Literary notes about Intoxicated (AI summary)
The term intoxicated in literature spans a wide spectrum of meaning, functioning both as a literal description of drunkenness and as a metaphor for being overwhelmed by powerful emotions or states of mind. In some contexts, it denotes the physical effects of alcohol, where a character’s staggered walk or unsteady behavior vividly paints a picture of inebriation ([1], [2], [3]). In other instances, the word is used metaphorically to symbolize being overwhelmed by positive forces such as love, beauty, or triumph—as when one is described as intoxicated with love or success, suggesting an emotional rapture that transcends ordinary perception ([4], [5], [6], [7]). The dual use of the term thereby enriches the narrative, allowing authors to evoke both the vulnerabilities of human frailty and the exhilaration of transcendent experiences ([8], [9]).
- What had attracted their attention was that the goodman was walking in a zig-zag, as though he were intoxicated.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - They all drank copiously until they were intoxicated.
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. Werner - Next morning he feels uneasy and intoxicated, as if he had taken ganja, and remains in this condition all day.
— from Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Edgar Thurston - 'No, Sir; admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgement and friendship like being enlivened.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson by James Boswell - He understood, too, that the old man had left the room intoxicated with his own success.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - She came; I saw her; I was intoxicated with love without an object; this intoxication fascinated my eyes; the object fixed itself upon her.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson - A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally weary, fatally intoxicated sadness, which spake with yawning mouth.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - While speaking I became intoxicated with my own ideas.
— from The History of a Crime by Victor Hugo
