River Lethe in popular culture
Encyclopedia
In Classical Greek, Lethe (Λήθη; lɛː́tʰɛː, ˈliθi) literally means "forgetfulness" or "concealment" and is related to the Greek word for "truth": a-lethe-ia (αλήθεια), meaning "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment". The River Lethe
in Greek Mythology has appeared many times in popular culture since the times of ancient Greece.
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
. Souls about to enter Heaven
drink from it to forget their sins.
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".
The fourth stanza of the fourth canto of Byron's "Don Juan
" reads:
In his poem "The Sleeper
," Edgar Allan Poe
describes a 'sleeping' "universal valley" that includes a Lethe-like body of water.
Charles Baudelaire
's poem "Spleen
" ends with the lines
French Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine
refers to the Lethe river in "Le Vallon" (The Vale)
In Hymn to Proserpine
(1866) by Algernon Charles Swinburne
, the line "We have drunken of things Lethean..." laments the decline of pagan tradition and beliefs in ancient Rome following the endorsement of Christianity as the official religion.
The river is also mentioned in at least one of the poems of Victorian classicist and poet A.E. Housman (XXIII from More Poems).
Here the role of the Lethe as the final barrier to be crossed before reaching Elysium is invoked (NB "Lethe" is better rhyme for "ferry" than is "Stix") and the poem as a whole seems to reflect the associations of the Lethe with forgetfulness and escape from ones former life.
The Edna St. Vincent Millay
poem "Lethe
" describes the river as
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
Sylvia Plath
has alluded to Lethe in multiple poems, particularly in those written for Ariel. For example, both "Amnesiac" (21 October 1962) and "Getting There" (6 November 1962) reference the river: "Getting There" ends with the lines
while the final stanza of "Amnesiac" ends with
The river Lethe is mentioned in Allen Ginsberg
's poem "A Supermarket in California
".
Billy Collins
, in his poem "Forgetfulness", refers to
in "Sonnet V: To the River Downs" Charlotte Smith
asks the river Lethe for forgetfulness:
Also mentioned in Byron's poem "Remember Thee! Remember Thee!".
In the Aeneid by Vergil, in book 6 Aeneas sees the future Roman heroes drinking from the River Lethe. "The drink the soothing fluid and long forgetfullness"
In chapter 4 of Nathaniel Hawthorne
's novel, The Scarlet Letter
, Roger Chillingworth claims, "I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe."
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 pseudonym based on the idea of the power of water, particularly the motif that water can weather her past.
In Bram Stoker
's Dracula, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing states to Lucy "It smell so like the waters of Lethe..."(Stoker, 192) talking about the garlic which he was going to place around her room so the Dracula would not suck her blood.
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 the volume, Swann's Way, of Marcel Proust
's novel, À la recherche du temps perdu
(In Search of Lost Time), the narrator comments, as he recollects a seemingly lost memory, "...trying to remember, feeling deep within myself a tract of soil reclaimed from the waters of Lethe slowly drying until the buildings rise on it again;"
The unnamed narrator of Sasha Sokolov's first novel, A School for Fools
, has a significant habit of referring to the river running through his neighborhood in the Russian countryside as Lethe.
Henry David Thoreau
wrote in Walking: "The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget our Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx
; and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide."
In chapter 17 of Graham Greene
's novel The Tenth Man, the protagonist Charlot watches the charlatan Carosse beguile the vulnerable Mademoiselle Mangeot: "He knew the game so well, Charlot thought: the restless playboy knew how to offer what most people wanted more than love--peace. The words flowed like water--the water of Lethe."
In Stephen King
's novel Rose Madder
, Rose, in preparation for retrieving the title character's child from a labyrinth, is warned not to drink from the water from a river she must cross. Later in the story, a few drops of that water, mixed in a soft drink, is used to remove Bill's memories of the latter part of the book's events.
In Piers Anthony
's With a Tangled Skein
, Niobe accompanies her daughter and granddaughter on a quest
to acquire an enchanted paint brush and a harp. During the quest, the trio must cross an illusory representation of the Lethe. Later, in Hell, Niobe must again cross a river, and wonders if it might be the actual Lethe.
In Valeer Damen’s novel KATABASIS, one of the main characters has to find and cross the river Lethe as a step in the process of entering the afterlife. “‘There is the plain. Transit. Like a battlefield. All the energy totals of actions and thoughts are there. Wind blows. Tests are there, functionaries, agents from above and below. Introduction functionary cannot help solve tests or help in final adjudication. In the end, river.’” (Damen, 21).
's play Julius Caesar
, Antony, on seeing the murderers' hands red with Caesar's blood, observes:
Additionally, the character of Sebastian refers to Lethe in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
:
In William Shakespeare
's play Hamlet, Hamlet's father's Ghost says to the prince,
, Sextus Pompey talks of Antony's supposed military inertia, hoping that
In John Webster
's play The White Devil
, the duke Brachiano in his death throes says to Vittoria, whose husband he conspired to murder, along with his own wife:
In Samuel Beckett
's radio play Embers
, the main character Henry describes conversing with his dead wife:
In Sarah Ruhl
's Eurydice, the river Lethe is a central theme of the play. All the shades must drink from Lethe and become like stones, speaking in their inaudible language and forgetting everything of the world.
In Offenbach
's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld
, the character John Styx drinks the waters of Lethe in a deliberate attempt to forget things. His forgetfulness is a significant factor in the plot of the last act.
New York playwright, Fredric Sinclair wrote a play titled "Lethe," about a young man who is helped by a childhood friend as he struggles to come to terms with memories of his past.
Saint Seiya
, written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada
, the river Lethe appears in the third act, the Hades arc. The river Lethe is mentioned several times as the boundary between the Underworld and the Elysion, the paradise of the Greek deities and heroes. It also appears in the anime
adaptation of the manga, depicted in the same manner as the source material.
in Marvel Comics Zeus drinks from Lethe before he is reborn, causing him to forget his life. Later Hercules uses the water to help defeat Typhon.
's You, the Living
, a quotation from Goethe's
Roman Elegies
is seen with "Lethe" as its destination.
's Andromeda
there is an entire episode entitled The Banks of the Lethe.
In Joss Whedon
's Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Tabula Rasa, Willow uses a flower called Lethe's Bramble as material component to a spell that temporarily erases the memory of her friends.
In the Star Trek
original television series episode Dagger of the Mind, one of the penal colony residents who is blank and emotionless, is introduced as "Lethe". This is a reference to her memories having been wiped by the neural neutralizer, a supposed medical device that is only later shown to be extremely dangerous.
In Disney's Original series "So Weird
" in the Season 3 last episode "The River"
, who first publicly demonstrated the use of ether
as an anesthetic, called his ether "Letheon".
Lethe
In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades. Also known as the Ameles potamos , the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness...
in Greek Mythology has appeared many times in popular culture since the times of ancient Greece.
Poetry
Walter Savage Landor transforms into substance the metaphor that time takes flight when he places a few drops of Lethe's waters on wing:On love, on grief, on every human thing,
Time sprinkles Lethe's water with his wing.
In The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
, 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
Purgatory
Purgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
. Souls about to enter Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
drink from it to forget their sins.
In John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
' poem, "Ode on Melancholy
Ode on Melancholy
"Ode on Melancholy" is a poem written by John Keats in the spring of 1819. In the spring of that year, Keats wrote the poem along with "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on Indolence", and "Ode to Psyche". In the Autumn of that year, Keats wrote "To Autumn", which completed his ...
", the first line begins "No, no! Go not to Lethe". In his Ode to a Nightingale
Ode to a Nightingale
"Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written in May 1819 in either the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, or, as according to Keats' friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats House, Hampstead, London. According to Brown, a nightingale had built its nest...
the "Lethe-wards" are said to have sunk into the narrator and created a "drowsy numbness".
The fourth stanza of the fourth canto of Byron's "Don Juan
Don Juan (Byron)
Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire"...
" reads:
"And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'T is that I may not weep; and if I weep,
'T is that our nature cannot always bring
Itself to apathy, for we must steep
Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe's spring,
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep:
Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx;
A mortal mother would on Lethe fix."
In his poem "The Sleeper
The Sleeper
The Sleeper is the first studio album by English indie folk band The Leisure Society.Their self-produced debut album 'The Sleeper' was initially released on 30 March 2009 on Willkommen Records...
," Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
describes a 'sleeping' "universal valley" that includes a Lethe-like body of water.
"Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake."
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
's poem "Spleen
Spleen
The spleen is an organ found in virtually all vertebrate animals with important roles in regard to red blood cells and the immune system. In humans, it is located in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen. It removes old red blood cells and holds a reserve of blood in case of hemorrhagic shock...
" ends with the lines
Baudelaire also wrote a poem entitled "Le Léthé" ("Lethe"), in which an adored but cruel woman serves as a metaphor for the oblivion of the river Lethe.
"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.").
French Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...
refers to the Lethe river in "Le Vallon" (The Vale)
J'ai trop vu, trop senti, trop aimé dans ma vie;
Je viens chercher vivant le calme du Léthé.
(I have seen too much, felt too much, loved too much in my life;
I come to seek, still living, the calm of Lethe.)
In Hymn to Proserpine
Hymn to Proserpine
"Hymn to Proserpine" is a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in 1866. The poem is addressed to the goddess Proserpina, the Roman equivalent of Persephone....
(1866) by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
, the line "We have drunken of things Lethean..." laments the decline of pagan tradition and beliefs in ancient Rome following the endorsement of Christianity as the official religion.
The river is also mentioned in at least one of the poems of Victorian classicist and poet A.E. Housman (XXIII from More Poems).
"Crossing alone the nighted ferry
With the one coin for fee,
Whom, on the wharf of Lethe waiting,
Count you to find? Not me.
The brisk fond lackey to fetch and carry,
The true, sick-hearted slave,
Expect him not in the just city
And free land of the grave."
Here the role of the Lethe as the final barrier to be crossed before reaching Elysium is invoked (NB "Lethe" is better rhyme for "ferry" than is "Stix") and the poem as a whole seems to reflect the associations of the Lethe with forgetfulness and escape from ones former life.
The Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work...
poem "Lethe
Lethe
In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades. Also known as the Ameles potamos , the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness...
" describes the river as
"the taker-away of pain,
And the giver-back of beauty!"
In "The Scarlet Woman", a poem by African-American poet Fenton Johnson
Fenton Johnson
John Fenton Johnson was born ninth of nine children into a Kentucky whiskey-making family with a strong storytelling tradition.-Life:His most recent book Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey draws on time spent living as a member of the monastic communities of the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in...
(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."
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
has alluded to Lethe in multiple poems, particularly in those written for Ariel. For example, both "Amnesiac" (21 October 1962) and "Getting There" (6 November 1962) reference the river: "Getting There" ends with the lines
"And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces
Step up to you from the black car of Lethe,
Pure as a baby."
while the final stanza of "Amnesiac" ends with
"O sister, mother, wife,
Sweet Lethe is my life.
I am never, never, never coming home!"
The river Lethe is mentioned in Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
's poem "A Supermarket in California
A Supermarket in California
"A Supermarket in California" is a poem by American poet Allen Ginsberg first published in Howl and Other Poems in 1956. The poem describes a narrator's impressions as he walks through a supermarket in California where he finds Federico García Lorca and Walt Whitman among the patrons...
".
"Ah, dear father graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did
you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking
bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe?" (Berkeley, 1955)
Billy Collins
Billy Collins
Billy Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida...
, in his poem "Forgetfulness", refers to
"a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall".
in "Sonnet V: To the River Downs" Charlotte Smith
Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Turner Smith was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility....
asks the river Lethe for forgetfulness:
"As to the sea your limpid waves you bear,
Can you one kind Lethean cup bestow,
To drink a long oblivion to my care?"
Also mentioned in Byron's poem "Remember Thee! Remember Thee!".
In the Aeneid by Vergil, in book 6 Aeneas sees the future Roman heroes drinking from the River Lethe. "The drink the soothing fluid and long forgetfullness"
Novels
James L. Grant's horror novel, On the Banks of Lethe, a reference to the books theme of lost memories.In chapter 4 of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
's novel, The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered to be his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an...
, Roger Chillingworth claims, "I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe."
In Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
's Time Enough for Love
Time Enough for Love
Time Enough for Love is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, first published in 1973. The work was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1973 and both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1974.-Plot:...
there is a reference to "Neolethe" (see the chapter entitled Counterpoint I), which is apparently a powerful sedative.
In Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...
's novel Beloved
Beloved (novel)
Beloved is a novel by the American writer Toni Morrison, published in 1987. Set in 1873 just after the American Civil War , it is based on the story of the African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a free state...
, the main character's name is Sethe, a pseudonym based on the idea of the power of water, particularly the motif that water can weather her past.
In Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...
's Dracula, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing states to Lucy "It smell so like the waters of Lethe..."(Stoker, 192) talking about the garlic which he was going to place around her room so the Dracula would not suck her blood.
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
refers to Lethe in The Great Divorce
The Great Divorce
The Great Divorce is a work of allegory by C. S. Lewis that is complementary to Lewis' earlier book The Screwtape Letters.The working title was Who Goes Home? but the real name was changed at the publisher's insistence. The title refers to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell...
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 the volume, Swann's Way, of Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
's novel, À la recherche du temps perdu
In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely...
(In Search of Lost Time), the narrator comments, as he recollects a seemingly lost memory, "...trying to remember, feeling deep within myself a tract of soil reclaimed from the waters of Lethe slowly drying until the buildings rise on it again;"
The unnamed narrator of Sasha Sokolov's first novel, A School for Fools
A School for Fools
A School for Fools is a novel written by Sasha Sokolov in the 1960s. "A School for Fools" was first circulated via 'samizdat,' or self-publication through underground connections. However, the novel was formally published in 1976 in U.S....
, has a significant habit of referring to the river running through his neighborhood in the Russian countryside as Lethe.
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
wrote in Walking: "The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget our Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx
Styx
In Greek mythology the Styx is the river that forms the boundary between the underworld and the world of the living, as well as a goddess and a nymph that represents the river.Styx may also refer to:-Popular culture:...
; and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide."
In chapter 17 of Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
's novel The Tenth Man, the protagonist Charlot watches the charlatan Carosse beguile the vulnerable Mademoiselle Mangeot: "He knew the game so well, Charlot thought: the restless playboy knew how to offer what most people wanted more than love--peace. The words flowed like water--the water of Lethe."
In Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
's novel Rose Madder
Rose Madder (novel)
Rose Madder is a 1995 novel by Stephen King. It deals with the effects of domestic violence and, unusually for a King novel, relies for its fantastic element on Greek mythology...
, Rose, in preparation for retrieving the title character's child from a labyrinth, is warned not to drink from the water from a river she must cross. Later in the story, a few drops of that water, mixed in a soft drink, is used to remove Bill's memories of the latter part of the book's events.
In Piers Anthony
Piers Anthony
Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob is an English American writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony. He is most famous for his long-running novel series set in the fictional realm of Xanth.Many of his books have appeared on the New York Times Best...
's With a Tangled Skein
With a Tangled Skein
With a Tangled Skein is a fantasy novel by Piers Anthony. It is the third of eight books in the Incarnations of Immortality series.- Plot introduction :...
, Niobe accompanies her daughter and granddaughter on a quest
to acquire an enchanted paint brush and a harp. During the quest, the trio must cross an illusory representation of the Lethe. Later, in Hell, Niobe must again cross a river, and wonders if it might be the actual Lethe.
In Valeer Damen’s novel KATABASIS, one of the main characters has to find and cross the river Lethe as a step in the process of entering the afterlife. “‘There is the plain. Transit. Like a battlefield. All the energy totals of actions and thoughts are there. Wind blows. Tests are there, functionaries, agents from above and below. Introduction functionary cannot help solve tests or help in final adjudication. In the end, river.’” (Damen, 21).
Plays
In William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's play Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar (play)
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, also known simply as Julius Caesar, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It portrays the 44 BC conspiracy against...
, 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
Twelfth Night, or What You Will
Twelfth Night; or, What You Will is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–02 as a Twelfth Night's entertainment for the close of the Christmas season...
:
"Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep; If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!" (IV.ii.61).
In William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's play Hamlet, Hamlet's father's Ghost says to the prince,
In Antony and Cleopatra
"I find thee apt, And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Wouldst thou not stir in this." (Act 1, scene V).
Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony...
, Sextus Pompey talks of Antony's supposed military inertia, hoping that
"Epicurean cooks / Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite, / That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour / Even till a Lethe'd dullness-" (II.i.24-27).
In John Webster
John Webster
John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...
's play The White Devil
The White Devil
The White Devil is a revenge tragedy from 1612 by English playwright John Webster . A notorious failure when it premiered, Webster complained the play was acted in the dead of winter before an unreceptive audience. The play's complexity, sophistication and satire made it a poor fit with the...
, the duke Brachiano in his death throes says to Vittoria, whose husband he conspired to murder, along with his own wife:
Brac. I have drunk Lethe. Vittoria? / My dearest happiness? Vittoria? (IV.ii.129-30)
In Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
's radio play Embers
Embers
Embers is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1957 and first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959. Donald McWhinnie directed Jack MacGowran – for whom the play was specially written – as “Henry”, Kathleen Michael as “Ada” and Patrick Magee as “Riding Master”...
, 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".
In Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl is an American playwright. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.-Biography:Ruhl was born in Wilmette, Illinois. Originally, she intended to be a poet. However, after she studied under Paula Vogel at Brown University , she was convinced to switch to playwrighting...
's Eurydice, the river Lethe is a central theme of the play. All the shades must drink from Lethe and become like stones, speaking in their inaudible language and forgetting everything of the world.
In Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld
Orpheus in the Underworld
Orphée aux enfers is an opéra bouffon , or opéra féerie in its revised version, by Jacques Offenbach. The French text was written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux....
, the character John Styx drinks the waters of Lethe in a deliberate attempt to forget things. His forgetfulness is a significant factor in the plot of the last act.
New York playwright, Fredric Sinclair wrote a play titled "Lethe," about a young man who is helped by a childhood friend as he struggles to come to terms with memories of his past.
Comic books
In the Japanese mangaManga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
Saint Seiya
Saint Seiya
, also known as Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac or simply Knights of the Zodiac, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada and serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1986 to 1991, and adapted into an anime TV series by Toei Animation from 1986 to 1989.The story follows...
, written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada
Masami Kurumada
is a Japanese manga artist and writer, known for specializing in fighting manga featuring bishōnen and/or mahō shōnen. He is famous as the creator/author of popular manga, such as Ring ni Kakero, Fūma no Kojirō, Saint Seiya and B't X. His male protagonists are a reflection of the classical and...
, the river Lethe appears in the third act, the Hades arc. The river Lethe is mentioned several times as the boundary between the Underworld and the Elysion, the paradise of the Greek deities and heroes. It also appears in the anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
adaptation of the manga, depicted in the same manner as the source material.
in Marvel Comics Zeus drinks from Lethe before he is reborn, causing him to forget his life. Later Hercules uses the water to help defeat Typhon.
Movies
In Roy AnderssonRoy Andersson
Roy Andersson is a Swedish film director, best known for his films A Swedish Love Story and Songs from the Second Floor. More than any other, Songs from the Second Floor succeeded in cementing his personal style — a style characterized by long takes, absurdist comedy, stiff caricaturing of...
's You, the Living
You, the Living
You, the Living is a 2007 Swedish film written and directed by Roy Andersson. The film is an exploration on the "grandeur of existence," centered around the lives of an overweight woman, a disgruntled psychiatrist, a heartbroken groupie, a carpenter, a business consultant, an elementary school...
, a quotation from Goethe's
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
Roman Elegies
is presented as an epigraph. Later, a tram
"Be pleased then, you the living, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe’s ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot"
Tram
A tram is a passenger rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets and also sometimes on separate rights of way. It may also run between cities and/or towns , and/or partially grade separated even in the cities...
is seen with "Lethe" as its destination.
Television
In Gene RoddenberryGene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry was an American television screenwriter, producer and futurist, best known for creating the American science fiction series Star Trek. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, California where his father worked as a police officer...
's Andromeda
Andromeda (TV series)
Andromeda is a Canadian-American science fiction television series, based on unused material by the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, developed by Robert Hewitt Wolfe, and produced by Roddenberry's widow, Majel Barrett Roddenberry. It starred Kevin Sorbo as High Guard Captain Dylan Hunt...
there is an entire episode entitled The Banks of the Lethe.
In Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
's Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Tabula Rasa, Willow uses a flower called Lethe's Bramble as material component to a spell that temporarily erases the memory of her friends.
In the Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
original television series episode Dagger of the Mind, one of the penal colony residents who is blank and emotionless, is introduced as "Lethe". This is a reference to her memories having been wiped by the neural neutralizer, a supposed medical device that is only later shown to be extremely dangerous.
In Disney's Original series "So Weird
So Weird
So Weird is a television series shot in Vancouver, British Columbia that aired on the Disney Channel as a midseason replacement from January 18, 1999 to September 28, 2001. In season one and season two, the series centered around teenage girl Fiona Phillips who toured with her rock star mom ,...
" in the Season 3 last episode "The River"
Music
- The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus, a men's a cappella group from Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, released an album in 1992 entitled "Drinking from Lethe." - In Tony BanksTony Banks (musician)This article is about the musician. For other people named Tony Banks, see Tony BanksAnthony George "Tony" Banks is a British composer, and multi-instrumentalist, who performs as a keyboardist and a guitarist...
' first solo album, A Curious FeelingA Curious FeelingAllmusic gave a resoundingly positive retrospective review, asserting that "Banks manages to capture the wonderment and allure that enveloped Genesis' Peter Gabriel days.....
, 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 composer Thomas AdèsThomas AdèsThomas Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor.-Biography:Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London...
' String Quartet, "Arcadiana," Op. 12, "Lethe" is the title of the work's seventh and final movement. - ClutchClutch (band)Clutch is an American rock band from Germantown, Maryland, formed in 1990. The band's first release was an EP entitled Pitchfork, which debuted in October 1990. Their first studio album, Transnational Speedway League, was released three years later in 1993. To date, Clutch has released nine studio...
, rock band from Germantown, MarylandMarylandMaryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, references the river in the song "American Sleep" on their "Pure Rock Fury" album: "Companion chimera, Lethean grazer." - The Swedish melodic death metalMelodic death metalMelodic death metal is a heavy metal music style that combines elements from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal with elements of death metal. The style was developed during the early and mid-1990s, primarily in England and Scandinavia...
band Dark TranquillityDark TranquillityDark Tranquillity is a Swedish melodic death metal band from Gothenburg. They are one of the longest-standing bands from the original Gothenburg metal scene, and are one of the most integral pioneers of the melodic death metal genre of music....
, released the song "Lethe" in their album "The GalleryThe Gallery (album)The Gallery is the second full-length studio album by the Swedish melodic death metal band Dark Tranquillity, released on November 27, 1995. It was the first full-length release to feature Mikael Stanne on lead vocals, while passing down his position of guitarist to Fredrik Johansson...
" in 1995. - the second movement of Thomas SleeperThomas SleeperThomas M. Sleeper is a modern American composer and conductor. His music has been described as 'hauntingly mysterious' and 'richly lyrical'. He is currently the Director of Orchestral Activities and Conductor of the University of Miami Frost Symphony Orchestra and Opera Theater...
's concerto for trumpet is called "...the river lethe". - In Nicholas LanierNicholas LanierNicholas Lanier, sometimes Laniere was an English composer, singer, lutenist and painter....
