Meaning of de profundis | Babel Free

Definitions

From deep feelings of misery or despair.

not-comparable

Examples

“Carts go along the streets; full of stript human corpses, thrown pell-mell; limbs sticking up: --seest thou that cold Hand sticking up, through the heaped embrace of brother corpses, in its yellow paleness, in its cold rigor; the palm opened towards Heaven, as if in dumb prayer, in expostulation de profundis, Take pity on the Sons of Men !”

“God can only be known de profundis.”

“They are acclamations de profundis, pilgrim odes of those who once again "lift their eyes unto the mountains" (Psalm 120 [121] : 1), trusting that "they who sow in tears shall reap in joy" (Psalm 125 [126] : 5),”

“Anti-Climacus culminates a little polemic against fatalism by speaking of prayer, particularly prayer in extremis, when all seems lost, or prayer de profundis, out of the depths of desperation, and just here he comes the closest to identifying God outright with possibility.”

“... “turned back to the Indians, it is the saving gesture—but a gesture of despair. ... the ground to confront de profundis the inevitability and the reality of one's own despair (“All have to come from under and through a dead layer” [Williams 213]) .”

CEFR level