Of Sphinx and Sparrows: The Apocalyptic Vision in Yeats’s “The Second Coming” and Milosz’s “A Song on the End of the World”

Hossein Nazari, Faezeh Dashtizad

Abstract


This paper critiques the contrasting apocalyptic visions in Yeats’s “The Second Coming” and Miłosz’s “A Song on the End of the World”. Taking Yeats’s poem as the epitome of modern apocalyptic vision, we can dissect the differences between the mainstream view of the apocalypse in this era and the marginal one in Miłosz’s poem, which are represented in the imagery each poet creates. Consequently, the juxtaposition of the two poems leads to a more profound understanding of the competing formulations of apocalypse in the early twentieth century, which is more heterogeneous in nature than the literature of the period may initially suggest.


Keywords


apocalyptic vision; imagery; W. B. Yeats; Czesław Miłosz; twentieth-century poetry

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2024.48.4.83-93
Date of publication: 2024-12-19 12:33:04
Date of submission: 2024-06-29 16:38:59


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