Literary notes about Crepuscular (AI summary)
Writers often use "crepuscular" to evoke an atmosphere of dim, shifting light and the delicate boundary between day and night. It can describe actual twilight conditions—a landscape cloaked in silver radiance or corridors bathed in a mysterious glow ([1], [2], [3])—and is equally employed to capture the elusive habits of creatures active at dawn or dusk ([4], [5]). In some works, the adjective expands beyond physical descriptions to convey abstract moods or mental states, suggesting a twilight of thought or a subdued, almost spectral quality in human experience ([6], [7]). This duality of meaning allows the term to serve as a bridge between the tangible and the metaphorical in literary narratives ([8], [9]).
- When from their tops the trees seemed streaming showers Of slender silver, cool, crepuscular, And like a nebulous radiance shone afar.—
— from The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 4 (of 5) Poems of mystery and of myth and romance by Madison Julius Cawein - In the transparent atmosphere there still flitted beams of crepuscular light.
— from The Triumph of Death by Gabriele D'Annunzio - The blood-red ribbon below the rainy clouds had faded and shrunk to a filament of pale olive that gave forth a weird, crepuscular glimmer.
— from Belford's Magazine, Vol II, No. 10, March 1889 by Various - Their habits are crepuscular if not nocturnal, and Fayrer does not state positively that they or any of the Indian Crotalidæ are viviparous.
— from Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life by Catherine Cooper Hopley - These Petrels are chiefly crepuscular or nocturnal in their habits, and during the daytime not a bird will be seen.
— from Among the Birds in Northern Shires by Charles Dixon - It is blended twilight of intellect and sensation; it is the crepuscular of thought.
— from The Life of Francis Thompson by Everard Meynell - There is indeed something infinitely charming in the crepuscular moments of the human mind.
— from Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series by John Addington Symonds - The crepuscular light of morning was not very different from the darkness of night, but it brought his senses back to him sluggishly.
— from The Empty Sack by Basil King - Rabbits and hares are crepuscular and possibly more nocturnal than diurnal.
— from A Synopsis of the North American Lagomorpha by E. Raymond (Eugene Raymond) Hall
