Literary notes about obscure (AI summary)
In literature, "obscure" is a multifaceted term used to evoke a sense of ambiguity, mystery, and complexity. Authors employ it to describe ideas, landscapes, or origins that are not immediately clear or are deliberately hidden, thereby inviting readers to explore deeper meanings ([1], [2], [3]). It also serves to characterize remote or unrecognized backgrounds, as when a character’s lineage or social status is rendered indistinct and shadowy ([4], [5]), or to depict physical settings shrouded in mist or darkness that enhance an atmosphere of foreboding ([6], [7]). Moreover, "obscure" can denote the difficulty of fully grasping abstract or convoluted subjects, whether in philosophical discourse or historical analysis ([8], [9], [10]). In each instance, its application enriches the text by layering subtle uncertainty and inviting further contemplation.
- I am trying to be as lucid as I can in presenting this obscure matter to you without details.”
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad - How can reason and intelligence, which we make use of, to arrive by obscure at apparent things; seeing that nothing is obscure to him?
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne - At the bottom of her heart was some obscure idea that alone interested her, but she could not get clear sight of it.
— from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy - On the contrary, to be descended from obscure Parentage, is Dishonourable.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes - Thomas St. Clair, youngest son of the Earl of Rossville, marries a Miss Sarah Black, a girl of humble and obscure birth.
— from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Baron Alfred Tennyson Tennyson - "You won't see me, you'll be crying so hard that the thick fog round you will obscure the prospect.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - The forest was obscure around them, and creaked with a blast that was passing through it.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - I touch slightly on these obscure and personal squabbles.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - The imagination passes easily from obscure to lively ideas, but with difficulty from lively to obscure.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - Thereby we enter upon one of the most important but unfortunately one of the most obscure domains of psychoanalysis.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
