Literary notes about riven (AI summary)
The word “riven” is deployed to evoke a powerful sense of something being violently split apart, whether it be the physical world or the inner landscape of human emotions. Poets and prose writers alike use it to describe the literal tearing of nature—mountains cleaved by rock-slides and walls shattered by calamity, as in vivid portrayals of craggy landscapes and broken structures [1], [2], [3]—while simultaneously applying it to the human condition, where hearts or souls are depicted as torn by grief, conflict, or passion [4], [5], [6]. This dual usage enriches the imagery, making the reader feel both the raw force of nature and the profound impact of emotional rupture, thereby imbuing the work with a drama that is as palpable as it is memorable [7], [8].
- 10 And on the riven gully’s very brow Lay spread at large the Cretan Infamy
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri - The mountain crests riven by rock-slides roll thundering downward And wandering rivers, to rivulets shrunk, writhed no longer Familiar marges between.
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter - Earthquakes have riven the mountain, splitting its sides and opening deep crevasses , which must be leapt or circumvented.
— from The Hawaiian Archipelago by Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy) Bird - When grief brings back the joy that was mine own, I would the heart from out my breast were riven.
— from French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France by Marie, de France, active 12th century - Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?
— from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Baron George Gordon Byron Byron - what should I do; when all my life's hope was thus torn by the roots out of my riven, outraged heart?
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë - The riven masts had gone by the board, leaks had been sprung in every direction, and the water, which rushed in, gained upon us rapidly.
— from Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss - It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë
