Literary notes about foreboding (AI summary)
The word "foreboding" is employed in literature to evoke an atmosphere of impending disaster or inner dread. Authors use it both as a marker of external omens, such as in ancient epic moods where a dark cloud signals imminent evil ([1], [2]), and as an internal state of apprehensive sorrow or intuitive warning felt by a character, as in the introspective voices of [3] and [4]. It serves as a tool to heighten tension by transforming ordinary moments into precursors of calamity, as seen when Zarathustra’s spirit is touched by an ominous premonition ([5]) or when a character’s very perception of the future is marred by a persistent sense of impending misfortune ([6], [7]). This multifaceted usage allows the term to suggest both literal and metaphorical darkness that shadows coming events.
- Our war-chariots were suddenly ablaze, and all their flagstaffs fell down foreboding evil unto the Bharatas.
— from The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 - The foreboding cloud blackened the skies.
— from Henry IV, Makers of History by John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott - I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 by Edgar Allan Poe - But even at that moment he had a dim foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also not normal.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Thus did Zarathustra hear a soothsayer speak; and the foreboding touched his heart and transformed him.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - I had a foreboding that that stain would deprive me of nine-tenths of my personal dignity.
— from Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - I felt some secret foreboding that it would, one day, be to me the scene of some happiness or misery.
— from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
