Lethe Lethe In Greek mythology, Lethe (Greek: , "Lḗthē"; , ) was one of the five rivers of the underworld of Hades. Also known as the "Ameles potamos" (river of unmindfulness), the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. Lethe was also the name of the Greek spirit of forgetfulness and oblivion, with whom the river was often identified. In Classical Greek, the word lethe (λήθη) literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness", or "concealment". It is related to the Greek word for "truth", "aletheia" (ἀλήθεια), which through the privative
Dead Souls remembered. In their studies of Gogol, Andrey Bely, D. S. Mirsky, Vladimir Nabokov, and other modernist critics rejected the commonly held view of "Dead Souls" as a reformist or satirical work. For instance, Nabokov regarded the plot of "Dead Souls" as unimportant and Gogol as a great writer whose works skirted the irrational and whose prose style combined superb descriptive power with a disregard for novelistic clichés. True, Chichikov displays a most extraordinary moral rot, but the whole idea of buying and selling dead souls is, to Nabokov, ridiculous on its face; therefore, the provincial setting of the novel is