The author of Lampi sulla Storia proposes a re-evaluation of oblivion as an arm for detoxification of memory.
Regarding the Vietnam War, the US President George W. Bush argued that “a great nation cannot afford memories that fuel discord”. In a conversation that appeared in the New York Review of Books, his successor Obama praised the “American amnesia” as opposed to the “long memory” of civilization where ancient events still cause fierce contrasts. After all the Lethe, the river of oblivion, is commented positively in the X Book of Plato´s Republic, in the VI Book of Virgil´s Aeneid, in Dante´s Purgatory which also mentions the Eunee, river of remembrance of good things of the past, in Goethe´s Faust and in Baudelaire´s poems.