's "No More Shall Meads be deckt with Flowers", there is a line, "Black Lethe shall oblivion leave, before my Celia I deceive...". - In HandelHANDELHANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
's "Leave me loathsome light", "Lethe, why does thy ling'ring current cease? Oh murmur me again to peace!". - FlemishFlandersFlanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
folk artist Miel Cools recorded a ballad called "Lethe". - Black metal bands Nightbringer recorded a song called "The River Lethe" and Nocte ObductaNocte ObductaNocte Obducta were a German Avant Garde Black metal band. They were founded in 1993 in Mainz under the name Desîhra. The band released seven albums, the first four of them under Grind Syndicate Media, all albums from 2003 were published under Supreme Chaos Records.- Discography :* 1998: Doch...
an album "Lethe". - The Swedish/Finnish melodic death metalMelodic death metalMelodic death metal is a heavy metal music style that combines elements from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal with elements of death metal. The style was developed during the early and mid-1990s, primarily in England and Scandinavia...
supergroupSupergroup (music)In the late 1960s, the term supergroup was coined to describe "a rock music group whose performers are already famous from having performed individually or in other groups"....
Solution .45Solution .45Solution .45 is a metal supergroup from Sweden and Finland, created by guitarist Jani Stefanovic . Their current lineup includes vocalist Christian Älvestam , guitarists Stefanovic, Patrik Gardberg and Tom Gardiner , bassist Anders Edlund , and...
released the song "Lethean Tears" in their album "For Aeons PastFor Aeons Past-Band members:* Christian Älvestam - vocals* Jani Stefanovic - lead and rhythm guitars* Tom Gardiner - lead and rhythm guitars* Rolf Pilve - drums* Anders Edlund - bass-Guests:* Mikko Härkin - keyboards* Mikael Stanne - backing vocals, lyrics...
" in 2010. - Death MetalDeath metalDeath metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....
one-man band Mindpath did a reference to Lethe on the song Nostalgia from the album In A State Of Full Consciousness - Gothic Metal band TristaniaTristaniaTristania is a monotypic genus, native to New South Wales, Australia, closely related to Cistemon. The genus had a number of species, but some have been reclassified as Lophostemon and Tristaniopsis....
recorded a song called "Lethean River", from their album "Beyond the VeilBeyond the Veil (album)Beyond The Veil is the second full-length album by the Norwegian band Tristania. It is the last album to feature the band's former vocalist, guitarist and core songwriter, Morten Veland.-Track listing:...
" in 1999. - Dark metal band Throes Of DawnThroes of DawnThroes of Dawn is a Black metal band from Finland, formed in 1994 by Henri Koivula and Jani Heinola . Throes Of Dawn's Music and lyrics has been known as emotional and progressive Dark Metal ....
have a song entitled "Lethe" from their 2010 album "The Great Fleet Of Echoes". - Greek black metal musician Akis Kapranos (Naer MataronNaer MataronNaer Mataron is a black metal band from Greece which draws on imagery from Greek mythology. The band was formed in 1994 after splitting from Nar Mataron, and was soon signed to Black Lotus Records, with whom they released four studio albums...
, NecromantiaNecromantiaNecromantia is a Greek black metal band that was founded in 1989 in Athens, Greece.- History :A dominant characteristic is the lack of rhythm guitar in their music, which is substituted by an eight-string bass guitar...
, Nocternity, Thou Art LordThou Art LordThou Art Lord are an Athens-based black metal band, formed in 1993.The line-up consists of former or current members of Greek extreme metal bands Rotting Christ, Necromantia, and now-former musicians from Septic Flesh....
) uses name Lethe as his stage nameStage nameA stage name, also called a showbiz name or screen name, is a pseudonym used by performers and entertainers such as actors, wrestlers, comedians, and musicians.-Motivation to use a stage name:...
.h/740301755#! - [To Sail Lethe] metalcore band from Independence, Missouri, http://www.reverbnation.com/tosailletheband
Science
Dr. William T.G. MortonWilliam T.G. Morton
William Thomas Green Morton was an American dentist who first publicly demonstrated the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anesthetic in 1846. The promotion of his questionable claim to have been the discoverer of anesthesia became an obsession for the rest of his life.- Life and work :Born in...
, who first publicly demonstrated the use of ether
Diethyl ether
Diethyl ether, also known as ethyl ether, simply ether, or ethoxyethane, is an organic compound in the ether class with the formula . It is a colorless, highly volatile flammable liquid with a characteristic odor...
as an anesthetic, called his ether "Letheon".