Lethe
First of the two rivers of the Earthly Paradise. It is born from the same source as the second, Eunoe. Lethe flows from south to north and forms, in the plain, a garland with Eunoe.
In the Comedy, Dante discovers the Lethe while crossing the forest of the Earthly Paradise. He describes it as a short-wave stream with extraordinary transparency. On its banks covered with plants and flowers resides Matelda (Purg. 28, 25-33; 35; 47; 62; 70 and 85) who, solicited by the poet, informs him amply and carefully on the hydrography of Purgatory (Purg. 28, 85-144). Then, Dante perceives the reflection of the procession of the Earthly Paradise in the river (Purg. 29, 64 ff.). He finally dives into it to drink its water.
The waters of Lethe have the ability to erase the memory of past faults (Purg. 31, 88-105; 33, 94-99). Several commentators of the Comedy think that the small stream perceived by Dante and Virgil, which crosses the center of the Earth, (Inf. 34, 130) is Lethe which flows towards the Cocytus, thus transferring the forgotten sins that were left there to Inferno.
Similarly, the Greek literary and mythological tradition (especially the doctrine of metempsychosis and reincarnation) conceives Lethe (Λήθη) as the river where the souls destined to regenerate in another body immerse themselves to forget their past (ex. Aristophanes, The Frogs, 185, and Plato, Republic X, 621). Orphic symbolism also mentions the existence of a source of forgetting (and of memory). Likewise, the Christian tradition alludes to rivers with similar faculties: traces of it can be found in the Holy Scriptures (Genesis and Revelation), in the Christian writings of the first centuries (from Tertulian to Dracontius) and in medieval treatises (from Huon of Bordeaux to the bestiaries of Philippe de Thuan).
Consult the entry of the Enciclopedia Dantesca in Italian.
Entry taken from the Enciclopedia Dantesca published by the Istituto Treccani — Texts revised by the Centre d’études médiévales of the Université de Montréal.
Editing: Gabrielle Hamelin, Martyna Kander.
English translation: Brittany Buscio.