But I am looking forward to tasting the waters of Lethe, and enjoying sweet, rabbit-free sleep.
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Only after the god Mercury shows him that, having drunk the waters of Lethe, Eurydice no longer remembers her husband, does Orpheus agree to ascend to Olympus.
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The word is used at the end when Socrates explains that because Er did not drink the waters of Lethe, the account (mythos in Greek) was preserved for us.
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Rodomonte and Orlando enter together, now comrades. The waters of Lethe have blanked from Orlando’s mind both his love for Angelica and his hatred of Medoro. Angelica and Medoro can now love one another without fear, Pasquale and Eurilla are united, and Orlando may go in search of fresh deeds of valour. The opera is scored for flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns/trumpets, timpani, strings, continuo.
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As the subtitle of the work indicates, Jonson set his masque on the shores of the river Lethe in the underworld of ancient Greek mythology. As the masque begins, Charon the ferryman has just dropped off a group of human figures, "imagined ghosts," to be received by Mercury. The Fates, however, complain that these people are not actually dead; they have been deluded through the influence of Cupid to think that they have "drown'd in Love." By drinking the waters of Lethe, the deluded lovers paradoxically forget their Cupid-imposed delusions and return to mental health.
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In the final lines of the poem, Ginsberg turns once again to the image of Whitman, asking: :Ah, dear father, greybeard, 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 in the black : waters of Lethe? In Greek mythology, Charon was the ferryman who carried the dead into the underworld, across the river Styx. The River Lethe was a different river in the underworld, which caused those who drank its waters to experience complete forgetfulness. The shades of the dead were required to drink the waters of the Lethe in order to forget their earthly life.
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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. In the musical Jasper in Deadland, a character representing Hades named Mr. Lethe tries to enlist the help of Jasper to get water from the river to the living world so people will forget about their lives.
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Later, as revealed in Hercules: The Animated Series, Hades passes time by trying other plans to take over Olympus, such as tricking the other gods into swimming in the waters of Lethe to forget their pasts, arranging for the sun to be stolen, or sending Cerberus after a temporarily mortal Zeus. One episode even had a crossover where Jafar makes a deal with Hades, in order to make Hercules and Aladdin fight each other. While Hades and Jafar had numerous things in common, Jafar's evil laugh consistently got on the more smooth-talking Hades' nerves — at least until he tried it for himself, calling it "cleansing." Back to the original film: a young woman named Megara (who also appeared in the animated series) sells her soul to Hades so that he will return her boyfriend's soul.
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