Czaykowski, Bogdan, ‘‘Czeslaw Milosz,’’ inDictionary of
Literary Biography, Vol. 215,Twentieth-Century Eastern
European Writers, First Series, edited by Steven Serafin,
The Gale Group, 1999, pp. 236–49.
Driscoll, Jeremy, ‘‘The Witness of Czeslaw Milosz,’’ in
First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public
Life, Vol. 147, November 2004, pp. 28–33.
Fiut, Aleksander,The Eternal Moment: The Poetry of
Czeslaw Milosz, translated by Theodosia S. Robertson,
University of California Press, 1990, pp. 6–36, 37–62.
Gomori, George, Obituary of Czeslaw Milosz, inInde-
pendent, August 16, 2004, http://news.independent.
co.uk/people/obituaries/article39034.ece (accessed Feb-
ruary 14, 2008).
Milosz, Czeslaw, ‘‘From the Rising of the Sun,’’ inNew and
Collected Poems, 1931–2001, Ecco, 2001, pp. 278–331.
Mozejko, Edward, ‘‘Between the Universals of Moral
Sensibility and Historical Consciousness: Notes on the
Writings of Czeslaw Milosz,’’ inBetween Anxiety and
Hope: The Poetry and Writing of Czeslaw Milosz, edited
by Edward Mozejko, University of Alberta Press, 1988,
pp. 1–29.
Nathan, Leonard, and Arthur Quinn,The Poet’s Work:
An Introduction to Czeslaw Milosz, Harvard University
Press, 1991, pp. 99–154.
Further Reading
Maciuszko, Jerry J., ‘‘The Moral Aspect of Czeslaw
Milosz’s Creativity,’’ inWorld Literature Today, Vol.
73, No. 4, Autumn 1999, p. 675.
Much of Milosz’s poetry, including ‘‘From the
Rising of the Sun,’’ is concerned with crisis,
such as a crisis of faith or the crises inflicted
on Milosz’s homeland by warfare. Maciuszko
explores the moral attitude that informs the
catastrophism (the focus on crises) of Milosz’s
work.
Royal, Robert, ‘‘The Ecstatic Pessimist,’’ inWilson Quar-
terly, Vol. 29, No. 1, Winter 2005, pp. 72–83.
Royal contends that in his poetry, Milosz does
not retreat from the horrors he witnessed in his
life, but neither does he express an attitude of
bleakness. Rather, Royal argues, Milosz uses
his painful experiences as a source of insight.
Smoley, Richard,Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of
Gnosticism, HarperOne, 2006.
Gnosticismintrigued Milosz, and hementionsin
‘‘From the Rising of the Sun’’ how the tempta-
tion of this school of thought, along with those
of similar faiths, perhaps poisoned him against
his Catholic faith. Smoley traces the roots of
Gnosticism from its origins and describes its
modern depiction in books and film.
Wat, Aleksander,My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish
Intellectual, translated by Richard Lourie and introduced
by Czeslaw Milosz, New York Review Books, 2003.
Wat, a contemporary of Milosz, was an
acclaimed Polish poet who lived in Poland during
the Nazi and Soviet occupations; he remained in
Poland longer than Milosz and experienced to a
more extensive degree the Soviet oppression that
possessed Poland following World War II. His
recollections of the Nazi and Soviet occupations
offer a detailed historical framework for under-
standing what Milosz endured as well as what he
escaped. Portions of the work are based on inter-
views between Wat and Milosz.From the Rising of the Sun