Literary notes about tempestuous (AI summary)
In literature, "tempestuous" is deployed to evoke images of wild energy and emotional storminess, coloring both natural phenomena and internal human states. It often conjures the violent, dynamic qualities of nature, as seen when massive seas are described as “fierce as the wild tempestuous sea” ([1]) or when life itself is likened to a barque tossed by “tempestuous waves” ([2]). The term equally captures the intensity of human passion and turmoil, characterizing impulsive moods and fervent actions that define personal struggle and historical upheaval ([3], [4]). Its versatile use not only enriches vivid descriptions of chaotic physical weather but also symbolizes the overwhelming, sometimes destructive, forces that propel characters into extraordinary, dramatic circumstances ([5]).
- Fierce as the wild tempestuous sea, What terror had his wrath for thee, Though death in every threatening form, And woe and torment, urged the storm?
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki - So much has this been so that my life has, throughout, resembled a barque tossed by tempestuous waves, a barque driven at the mercy of the winds.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol - I recognise that youthfulness, that liability to violent, tempestuous impulses.
— from The possessed : by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - There may exist certain critical and tempestuous conjunctures of the State, in which a poll tax may become an inestimable resource.
— from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and James Madison - How many magnificent projects of vengeance she conceives by the light of the flashes which her tempestuous passion casts over her mind against Mme.
— from The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet
