s.
- Belonged to the catastrophist school of poetry; he wrote about the past, emphasizing the tragedy and irony. Milosz also believed that the biggest problem in society was humans’ lack of morals; this belief also made it into some of his poems.
- His writing, and the works of other catastrophist poets, foreshadowed the start of World War II.
- Became a member of the diplomatic committee of Poland’s communist government after WWII.
- Moved to America in 1960. He has been the professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California at Berkeley since 1961.
- In addition to writing poems, Milosz also translated many pieces of poetry
- Won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980.
- Before he won the Nobel Prize, Milosz’s poetry was suppressed by the communist government of Poland and widely unknown in the United States.
- Czeslaw Milosz died on August 14, 2004
Sources: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1980/milosz-bio.html and http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/czeslaw-milosz
I agree with your prediction about how the speaker might be god. The speaker goes through a lot of examples of what happens throughout by the world as it is about to die. Also it makes since because the poet Milosz was catholic. However, I also am open to another theory of who the speaker might be. On of the possibilities of the speaker's identity is that he is a songwriter and has a connection to some sort of muse or god. I believe this simply because of the title: "A Song on the End of the World." This title says that the poem is a song. It wouldn't really make since for god to write a song. So god may be speaking through the the speaker as some sort of warning.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said about the theme of the poem. Everything depends on the perspective of the person living it or speaking it. What one person considers survivable, someone else might not be able to live without. In the world, there will always be someone who is dying, or suffering, or grieving, but at the same moment, there is someone laughing or being born. Side by side, people are living separate lives, with their own, separate sorrows and joys. Because everyone in the world has different experiences, their outlook on life will also be different. Someone may look at a thunderstorm and see the world ending, while someone else might see the beauty in the lightning and the thunder- it all depends on perspective.
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