Literary notes about elysian (AI summary)
In literature, “elysian” is often used to evoke an image of a paradisiacal realm—a space of sublime beauty and transcendent peace, whether in mythological, poetic, or even modern social contexts. Authors have drawn on its rich associations with the blessed afterlife and idealized landscapes to contrast their subjects with more sordid or mundane realities, as seen when Virgil’s depiction of heroic afterlife is conjured to offer a tone of solemn splendor [1, 2]. At times, the term becomes a metaphor for an elevated state of mind or creative inspiration, suggesting that art and literature themselves can function as a kind of Elysium [3, 4]. Whether illustrating a literal paradise for heroes and souls [5, 6, 7] or serving as an allegory for transcendent experience in everyday life [8, 9], “elysian” enriches the text by infusing it with an aura of otherworldly grace and eternal bliss.
- Ay, sir; methinks the Hell of Virgil—and his Elysian Fields are examples of a high, solemn, and beautiful Poetry.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849 by Various - All have their manes, and those manes bear: The few, so cleans’d, to these abodes repair, And breathe, in ample fields, the soft Elysian air.
— from The Aeneid by Virgil - Thus, then, he had come back, full of Elysian dreams, to his Sophy,—his Enchanted Princess.
— from What Will He Do with It? — Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron - Can any couch be more delectable than that amidst the Elysian leaves of Books?
— from The Book-lover: A Guide to the Best Reading by James Baldwin - "The Gods have decreed thou shalt not die, O Menelaus, but shalt dwell in the Elysian Plain, at the ends of the earth."
— from Homer's OdysseyA Commentary by Denton Jaques Snider - 566: “The deathless gods will convey thee to the Elysian plain and the world’s end ... where life is easiest for men.
— from Milton's Comus by John Milton - As for your own end, Menelaus, you shall not die in Argos, but the gods will take you to the Elysian plain, which is at the ends of the world.
— from The Odyssey by Homer - Proletarians for the most part wish, chinch-bug fashion, to crawl into the Elysian fields now occupied by the hated capitalists.
— from The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study by Everett Dean Martin - The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
