οὕτως, ὦ Γλαύκων, μῦθος ἐσώθη καὶ οὐκ ἀπώλετο, καὶ ἡμᾶς ἂν σώσειεν, ἂν πειθώμεθα αὐτῷ, καὶ τὸν τῆς Λήθης ποταμὸν εὖ διαβησόμεθα καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν οὐ μιανθησόμεθα. "And so, O Glaucon, a legend has been saved and did not get lost. and it could save us, too, if we would be obedient to it; and then we will fittingly traverse the river flowing in the field of λήθη and will not desecrate the 'soul,' i.e., the fundamental power to say beings" (621b 8 ff.).
Once again there is talk of σῴζειν, saving. What is preserved and secured is the legend of the essence of λήθη, the withdrawing concealment. That the μῦθος as a whole is to secure in the unconcealed precisely this closing expression of the essence of concealment can be recognized from the fact that out of the rich content of the μῦθος Plato in the end once more mentions τὸν τῆς Λήθης ποταμόν, the river flowing in the field of λήθη. A superficial reading of this passage had already in antiquity led to the false notion of a "river Lethe," as if λήθη itself were the river. But λήθη is neither the river itself. nor is it symbolized by the river. Λήθη is πεδίον, field, region, the essence of the place and of the sojourn from which there is a sudden transition to a place and a sojourn that, as the unconcealedness of beings, envelops the mortal course of man. In the emptiness and abandonment of the field of all-withdrawing concealment, what alone can exist is this river, because its water corresponds to the essence of the field in that this water withdraws from and eludes all containment and in that way carries the essence of the place of the withdrawing concealment everywhere it is taken as a drink. The place of λήθη is to be traversed only by traversing the single thing that exists at this place, namely the water of the river. If it were only a matter of stepping across, then the water would run past the ones who are crossing and would flow away and would not affect them in their essence. But the crossing must occur and does occur only by the water becoming a drink and thus entering into man and determining him from the very innermost of his essence. And thereby it also determines how man, destined to unconcealedness, will in the future stand in the unconcealed while retaining a relation to withdrawing concealment. The appropriate, i.e., the measured crossing of the river flowing through the place of λήθη consists in taking a drink of the water according to the fitting measure. Yet the essence of man, and not only the individual man in his destiny, is saved only when man, as the being he is, harkens to the legend of concealment. Only in that way can he follow what unconcealedness itself and the disclosure of the unconcealed demand in their essence.
Without insight into the δαιμόνιον of λήθη, we will never be able to appreciate the astonishing fact that the "mother of the muses," and consequently the essential beginning of poetry, is "Mnemosyne," i.e., the primordial free salvation and preservation of Being, without which