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Literary notes about PHANTOM (AI summary)

The term “phantom” in literature often serves as a multifaceted symbol, evoking both tangible specters and abstract, elusive qualities. It can denote a literal ghostly figure whose presence provokes fear, mystery, or melancholy—as in characters who move silently or vanish into darkness [1][2]—while also representing intangible ideas such as lost ideals, haunting memories, or distorted perceptions of reality [3][4]. In some works, “phantom” is a personified notion that pursues or confronts protagonists, embodying not only supernatural dread but also the emotional residue of the past [5][6]. This dual nature allows authors to blur the boundaries between external hauntings and internal struggles, making the phantom both a physical apparition and a metaphor for intangible remnants that persist despite the passage of time [7][8].
  1. “A kind of black phantom appeared and raised her veil as soon as Jean had left the room.
    — from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant
  2. The phantom said; then vanish'd from his sight, Resolves to air, and mixes with the night.
    — from The Iliad by Homer
  3. Furthermore, art put before us a mere phantom of the good.
    — from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
  4. and so all that had happened to him the day before was again a phantom exaggerated by his sick and overstrained imagination.
    — from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  5. my elder brothers born in these later years?' pursued the Phantom.
    — from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
  6. And bending above the grave in passionate grief, the Haunted Man beheld the phantom of the previous night.
    — from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte
  7. Here the fluttering phantom of flying Aeneas darts and hides itself.
    — from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil
  8. During the watches of the night there closes upon him this phantom of Fear, with its presage of Death.
    — from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

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