Such absence is essentially characterized by falling-away, as is concealment. Let us reflect on this: something falls and thereby falls away. This falling away is a kind of being-away and being-absent. What falls away no longer returns to what is present, and yet this "away" turns, in its turning away, against what is present, and specifically in the uncanny fashion that it takes no notice of it. Here we catch sight of the hidden essence of the oppositional and the conflictual, which explains why λήθη and λιμός are said to be descended from "Eris," the goddess "Strife." If hardship and suffering are mentioned here as descendants of Strife, then precisely this origin in strife should teach us to avoid the modern misinterpretation and not attempt to understand pain and suffering "psychologically" as kinds of "lived experiences." Our usual interpretation of them in terms of lived experience is the main reason Greek tragedy is still entirely sealed off to us. Aeschylus-Sophocles on the one side, and Shakespeare on the other, are incomparable worlds. German humanism has mixed them up and has made the Greek world completely inaccessible. Goethe is disastrous.
In Hesiod's Theogony only this is said about λήθη, that it, together with λιμός, was born to Eris. Ἔρις herself is the daughter of Νύξ, which is called ὀλοή, an eponym in Homer and Hesiod often belonging to Μοῖρα. We translate ὀλοή as "ruinous." This again is "correct," and yet it is quite un-Greek, for we do not see why the night is supposed to be "ruinous." To ruin is to destroy, to annihilate, i.e., to deprive of being, i.e., for the Greeks, to take away presence {Anwesenheit}. The night is ὀλοή because it lets all that is present disappear into concealment. In what respect Μοῖρα is called ὀλοή will be clarified when we consider Parmenides' expression, Μοῖρα κακή, "evil fate." What Hesiod says of λήθη is sufficient for the Greeks to grasp the essence; however, for us moderns it is too little and does not enable us to see clearly the essence of λήθη and to recognize its essential relation to ἀλήθεια. Indeed we often encounter λήθη, especially in the poets, although they do not mention it in the decisive way the thinkers speak of ἀλήθεια. Perhaps it rather corresponds to the essence of λήθη to be passed over in silence. We reflect too rarely on the fact that the same Greeks to whom the word and speech were bestowed primordially could, for that very reason, keep silent in a unique way as well. For "to keep silent" is not merely to say nothing. Without something essential to say, one cannot keep silent. Only within essential speech, and by means of it alone, can there prevail essential silence, having nothing in common with secrecy, concealment, or "mental reservations." The Greek thinkers and poets largely keep silent over λήθη. But perhaps it is not an accident that at the time of the completion of the Greek world the essence of λήθη was once more explicitly remembered in a significant context. Before we consider it in detail, let us take up a verse from