Literary notes about melancholy (AI summary)
In literature, the word "melancholy" often conveys a pervasive, introspective sadness that can define both character and setting. It is used to illustrate the inner struggles of individuals—capturing moods of quiet despair or reflective sorrow, as when a character is gently reassured in a moment of vulnerability [1] or when a mood of gentle despondency colors an entire narrative [2][3]. Beyond personal emotion, melancholy frequently permeates landscapes and atmospheres, lending a somber tone to twilight scenes or abandoned fields that echo lost beauty and fading joy [4][5]. In some works, the term even takes on a metaphorical role, representing the weight of life’s transient pleasures and enduring regrets, thereby deepening the themes of introspection and existential reflection [6][7][8].
- But just as Vautrin left him, Father Goriot came up and said in his ear, “You look melancholy, my boy; I will cheer you up.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac - “I see I have the means of fretting him out of his melancholy for some time to come.”
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - But he is generally melancholy and despairing; and sometimes he gnashes his teeth, as if impatient of the weight of woes that oppresses him.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - He especially dreaded the darkness of the evening, the melancholy feeling of the twilight.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant - The evening grew more dull every moment, and a melancholy wind sounded through the deserted fields, like a distant giant whistling for his house-dog.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens - It opened with the melancholy reflection that, in the lives of mortals the best days are the first to flee.
— from My Ántonia by Willa Cather - For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me.
— from Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville - Panurge, whose belly thought his throat cut, backed the motion presently, and asked for a pill to purge melancholy.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
