Literary notes about distant (AI summary)
The word "distant" in literature is a versatile term that writers use to evoke both physical remoteness and a sense of emotional or temporal separation. It can describe the cool, detached demeanor of characters, as seen when friends become "cool and distant" ([1]), or the abstract realm of memory and thought, where one paces while contemplating "distant things and persons" ([2]). At times, it pinpoints specific geographical remoteness, such as a volcano from a bygone era ([3]) or measures an expanse in detailed scientific observation ([4]). Equally, "distant" captures a psychological focus, as when a character's fixed gaze lands on a spot far removed from immediate concerns ([5]). This layered use enriches narrative landscapes, bridging the tangible with the ethereal.
- Many of their friends fell away entirely, and the rest became cool and distant.
— from The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories by Mark Twain - I begin my promenade—thinking of all kinds of distant things and persons, and of nothing near—and pace up and down for half-an-hour.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens - At this single point in the interior there has been, in some far distant age, a great, sudden volcanic upheaval.
— from The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle - He says, that the Nile is distant from the Arabian Gulf towards the west 1000 stadia, and that it resembles (in its course) the letter N reversed.
— from The Geography of Strabo, Volume 3 (of 3) by Strabo - In Siddhartha's face he saw no trembling, his eyes were fixed on a distant spot.
— from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
