Literary notes about lethargy (AI summary)
Lethargy in literature often conveys a state of deep-seated physical and mental sluggishness, a malaise that can envelop an individual or even an entire community. It appears as a description of a slowing of thought and movement—illustrated when intellect gives way to indolence [1] or when one is overcome by a heaviness that can only be roused by a dramatic event [2, 3]. At times, this state is portrayed as temporary, with characters emerging from their stupor through an external stimulus or inner resolve [4, 5, 6]. In other instances, lethargy is used metaphorically to comment on societal or moral inertia, highlighting a widespread lack of ambition or vitality [7, 8, 9].
- The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence.
— from The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn by William Benjamin Smith - To deal candidly, I must own, that this intelligence roused me from a lethargy of grief which had begun to overpower my faculties.
— from The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete by T. Smollett - He passed days and nights in a continued lethargy.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The officers all seemed to awaken from their lethargy, their looks brightened, and they began to talk.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant - That proposal, unexpectedly, roused Linton from his lethargy, and threw him into a strange state of agitation.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - The sight roused him from his lethargy, for he had not seen any thing that looked like a vessel since the day he parted with [Pg 270] Colonel Raybone.
— from Watch and Wait; or, The Young Fugitives by Oliver Optic - Oh! splendid lethargy of the real overwhelmed by the ideal.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - And he could not understand the lethargy, the lack of ambition, the indifference of our young men to our marvelous possibilities.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden - A silent consternation prevailed in the assembly, till a senator, of the name and family of Trajan, awakened his brethren from their fatal lethargy.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
