Literary notes about keenness (AI summary)
The word "keenness" in literature is employed to evoke both literal and figurative sharpness, capturing physical intensity and acute mental or emotional perception. Authors use it to describe the piercing quality of natural elements and sensations, as when the wind is compared to a knife’s edge (e.g., [1]), or the clarity of sight is likened to that of a falcon’s vision (e.g., [2]). At the same time, it often conveys the incisiveness of thought or emotion, be it the fervor of desire ([3]), the brilliant clarity of intellectual insight ([4], [5]), or the bittersweet edge of deep feeling ([6], [7]). In each instance, "keenness" serves as a versatile device that intensifies the reader’s experience of both the external world and the inner landscape of the character.
- The wind cut with the keenness of a knife.
— from The Rainbow Trail by Zane Grey - Heimdall, like Argus, was gifted with marvellous keenness of sight, which enabled him to see a hundred miles off as plainly by night as by day.
— from Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas by H. A. Guerber - It was equal only to the keenness of my desire to be alone with myself.
— from On Love by Stendhal - The eyes were not specially remarkable, though there was a suggestion of intellectual keenness in them.
— from The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2 by Cook, Edward Tyas, Sir - Goethe has experienced its effect with unparalleled keenness.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross - I cannot describe the keenness, the burning and intolerable bitterness, of my sensation.
— from St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century by William Godwin - At the same time, it cannot for a moment be denied that keenness of moral, and of ćsthetic perception, act and react upon one another.
— from The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) by George Tyrrell
