I remember childhood dreams and hauntings of ‘half-comprehended notions’: cold war threats of nuclear annhilation, and being told the Soviet Union was bombarding us with dangerous invisible rays, or that if you swallowed an apple pip a tree would grow out of your belly.
‘Of these death-white realms, formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive.’
Source: Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (London: Bounty Books, 2012 (1847)), p. 3
