lethe

 

(lē'thē) , in Greek mythology, river of forgetfulness in Hades. The dead drank from Lethe upon their arrival in the underworld.

For the butterfly genus, see Lethe (genus).

The Greek Underworld
Residents:
Persephone Hades Minos Aeacus	Rhadamanthus Charon Cerberus
Geography:
Acheron Cocytus Tartarus Lethe Elysion	Styx Phlegethon Asphodel Meadows Erebus
Famous inmates:
Ixion Sisyphus	Tantalus The Titans
Related:
Greek mythology	Greek religion

In Classical Greek, Lethe (λήθη; lêthê) literally means "forgetfulness" or "concealment". It is related to the Greek word for "truth": a-lethe-ia (αλήθεια), meaning "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment". In Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the several rivers of Hades: those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. Lethe was also a naiad, the daughter of Eris ('Strife' in Hesiod's Theogony). The naiad Lethe is probably a separate personification of forgetfulness rather than a reference to the river which bears her name.

Role in religion and philosophy

Some ancient Greeks believed that souls were made to drink from the river before being reincarnated, so they would not remember their past lives. The Myth of Er at the end of Plato's Republic tells of the dead arriving at the "plain of Lethe", which the river Ameles ("careless") runs through.

A few mystery religions taught the existence of another river, the Mnemosyne; those who drank from the Mnemosyne would remember everything and attain omniscience. Initiates were taught that they would receive a choice of rivers to drink from after death, and to drink from Mnemosyne instead of Lethe. These two rivers are attested in several verse inscriptions on gold plates dating to the 4th century BC and onward, found at Thurii in Southern Italy and elsewhere throughout the Greek world.

There were rivers of Lethe and Mnemosyne at the oracular shrine of Trophonius in Boeotia, from which worshippers would drink before making oracular consultations with the god.

Real rivers

Amongst authors in Antiquity, the tiny Limia River near Xinzo de Limia in the province of Ourense in Galicia was said to have the same properties of memory loss as the legendary Lethe River. In 138 BC, the Roman general Decimus Junius Brutus sought to dispose of the myth, as it impeded his military campaigns in the area. He was said to have crossed the Limia and then called his soldiers on the other side, one by one, by name. The soldiers, astonished that their general remembered their names, crossed the river as well without fear. This act proved that the Limia was not as dangerous as the local myths described.

In Alaska a river which runs through the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is called River Lethe.

References to Lethe in later culture

In The Divine Comedy, the stream of Lethe flows to the centre of the earth from its surface, but its headwaters are located in the Earthly Paradise found at the top of the mountain of Purgatory.

In William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, Antony, on seeing the murderers' hands red with Caesar's blood, observes: "Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand,/Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy Lethe" (III.i.215). Additionally, the character of Sebastian refers to Lethe in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: "Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep; If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!" (IV.ii.61).

In John Keats' poem, "Ode on Melancholy", the first line begins "No, no! Go not to Lethe". In his Ode to a Nightingale the "Lethe-wards" are said to have sunk into the narrator and created a "drowsy numbness".

In chapter 4 of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth claims, "I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe."

Dr. William T.G. Morton, who first publicly demonstrated the use of ether as an anesthetic, called his ether "Letheon".

Charles Baudelaire's poem "Spleen" ends with the lines "II n'a su réchauffer ce cadavre hébété/Où coule au lieu de sang l'eau verte du Léthé" ("He failed to warm this dazed cadaver in whose veins/Flows the green water of Lethe in place of blood."). He also wrote a poem called "Le Léthé" ("Lethe"). Baudelaire also wrote a poem entitled "Le Lethe" in which an adored but cruel woman serves as a metaphor for the oblivion of the river Lethe.

In "The Scarlet Woman", a poem by African-American poet Fenton Johnson (1888-1958), a young woman resorts to prostitution in order to avoid starvation. The poem concludes with the lines "Now I can drink more gin than any man for miles around./Gin is better than all the water in Lethe."

C. S. Lewis refers to Lethe in The Great Divorce when he writes, “‘It is up there in the mountains, very cold and clear, between two green hills. A little like Lethe. When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works". The Spirit who talks about the fountain is describing Heaven to an artist, telling him that soon he will forget all ownership of his work.

In Samuel Beckett's radio play Embers, the main character Henry describes conversing with his dead wife: "that's what hell will be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead".

"Getting There", a 1962 poem by Sylvia Plath, ends with the lines "And I, stepping from this skin/Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces//Step up to you from from the black car of Lethe,/Pure as a baby."

The river Lethe is mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's poem "A Supermarket in California".

In Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love there is a reference to "Neolethe" (see the chapter entitled Counterpoint I), which is apparently a powerful sedative.

In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, the main character's name is Sethe, a psuedonym based on the idea of the power of water, particularly the motif that water can weather her past.

Billy Collins, in his poem "Forgetfulness", refers to "a dark mythological river/whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall".

In Tony Banks' first solo album, A Curious Feeling, where he tells the story of a man who makes some kind of pact with the devil and finishes by losing his memory, the ninth song is called "The Waters of Lethe".

In Sarah Ruhl's play Eurydice, all the shades must drink from Lethe and become like stones, speaking in their inaudible language and forgetting everything of the world. This river is a central theme of the play.

In composer Thomas Adès' String Quartet, "Arcadiana," Op. 12, "Lethe" is the title of the work's seventh and final movement.

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