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River Lethe in popular culture

In Classical Greek, Lethe (Λήθη; Ancient Greek: [lɛː́tʰɛː], Modern Greek: [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.

Comics and manga edit

In the Japanese manga 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 the Japanese manga Sailor Moon, written and illustrated by Naoko Takeuchi, the "River of Forgetfulness" appears in act 56, the seventh act of the Stars arc. Sailor Lethe, guardian of the planet Lethe, is the watchman of the river. Sailor Lethe's much less aggressive sister, Sailor Mnemosyne, is the watchman of the "River of Memory." When the main character, Sailor Moon, falls into Lethe's river, she loses all sense of her memory, as do the rest of her allies when they fall in. Sailor Moon is able to regain her memory, but Princess Kakyuu must drink from Mnemosyne's River of Memory in order to snap out of Lethe's spell.

Music edit

  • The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus, a men's a cappella group from Yale University, released an album in 1992 entitled "Drinking from Lethe."
  • 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 composer Thomas Adès' String Quartet, "Arcadiana," Op. 12, "Lethe" is the title of the work's seventh and final movement.
  • Clutch, rock band from Germantown, Maryland, references the river in the song "American Sleep" on their "Pure Rock Fury" album: "Companion chimera, Lethean grazer."
  • American rock supergroup The Company Band, also featuring Neil Fallon of Clutch, have a song called "Lethe Waters" on their eponymous debut album.
  • The Swedish melodic death metal band Dark Tranquillity, released the song "Lethe" in their album "The Gallery" in 1995.
  • The second movement of Thomas Sleeper's concerto for trumpet is called "...the river lethe".
  • In Nicholas Lanier's "No More Shall Meads be deckt with Flowers", there is a line, "Black Lethe shall oblivion leave, before my Celia I deceive...".
  • The aria "Leave me loathsome light", from George Frideric Handel's Semele, contains the line "Lethe, why does thy ling'ring current cease? Oh murmur me again to peace!".
  • Flemish folk artist Miel Cools recorded a ballad called "Lethe".
  • Black metal bands Nightbringer recorded a song called "The River Lethe" and Nocte Obducta an album "Lethe".
  • The Swedish/Finnish melodic death metal supergroup Solution .45 released the song "Lethean Tears" in their album "For Aeons Past" in 2010.
  • Death Metal 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 Tristania recorded a song called "Lethean River", from their album "Beyond the Veil" in 1999.
  • Dark metal band Throes Of Dawn have a song entitled "Lethe" from their 2010 album "The Great Fleet Of Echoes".
  • To Sail Lethe metalcore band from Independence, Missouri.
  • Norwegian rock band Motorpsycho have an instrumental song called "La Lethe" on their album The Death Defying Unicorn.
  • American experimental rock band Kayo Dot recorded a song entitled "Lethe," featured on their 2012 album Gamma Knife.
  • French doom and depressive black metal band Lethian Dreams also take their name from river Lethe.
  • Black metal band Satanochio released a song titled "Lethe" on their second full-length album, From Beyond.
  • British rock band Radiohead took heavy inspiration from Lethe, as well as general themes of memory and forgetfulness, for their fifth studio album, Amnesiac.
  • Kristin Hersh has a song titled "Lethe" on her album Possible Dust Clouds.
  • Irish musician Andrew Hozier-Byrne mentions the Lethe on his track First Time, on his Dante's Inferno inspired album Unreal/Unearth.[1][2]

Novels edit

Dan Simmons' Hyperion contains a chapter titled "The River Lethe's Taste is Bitter", so named because the daughter of main character of the chapter suffers from a malady which causes her to age backwards, thus forgetting her life and family one day at a time.

In Rick Riordan's novels, The Heroes of Olympus series and the short story Percy Jackson and the Sword of Hades in The Demigod Files reference and portray this river in their plot.

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'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.

Plays edit

 
Eurydice's dead father falls unconscious after dipping himself in the Lethe, in a performance of Ruhl's Eurydice at Shimer College.

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 William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Hamlet's father's Ghost says to the prince,

"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).

In Antony and Cleopatra, 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 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.

Metastasio's opera libretto Artaserse references the River Lethe in one of Artabano's arias, Su le sponde del torbido Lete, originally set to music for a tenor voice by Leonardo Vinci. In the aria, Artabano sings of the recently murdered Serse as waiting for revenge on the banks of the turbid Lethe.

In Haydn's opera Orlando Paladino, Orlando is so consumed by his unrequited love for Angelica that it drives him to insanity and in order to rid him of his insanity, and the sorceress Alcina sends him to the underworld and orders Caronte to bathe him in the waters of the River Lethe to make him forget about Angelica and regain his sanity.

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.

Poetry edit

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 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 narrator sinks "Lethe-wards," that is, into the "drowsy numbness" of the river.

The fourth stanza of the fourth canto of Byron's "Don Juan" 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," Edgar Allan Poe 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'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.").

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. French Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine 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.)

Pushkin's verse novel "Eugene Onegin" also contains three separate references to the Lethe (Лета) including this most poignant one in Lensky's soliloquy in Chapter 6, Stanza XXII as he awaits his fate at the dueling ground:

А я, быть может, я гробницы Сойду в таинственную сень, И память юного поэта Поглотит медленная Лета, Забудет мир меня;

but I perhaps will be declining into the tomb's mysterious shade; the trail the youthful poet followed by sluggish Lethe may be swallowed, and I be by the world forgot;

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).

"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 poem "Lethe" 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 (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 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)[3] 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's poem "A Supermarket in California".

"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, 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 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"

Emily Dickinson mentions the "Lethe" in her poetry (#1730 by Thomas Johnson editing).

Television edit

In the Cartoon Network series Adventure Time, the protagonists travel to the underworld in season two, episode seventeen "Death in Bloom." In this episode, Jake drinks from an unnamed river (presumably the Lethe) and loses his memories.

In the Andromeda seadon 1 episode "The Banks of the Lethe", a black hole enables communication between a pair of separated lovers.

In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Tabula Rasa", Willow uses a flower called Lethe's Bramble as a material component to a spell that temporarily erases the memory of her friends.

In Hercules: The Animated Series, the waters of the Lethe are used in two episodes: "Hercules and the Pool Party", where Hades uses a Lethe Pool of Forgetfulness to erase the memories of the other Olympian gods, and "Hercules and the Aetolian Amphora", where a young Megara steals an amphora full of waters from the Pool of Forgetfulness to erase bad memories of a date with Adonis, encountering and then forgetting Hercules in the process.

In Peaky Blinders season 5, episode 6: "Mr. Jones", Tommy Selby, who (along with his brother Arthur and their fellow WWI combat veteran Barney) has been shown to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, visits the Margate, Kent home of Alfie Solomons, whom he had shot on the beach in the season 4 finale. Prominently written on Alfie's tile doormat is the word "LETHE".[4]

The river is featured in the season 3 finale episode of the Disney Original series So Weird, titled "The River".

In the Star Trek: The Original 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.[original research?]

In the Japanese series Ultraman Nexus, a recurring character is the machine known, as Lethe. It is capable of sealing memories, making people unable to access them.

"Lethe" is the title of Star Trek: Discovery Season 1, Episode 6.

Video games edit

In Final Fantasy VI, a river area in the game, on which the party first encounters the octopus character Ultros, is referred to as the "Lethe River".

The fourth act of Kentucky Route Zero is set on Lake Lethe, where a pair of scientists are studying memory loss.

References edit

  1. ^ "Hozier - First Time (Official Audio)". YouTube. 23 June 2023. Retrieved 18 August 2023.
  2. ^ Reilly, Nick (17 March 2023). "Hozier on new EP 'Eat Your Young' and how Dante's 'Inferno' inspired him". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 18 August 2023.
  3. ^ The Collected Poems / Sylvia Plath (ISBN 0-06-090900-5)
  4. ^ Mellor, Louisa Mellor (October 3, 2019). "Peaky Blinders Season 5 Episode 6 Review: Mr. Jones". Den of Geek.

river, lethe, popular, culture, this, article, contain, irrelevant, references, popular, culture, please, remove, content, citations, reliable, independent, sources, february, 2024, classical, greek, lethe, Λήθη, ancient, greek, lɛː, tʰɛː, modern, greek, ˈliθi. This article may contain irrelevant references to popular culture Please remove the content or add citations to reliable and independent sources February 2024 In Classical Greek Lethe Lh8h Ancient Greek lɛː tʰɛː Modern Greek ˈli8i literally means forgetfulness or concealment and is related to the Greek word for truth a lethe ia alh8eia 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 Contents 1 Comics and manga 2 Music 3 Novels 4 Plays 5 Poetry 6 Television 7 Video games 8 ReferencesComics and manga editIn the Japanese manga 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 the Japanese manga Sailor Moon written and illustrated by Naoko Takeuchi the River of Forgetfulness appears in act 56 the seventh act of the Stars arc Sailor Lethe guardian of the planet Lethe is the watchman of the river Sailor Lethe s much less aggressive sister Sailor Mnemosyne is the watchman of the River of Memory When the main character Sailor Moon falls into Lethe s river she loses all sense of her memory as do the rest of her allies when they fall in Sailor Moon is able to regain her memory but Princess Kakyuu must drink from Mnemosyne s River of Memory in order to snap out of Lethe s spell Music editThis article may contain irrelevant references to popular culture Please remove the content or add citations to reliable and independent sources February 2024 The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus a men s a cappella group from Yale University released an album in 1992 entitled Drinking from Lethe 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 composer Thomas Ades String Quartet Arcadiana Op 12 Lethe is the title of the work s seventh and final movement Clutch rock band from Germantown Maryland references the river in the song American Sleep on their Pure Rock Fury album Companion chimera Lethean grazer American rock supergroup The Company Band also featuring Neil Fallon of Clutch have a song called Lethe Waters on their eponymous debut album The Swedish melodic death metal band Dark Tranquillity released the song Lethe in their album The Gallery in 1995 The second movement of Thomas Sleeper s concerto for trumpet is called the river lethe In Nicholas Lanier s No More Shall Meads be deckt with Flowers there is a line Black Lethe shall oblivion leave before my Celia I deceive The aria Leave me loathsome light from George Frideric Handel s Semele contains the line Lethe why does thy ling ring current cease Oh murmur me again to peace Flemish folk artist Miel Cools recorded a ballad called Lethe Black metal bands Nightbringer recorded a song called The River Lethe and Nocte Obducta an album Lethe The Swedish Finnish melodic death metal supergroup Solution 45 released the song Lethean Tears in their album For Aeons Past in 2010 Death Metal 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 Tristania recorded a song called Lethean River from their album Beyond the Veil in 1999 Dark metal band Throes Of Dawn have a song entitled Lethe from their 2010 album The Great Fleet Of Echoes To Sail Lethe metalcore band from Independence Missouri Norwegian rock band Motorpsycho have an instrumental song called La Lethe on their album The Death Defying Unicorn American experimental rock band Kayo Dot recorded a song entitled Lethe featured on their 2012 album Gamma Knife French doom and depressive black metal band Lethian Dreams also take their name from river Lethe Black metal band Satanochio released a song titled Lethe on their second full length album From Beyond British rock band Radiohead took heavy inspiration from Lethe as well as general themes of memory and forgetfulness for their fifth studio album Amnesiac Kristin Hersh has a song titled Lethe on her album Possible Dust Clouds Irish musician Andrew Hozier Byrne mentions the Lethe on his track First Time on his Dante s Inferno inspired album Unreal Unearth 1 2 Novels editThis article may contain irrelevant references to popular culture Please remove the content or add citations to reliable and independent sources February 2024 Dan Simmons Hyperion contains a chapter titled The River Lethe s Taste is Bitter so named because the daughter of main character of the chapter suffers from a malady which causes her to age backwards thus forgetting her life and family one day at a time In Rick Riordan s novels The Heroes of Olympus series and the short story Percy Jackson and the Sword of Hades in The Demigod Files reference and portray this river in their plot 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 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 A 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 Plays editThis article may contain irrelevant references to popular culture Please remove the content or add citations to reliable and independent sources February 2024 nbsp Eurydice s dead father falls unconscious after dipping himself in the Lethe in a performance of Ruhl s Eurydice at Shimer College 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 William Shakespeare s play Hamlet Hamlet s father s Ghost says to the prince 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 In Antony and Cleopatra 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 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 Metastasio s opera libretto Artaserse references the River Lethe in one of Artabano s arias Su le sponde del torbido Lete originally set to music for a tenor voice by Leonardo Vinci In the aria Artabano sings of the recently