Abstract / DOI
Lethe and Eunoë: Forgetting and Remembering on the Threshold of Paradiso in Dante's Divina Commedia. In his Divina Commedia, Dante created a cathedral of memory, which encloses a topography of the afterlife with Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. In hell, the principle of retribution prevails. The damned can neither forget nor repress; they remain forever chained to the memory of their vices. In the Purgatorio, the isolation in hell, without communication, gives way to a caring interpenetration. Memory has a purifying function. At the threshold to paradise, Lethe and Eunoe are to be passed. The article discusses what provocation the poetic imagination of the two rivers of forgetting and remembering means for eschatology.