Literary notes about stygian (AI summary)
The word "Stygian" is employed to evoke oppressive darkness and a sense of otherworldliness, often linking the material with mythic or infernal realms. Literary works imbue it with richly symbolic overtones: from evocations of an unyielding, shadowed landscape in Milton’s epic ([1]) and Homer’s tales of spectral gloom ([2], [3], [4]), to depictions of tangible, almost suffocating darkness in settings like nebulous warehouses or desolate natural environs ([5], [6]). It frequently serves as a metaphor for moral and existential despair—suggesting not only physical obscurity but also a plunge into the depths of human desolation ([7]). Thus, "Stygian" functions as a potent device, uniting imagery of eternal night with the haunting allure of a mythic, underworld passage.
- Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing, Escap’t the Stygian Pool, though long detain’d
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton - Lo! Hector rises from the Stygian shades!
— from The Iliad by Homer - Or, haply perish'd on some distant coast, In stygian gloom he glides, a pensive ghost!
— from The Odyssey by Homer - Once was my sire, though now, for ever lost, In Stygian gloom he glides a pensive ghost!
— from The Odyssey by Homer - The night was black outside; a cool drizzle blew against his face as he peered into the Stygian darkness.
— from Her Weight in Gold by George Barr McCutcheon - A cloud bank floated across the moon, plunging the woods into Stygian darkness.
— from The Plunderer by Henry Oyen - But what instinct is there to guide the human soul that, quickened by unselfish love, is yet walled in by the Stygian darkness of an ignorant life?
— from The Blue Goose by Frank Lewis Nason
