Literary notes about Inmost (AI summary)
The term "inmost" is employed across literature to evoke a sense of deep, hidden essence, whether referring to the internal landscape of the human soul, the core of one's thoughts, or even physical depths in architecture and nature. In many works, it connotes the most private emotional or intellectual space—“the inmost soul” or “inmost heart” serves as a metaphor for that secret, unassailable core, as seen in examples where characters reveal their deepest feelings or states of being ([1], [2], [3]). In philosophical and reflective texts, "inmost" is used to denote the kernel of an idea or the underlying truth of a concept ([4], [5], [6]), while in more descriptive or spatial contexts, it illustrates the concealed recesses of structures or landscapes ([7], [8], [9]). This dual application highlights the word's versatility in literature as both a metaphorical journey into personal introspection and a literal descent into hidden spaces, imbuing narratives with emotional depth and a sense of mystery.
- I gnashed my teeth and ground them together, uttering a groan that came from my inmost soul.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - We shall exist; we shall see each other again; we shall behold your mother; I shall behold her, and expose to her my inmost heart.
— from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - for the first time in my existence, I felt rapture glow within my inmost soul.
— from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "When trying to explain the inmost nature of mythology," he says, "I called it a disease of Language rather than of Thought....
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim - It is according to its inmost meaning quite comprehensible to the healthy understanding, and speaks a language quite intelligible to it.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer - It is the inmost nature, the kernel, of every particular thing, and also of the whole.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer - [742] When we above the inmost Cloister stood 40 Of Malebolge, and discerned the crew Of such as there compose the Brotherhood, [743]
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri - We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe - In the inmost bight, there is but a narrow neck of land dividing the fjord from the West sea.
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson
