lethe

plural lethes

1. uncountableusuallyForgetfulness of the past; oblivion.

   So in the Lethe of thy angry ſoule, Thou drowne the ſad remembrance of thoſe wrongs, Which thou ſuppoſest I haue done to thee.

   c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iv], page 197

2. uncountableusuallyDissimulation.

   Till that the conquering Wine hath ſteep't our ſenſe, In ſoft and delicate Lethe.

   c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene vii], page 351

   1 more example

   What does it mean to say that the stream of silence originates in lethe? It means, above all, that the stream has its source (Quelle) in that which has not yet been said and which must remain unsaid: the "unsaid."

   1980, Joseph J. Kockelmans, On Heidegger and Language, Northwestern University Press, →ISBN, page 241

plural lethes

1. obsoleterareuncountableusuallyDeath.

   Pardon me Iulius, here was't thou bay'd braue Hart, Heere did'ſt thou fall, and heere thy Hunters ſtand Sign'd in thy Spoyle, and Crimſon'd in thy Lethee.

   1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i], page 120, line 219

1. Greekhuman sciencesThe personification of oblivion, daughter of Eris.
2. Greekhuman sciencesThe river which flows through Hades from which the souls of the dead drank so that they would forget their time on Earth.

   By the grey sea-side, unassuaged, unheard of, / Unbeloved, unseen in the ebb of twilight, / Ghosts of outcast women return lamenting, / Purged not in Lethe,

   1866, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Sapphics”, in Poems and Ballads, London: J. C. Hotten, page 238

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   No wonder these mortal Folks have so many Complaints, […] if they were dead now, and to be settled here for ever, they'd be damn'd before they'd make such a Rout come over—“But care, I suppose, is thirsty; and till they have drench’d themselves with Lethe, there will be no quiet among ’em” however, I’ll e’en to work; and so, friend Æsop, and brother Mercury, good bye to ye.

   1740, David Garrick, Lethe: or Aesop in the Shade, published 1782

   My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, / Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains / One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

   1820, John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

   For two-and-twenty years he [Doctor Guillotin], unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar’s.

   1837, Thomas Carlyle, chapter IV, in The French Revolution: A History […], volume I (The Bastille), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, book IV (States-General)

   A well-fed man is not driven to drink by the craving that torments the hungry; and the comfortable do not crave for the boon of forgetfulness. Gin is the only Lethe of the miserable.

   1890, William Booth, chapter 6, in In Darkest England and the Way Out

   When we have done penance, and are purified, and have drunk of the fountain of Lethe and bathed in the fountain of Eunoe, the mistress of our soul raises us to the Paradise of Heaven.

   1891, Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist”, in Intentions