Themes
Alienation
The theme of alienation is a pervasive one in
‘‘From the Rising of the Sun,’’ and Milosz
explores it in all its variations. The poet under-
scores the extreme isolation he experiences from
mankind, focusing on the religious, social, tem-
poral, and geographic sources of this sense of
disconnection. Throughout the poem he makes
reference to his sense of alienation from faithful
Christians. He fears that his investigations into
alternative philosophies and faiths have isolated
him from the his religious peers. He despairs that
he will be excluded from the final restoration of
mankind to its original glory with God due to his
inabilities to fully embrace his faith, due to his
difficulty in believing what he cannot rationally
understand. The poem also depicts the poet’s
yearning for the home he left behind in Lithua-
nia. He longs for the people and places he
remembers from long ago. Trying to capture a
sense of what he left behind, of the history of his
homeland, he constructs elaborately detailed
and lengthy lists, designed to offer at least a
glimpse into the lives of his native people. He
identifies in many ways with the people of Lith-
uania and Poland, as shown by his verses on the
old servant woman, Lisabeth. Yet he neverthe-
less is fully aware of his distance from them, in
terms of time and geography. In the last section
of the poem, Milosz emphasizes this distance by
reminding the reader that while much of the
poem depicts his onetime home in Eastern
Europe and how it existed years ago, he is in
fact writing from present-day California. He fur-
thermore implies that he is even isolated from
himself when he speaks of the unchanging con-
sciousness, which we may assume ishis, that will
not forgive.
Judgment and the Apocalypse
A number of religious issues are treated in
‘‘From the Rising of the Sun,’’ including sin
and the nature of God. The title of the poem
itself is taken from a line from the biblical book
of Psalms. The full verse is an urging to praise
God’s name from sunrise to sunset. One of the
most prominent of the poem’s religious features
is its repeated reference to both individual judg-
ment (God’s personal judgment against the
poet) and the final judgment of mankind, the
end of days, the apocalypse. While Milosz
expresses his quest for faith throughout the
course of the poem, he returns with some regu-
larity to the question of his ultimate fate, seem-
ing to doubt that he has been faithful enough to
achieve the ultimate union with God he claims to
believe in.
In the opening stanza of the poem, Milosz
refers to a red horse, a symbol taken from the
book of Revelation in its depiction of the apoc-
alypse. (One of four horses mentioned in Reve-
lation, the red horse and its rider are associated
with war, one of the indicators of the coming
apocalypse.) Also in the first section of the
poem, he speaks of the challenges that the man
who has lived a long life will face in beingTOPICS FOR
FURTHER
STUDY In ‘‘From the Rising of the Sun,’’ Milosz
refers to several faiths or philosophies that
deviate from the teachings of Christianity.
Research one of these systems of thought
and write an essay comparing it to the teach-
ings of modern-day Christianity.
Milosz speaks lovingly of the Lithuanian
people in his depictions of their lives, their
homes, their villages and towns, and their
countryside. Focusing on one or two aspects
of Lithuanian life and culture, create a pre-
sentation about Lithuanians, incorporating
visual elements, music, or food, for example.
A variety of political forces shaped the
development of the Lithuania that Milosz
describes in ‘‘From the Rising of the Sun.’’
Write a report on the twentieth-century wars
and occupations that plagued the country,
being sure to include a discussion of the
nation’s struggle for independence.
Milosz employs both verse and prose in
‘‘From the Rising of the Sun.’’ Write a
poem that emulates this unique structure.
Like Milosz’s poem, it may reflect on the
past and provide conjecture on the future.
Select themes that are representative of your
interests and concerns.FromtheRisingoftheSun