Waters of Forgetting

Lost homecoming, another life, and the memories that must return

Forgetting can break a journey or make another beginning possible. The lotus loosens the sailors’ desire for home, while Lethe prepares Virgil’s souls for new bodies. Marcus sets the loss of memory beside the loss of remembrance by others. Dante gives forgetting a specific task and sets the recovery of good beside it.

1. Odyssey 9.94–97
2. Aeneid 6.713–715
3. Meditations 7.21.1
4. Purgatorio 28.127–133
5. Purgatorio 31.94–102
6. Purgatorio 33.136–145