Literary notes about eddy (AI summary)
In literature, "eddy" is employed with remarkable versatility, serving both as a literal term for swirling currents and as a rich metaphor for complex inner states or social phenomena. Authors describe natural eddies as swirling disturbances in water or air – think of the dust settling after an eddy of wind [1] or the swirling mass of water creating a chaotic current that draws objects along [2, 3, 4, 5]. At the same time, it transforms into a symbolic image that conveys the turbulence of the mind or the disruption within society, as in the portrayal of a dry leaf imprisoned in an eddy of wind that mirrors an inner state of doubt [6] or the depiction of a collective human mind caught in an eddy that blurs individual identity [7]. Other texts expand its metaphorical scope further, likening the unpredictable shifts of fate or social dynamics to an "eddy of equality" [8] or even a "side eddy of fashions" that diverts popular trends [9]. In each instance—from natural descriptions [10, 11] to abstract human experiences—the term enriches the narrative by concentrating on the interplay between force, movement, and the ever-changing boundaries between calm and chaos.
- Silence followed, as dust settles after an eddy of wind.
— from The Trial of Callista Blake by Edgar Pangborn - The surface was smooth as glass, and the eddy occasioned by his sinking was scarcely visible.
— from Arthur Mervyn; Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 by Charles Brockden Brown - They saw nothing except a strong eddy breaking three cable lengths out, as if those sheets of water had been violently churned.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne - There was a slight eddy there and the surface of the water was flecked with bits of white foam which came from the rapids just above.
— from Cruisings in the CascadesA Narrative of Travel, Exploration, Amateur Photography,Hunting, and Fishing by G. O. (George O.) Shields - Quivering violently, its tail was creating a considerable eddy.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne - I thought of a dry leaf imprisoned in an eddy of wind, while a mysterious apprehension, a load of indefinite doubt, weighed me down in my chair.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad - Every mind being drawn into the same eddy, the individual type nearly confounds itself with that of the race.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim - This displacement, which places the “elegant” name on the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Jane and Josie both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side eddy of fashions.
— from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery - It was like the wind following the eddy into Lookout Cavern.
— from The Best Short Stories of 1917, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story - There is a fierce eddy between the wharf and the house.
— from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
