MILOSZ AND ELIJAH

The article analyses Czeslawa Milosza one of the most recognisable piece - Piosenka o koricu Swiata (A Song on the End of the World). The poem's interpretation is directed on the context of the Apocalypse and Christian eschatology. The Jewish tradition, which belongs to omitted perspectives of analysis, proves vital due to the poet's private contacts with and interests in Judaism and due to the subject referring to the end of the world. In Milosz's poem the point of reference is the Biblical prophet Elijah, a messianic figure signalling the final days. A more insightful reading of the two pieces - the Biblical and the poetic one - supported by exegesis leads to a conviction of a relation between the scene of Elijah's expecting death and Czeslaw Milosz's lyrical situation of the poem.