Eunoe (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

: ) is a feature of

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...

's ''

Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature ...

'' created by Dante as the fifth river of the dead (taking into consideration that

Cocytus Cocytus or Kokytos ( grc, Κωκυτός, literally "lamentation") is the river of wailing in the underworld in Greek mythology. Cocytus flows into the river Acheron, on the other side of which lies Hades, the underworld, the mythological abo ...

was described as a

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

rather than a river). In the ''

Purgatorio ''Purgatorio'' (; Italian for "Purgatory") is the second part of Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', following the '' Inferno'' and preceding the '' Paradiso''. The poem was written in the early 14th century. It is an allegory telling of the climb of D ...

'', the second ''cantica'' of Dante's poem, penitents reaching the Garden of Eden at the top of Mount Purgatory are first washed in the waters of the river

Lethe In Greek mythology, Lethe (; Ancient Greek: ''Lḗthē''; , ), also referred to as Lemosyne, 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 cav ...

in order to forget the memories of their mortal sins. They then pass through Eunoe to have the memories of their good deeds in life strengthened. Upon completing his or her sentence in Purgatory, a soul is washed in the rivers Lethe and Eunoe (in that order) by Matilda. It is unclear who Matilda was in real life, but, nonetheless, her function is to cause the penitent to forget his or her sins (now that these sins have been purged) and then sip from the waters of Eunoe so that the soul may enter heaven full of the strength of his or her life's good deeds. In ''Purg.'' XXXIII, in the concluding lines of that canto and of the entire ''cantica,'' Dante makes particular reference to the ''dolce ber'' ("sweet draught"''Purgatorio'', Canto XXXIII, line 138, Longfellow translation) of Eunoe when he explains that he wished he possessed greater space to write of the water that "ne'er would satiate me." The word "eunoe" is one of Dante's many

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

s presumably derived from Greek " eu-," meaning "good" and "noe," meaning "mind."

References

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See also

References