Literary notes about Loathing (AI summary)
In literature, loathing is frequently employed to convey a deep and multifaceted emotional repulsion—a state that can range from moral disgust to a visceral, physical reaction. Philosophers and novelists alike use the term to articulate a denial of everything corrupt or base, as seen when Nietzsche muses on our "loathing of dirt" provoking self-neglect [1] and again when he speaks of renouncing that which incites a profound inner rejection [2, 3]. At times, loathing emerges as a sudden, almost bodily sensation—a feeling akin to the onset of sea-sickness [4] or manifesting in the shuddering revulsion that characters experience in the midst of personal and societal decay [5, 6]. In other passages, loathing is intermingled with tenderness or unexpected moral introspection, emphasizing its capacity to articulate the darkest shadows in human nature and emotion [7, 8, 9].
- Our loathing of dirt may be so great as to prevent our cleaning ourselves—"justifying" ourselves.
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - All loathing did I once vow to renounce: then did ye change my nigh ones and nearest ones into ulcerations.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - — “Thine old sickness seizeth thee,” said here the king on the left, “thy loathing seizeth thee, my poor brother.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - Then came a sort of loathing, like the first stage of sea-sickness, and a wild desire to be free from something—I knew not what.
— from Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker - But there was no love in my own heart, nothing but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken Lucy’s shape without her soul.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker - Raskolnikov whispered with loathing and contempt, as though he did not want to speak aloud.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - “Is it loathing for my father's house?” he wondered.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - This was a feeling of loathing for something—whether for Alexey Alexandrovitch, or for himself, or for the whole world, he could not have said.
— from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy - Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
