Citations:obnubilation

English citations of obnubilation and obnubilations

action of darkening or fact of being darkened

• 1610, John Healey (translator), Juan Luis Vives (author of commentary), S^t. Auguſtine, of the Citie of God: with the learned Comments of Io. Lod. Vives (first edition), book 3, chapter 15: “Of the liues and deaths of the Romaine Kings”, pages 127–128, note e:

  the partly meeting of the Sun and Moone depriues vs of the Suns light, and this is the Eclypſe of the Sun but the ſhade of the earth falling from yͤ ſuns place lineally vpon the moone, makes the moones eclipſe. So that neither can the Sunne bee Eclipſed but in the Moones change, and partile coniunction with him; neither can the Moone be eclipſed but at her ful, and in her fartheſt poſture from the ſunne: then is ſhe proſtitute to obnubilation.

• 1653, Edward Waterhouse, An humble apologie for learning and learned men, page 175:

  Let then others glory in their triumphs, and trophies, in their obnubilation of bodies coruscant, that they have brought fear upon Champions, forced contributions from the Herculesses of manhood; let them boast, their wills are laws, their names are renowned, and their sons shall be made Princes in all Lands, yet in spight of them, and their wrath, we of the bookish Tribe shall live to laugh their folly to scorn, who think any thing praise worthy which is not victorious and generous, not moderate and diffusively good: for as Saint Augustine sayes, Vertue must not follow glory, but glory vertue, as the more worthy; and therefore hath God given man wisdom, that by it he may guard himselfe against those harms which assault his frailty.

• 1819, Felix MacDonogh, The Hermit in London, London: Henry Colburn, volume II, page 133:

  Fog and sunshine, obnubilation and light.

• 1951, Abraham Moses Klein (author), Elizabeth A. Popham and Zailig Pollock (editors), The Second Scroll, Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press (2000), →ISBN, gloss dalid (ר): “The Three Judgments”, page 95:

  Do you now, under the penalties of this court, // Fulfill yours and let no dark // Obnubilations of salesmen dim the day // Lit by your contract, which is clear, as though it were // A lamp, make of Marouf.

• 1989, Charles Doyle, Richard Aldington: A Biography, Macmillan, chapter 11: “A Career as a Novelist, 1929–31”, page 146:

  But in 1931 these and other obnubilations (to use a favourite Latinism of Aldington’s) were over the horizon and he gave a set of proofs of The Colonel’s Daughter to Douglas, another going to the indigent but companionable MacGreevy.

(literally) veiling or concealment by clouds

• 1814 January 15th, “Foggiana” in The Spirit of the Public Journals for 1814: Being an Impartial Selection of the most ingenious Essays and Jeux d’Esprits that appear in the Newspapers and Other Publications, volume XVIII (1815), page 23:

  Homer, the father of the Poets, by these obnubilations, frequently rescues his heroes from the most imminent danger. Thus, in the third book of The Iliad, when Paris, defeated by Menelaus, is on the point of losing his life, Venus snatches him away in a fog: — // “Then, as once more he lifts the deadly dart, // In thirst of vengeance, at his rival’s heart, // The Queen of Love her fav’rite champion shrouds // (For Gods can all things) in a veil of clouds.”

(medicine) obscuration or clouding of the mind or faculties

• 1753 December 17th, John Rutty, A Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies (first edition, 1777) in The Life of Samuel Johnſon, LL.D. (first edition, 1791), aut. James Boswell, volume II, “1777. Ætat. 68.”, page 155:

  An hypochondriack obnubilation from wind and indigeſtion.

• 1803, Thomas Beddoes, Hygëia: or, Essays Moral and Medical, on the Causes Affecting the Personal State of Our Middling and Affluent Classes, volume III, essay ix, page 198:

  Dimness or obnubilation of sight.

• 1888 May, Granville Stanley Hall (editor), The American Journal of Psychology, volume I, № 3, Psychological Literature: Hypnotism, “Ueber die therapeutische Verwendung der Hypnose by Richard Schulz” (review), page 519:

  At the instant of the accident the patient lost consciousness for several hours, and afterwards lay for several days in a state of torpor or obnubilation, propitious for the efficacy of suggestion.

• 1892, Henry Power and Leonard William Sedgwick, The New Sydenham Society’s Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences: Based on Mayne’s Lexicon, volume IV, “Oblivio–Obstetrician”, s.v. ‘Obnubilaʹtion’:

  Obnubilaʹtion. (F. obnubilation; from L. obnubilo, to overcloud. I. obnubilazione; S. obnubilacion; G. Umwölking.) A dazzling of the eyes without giddiness, so that objects seem to be seen through a cloud, as in threatened fainting.

