Lethe
In Greek, the word "Lethe" means forgetfulness, oblivion, or concealment. The fascinating and undeniably psychoanalytic nature of this poem lies in the fact that these words all represent slightly different states or situations. While the reader may assume that to forget is to be oblivious, or that to conceal is to forget, the speaker is offering a subtle opportunity to notice that these states are nuanced and unstable. Further, our longings are not always precise, rational, or possible, and often reveal our ambivalences. To "long through the night" for the tide to cover you sounds suicidal on a literal level, or desiring of numbness on a metaphorical level. However, if the tide only "conceals," then whatever is concealed is still present. If one forgets, one can always remember, and if one is oblivious, one is still alive. Through these minute differences underlying the concept of lethe, the speaker illuminates the irony of the human condition, and the central tenant of psychoanalysis: that even in a state of desperate longing, we always still divided, ambivalent about what we want.
Protection or Concealment
An interesting tension in this poem is that the speaker implies a kind of paradox. One's natural surroundings can give shelter or protection or life-force. However, she insists that this form of protection is not what the reader (or the addressee) wants. Descriptions like "Shelter of cedar-wood," "fragrance of flowering bush," and "wailing of reed-bird to waken you" access something primal and animated within us, and yet are not as powerful, in this poem, as the desire for oblivion. Perhaps the speaker's logic, then, centers around the different ways people seek relief, pleasure, or survival. Despite the more romantic notion of finding such a feeling in nature or love, sometimes a longing for numbness or nothingness prevails. Life and the psyche are endlessly complicated, and one might come away from this poem acknowledging the forms of protection people seek as free, yet limited, human subjects.
Myth and Reality
The poem's title, "Lethe," pulls the reader immediately into a complex allegory with roots in Ancient Greek mythology. The line "the roll of the full tide" alludes to the addressee's intense longing for the effects of lethe. However, despite this direct reference to the ancient myth, the construct of the poem also allows for connections to real experience: the underlying reality that to actually drown would be relief from waking life, the fact that water is a common metaphor for the difficult depths of psychic experience, and real tension that lingering by a river reveals: the longing for both life and death, consciousness and oblivion.