murdered Serse as waiting for revenge on the banks of the turbid Lethe In Haydn s opera Orlando Paladino Orlando is so consumed by his unrequited love for Angelica that it drives him to insanity and in order to rid him of his insanity and the sorceress Alcina sends him to the underworld and orders Caronte to bathe him in the waters of the River Lethe to make him forget about Angelica and regain his sanity 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 Poetry editWalter 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 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 narrator sinks Lethe wards that is into the drowsy numbness of the river The fourth stanza of the fourth canto of Byron s Don Juan 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 Edgar Allan Poe describes a sleeping universal valley that includes a Lethe like body of water Looking like Lethe see the lakeA conscious slumber seems to take And would not for the world awake Charles Baudelaire s poem Spleen ends with the lines II n a su rechauffer ce cadavre hebeteOu coule au lieu de sang l eau verte du Lethe He failed to warm this dazed cadaver in whose veinsFlows the green water of Lethe in place of blood Baudelaire also wrote a poem entitled Le Lethe Lethe in which an adored but cruel woman serves as a metaphor for the oblivion of the river Lethe French Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine refers to the Lethe river in Le Vallon The Vale J ai trop vu trop senti trop aime dans ma vie Je viens chercher vivant le calme du Lethe I have seen too much felt too much loved too much in my life I come to seek still living the calm of Lethe Pushkin s verse novel Eugene Onegin also contains three separate references to the Lethe Leta including this most poignant one in Lensky s soliloquy in Chapter 6 Stanza XXII as he awaits his fate at the dueling ground A ya byt mozhet ya grobnicy Sojdu v tainstvennuyu sen I pamyat yunogo poeta Poglotit medlennaya Leta Zabudet mir menya but I perhaps will be declining into the tomb s mysterious shade the trail the youthful poet followed by sluggish Lethe may be swallowed and I be by the world forgot 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 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 cityAnd 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 poem Lethe 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 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 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 3 reference the river Getting There ends with the lines And I stepping from this skinOf old bandages boredoms old facesStep 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 s poem A Supermarket in California 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 ofLethe Berkeley 1955 Billy Collins in his poem Forgetfulness refers to a dark mythological riverwhose name begins with an L as far as you can recall in Sonnet V To the River Downs Charlotte Smith 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 Emily Dickinson mentions the Lethe in her poetry 1730 by Thomas Johnson editing Television editIn the Cartoon Network series Adventure Time the protagonists travel to the underworld in season two episode seventeen Death in Bloom In this episode Jake drinks from an unnamed river presumably the Lethe and loses his memories In the Andromeda seadon 1 episode The Banks of the Lethe a black hole enables communication between a pair of separated lovers In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Tabula Rasa Willow uses a flower called Lethe s Bramble as a material component to a spell that temporarily erases the memory of her friends In Hercules The Animated Series the waters of the Lethe are used in two episodes Hercules and the Pool Party where Hades uses a Lethe Pool of Forgetfulness to erase the memories of the other Olympian gods and Hercules and the Aetolian Amphora where a young Megara steals an amphora full of waters from the Pool of Forgetfulness to erase bad memories of a date with Adonis encountering and then forgetting Hercules in the process In Peaky Blinders season 5 episode 6 Mr Jones Tommy Selby who along with his brother Arthur and their fellow WWI combat veteran Barney has been shown to be suffering from post traumatic stress disorder visits the Margate Kent home of Alfie Solomons whom he had shot on the beach in the season 4 finale Prominently written on Alfie s tile doormat is the word LETHE 4 The river is featured in the season 3 finale episode of the Disney Original series So Weird titled The River In the Star Trek The Original 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 original research In the Japanese series Ultraman Nexus a recurring character is the machine known as Lethe It is capable of sealing memories making people unable to access them Lethe is the title of Star Trek Discovery Season 1 Episode 6 Video games editIn Final Fantasy VI a river area in the game on which the party first encounters the octopus character Ultros is referred to as the Lethe River The fourth act of Kentucky Route Zero is set on Lake Lethe where a pair of scientists are studying memory loss References edit Hozier First Time Official Audio YouTube 23 June 2023 Retrieved 18 August 2023 Reilly Nick 17 March 2023 Hozier on new EP Eat Your Young and how Dante s Inferno inspired him Rolling Stone Retrieved 18 August 2023 The Collected Poems Sylvia Plath ISBN 0 06 090900 5 Mellor Louisa Mellor October 3 2019 Peaky Blinders Season 5 Episode 6 Review Mr Jones Den of Geek Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title River Lethe in popular culture amp oldid 1211360034, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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