• 1960 June 27th–29th, Henri Fischgold and Betty A. Schwartz, “A clinical, electroencephalographic and polygraphic study of sleep in the human adult” in the Ciba Foundation Symposium on “The Nature of Sleep”, eds. G.E.W. Wolstenholme and Maeve O’Connor, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, pages 235–236:

  In man, we are beginning to realize that wakefulness continually fluctuates because of the afferent impulses arising from the environment and from reactions of attentiveness, tiredness or disinterest, and that there exist numerous electroencephalographic aspects of dissolution or lowering of the level of conscious awareness. These aspects are: // (a) Spontaneous sleep, of day or night, of the foetus, the newborn, the child, the adult and the aged. Over and above every other parameter age modifies the cyclic distribution of the stages of sleep. // (b) Sleep induced by hypnotic drugs (whether barbiturates or not), tranquillizers, etc. (induction and sustainment of sleep are different things). // (c) Hypersomnias, e.g. narcolepsy. // (d) Obnubilations, comas and stupors, each with its clinical and electroencephalographic characteristics. // (e) Akinetic mutism, myoclonic or not. // (f) General anaesthetics (volatile or soluble, barbituric or non-barbituric, pure or mixed, associated or not associated with muscle-relaxing drugs). Each chemical substance adds its own signature to the tracing, although only somatic and electroencephalographic reactivity appear to show the actual depth of the anaesthesia (Arfel, G. [1960.] Anesthésie, réanimation, p. 261. Paris: Flammarion). // (g) Ultra-short-acting, intravenously injected anaesthetics, which induce a particular state of easily reversible sleep. // (h) Profound hypothermia which, lowering the brain temperature to 8° or 10°, creates an “apparent death”.

• 1997 July, Juan F. Masa, Bartolomé R. Celli, Juan A. Riesco, Julio Sánchez de Cos, Carlos Disdier, and Agustín Sojo (authors), “Noninvasive Positive Pressure Ventilation and Not Oxygen May Prevent Overt Ventilatory Failure in Patients With Chest Wall Diseases” in Chest, volume CXII, № 1, Abstract, page 207:

  After 2 weeks of treatment, symptoms of dyspnea, morning headaches, and morning obnubilation improved significantly (p<0.05) in both groups of patients after NIPPV but not with oxygen.

something that obscures or causes confoundment, obfuscation

• 1999, Balachandra Rajan, Under Western Eyes: India from Milton to Macaulay, Durham/London: Duke University Press, afterword: “From Center to Circumference”, page 206:

  “Longing for form” is a phrase that needs to be reinscribed as we recall complaints about Hinduism’s formlessness; Lowes Dickinson cowering before the proliferations of temple sculpture; Forster’s Fielding returning with relief to “the Mediterranean harmony”; Yeats’s contrast between “calculation, number, measurement,” and “Asiatic vague immensities”; and Pound’s ugly invective about the “obnubilations” of Indian art.

• 2009, Chris J. Ackerley, Watt, Faber & Faber, →ISBN, Preface:

  The more distressing, then, that for the first six decades of its existence (as manuscript and book) the text of Watt has been a mess. The problem of error is crucial, for as Watt interrogates the foundations of rational inquiry, the distinctions between intended errors, authorial errors, mistakes introduced by publishers, changes of intention and other obnubilations loom all the larger. If no distinction can be drawn between deliberate and inadvertent error then all interpretation is fraught. To an extent, this will always be so with Watt, because its textual history is so complex; but a first scholarly step must be the determination of the best text possible (if not the best possible text).

• 2016, Roger Paulin, The Life of August Wilhelm Schlegel, Cosmopolitan of Art and Poetry, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, →ISBN, chapter 2: “Jena and Berlin (1795–1804)”, section 2.1: ‘Jena’, § 2.1.2: «Goethe and Schiller on the Attack: The Xenien», page 79:

  For all the good relations and the general tone of bonhomie, controversy was in the air. Already towards the end of 1795, Schiller was writing to Goethe of ‘times of feud’ and a ‘church militant’. They felt embattled. Neither Die Horen nor the first parts of Wilhelm Meister had been well enough received for Goethe’s satisfaction nor was this state of affairs to improve substantially. Excellence was not being given its due; German literary discourse was dominated by the ill-disposed, by mediocrities, by superannuated talents, by mere specialists. Schiller named them: Nicolai, Manso, Eschenburg, Ramdohr and tutti quanti. Philosophy was wreathed in Fichtean obnubilations. There were direct opponents, the hated Reichardt for instance, who had dared to remark ‘deficiencies’ in Die Horen, and there were those all-too-clever young men, the brothers Schlegel.