Eyes of Thecla

don doggett · 02 May 2006, 18:30 · from 2006-May.txt.gz

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From: kingwukong at yahoo.com (don doggett)
Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 11:30:17 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Eyes of Thecla
In-Reply-To: <BAY107-F12927569BBF02C1DF37B27D8B60 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <20060502183017.21051.qmail at web32403.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Well, as I said, I don't have my books, so it's quite
possible I'm misremembering. Thanks for the
correction.

Don

--- mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> > > I don't know of any other characters who are
> > > described as having very large
> > > violet or purple eyes
> 
> >I don't have my books with me, but Noctua, who is
> the
> >naviscaput's daughter, has violet eyes, as does
> >Valeria. There are more that I can't recall, but I
> >think you are right that they're related in some
> way.
> 
> >Ah, yes, Katharine, Severian's mother, also has
> violet
> >eyes.
> 
> Mr. Doggett:
> 
> Either you're misremembering, have a variant text,
> or I'm looking in all the 
> wrong places.
> 
> Noctua is "luminous of eye" "and the light that is
> in them is not of Urth" 
> -- "she, whose eyes held starlight."
> 
> Katharine, meanwhile, is "dark of complexion, dark
> of eye" -- like her son, 
> who has brown eyes. (Genetically, there is no way a
> violet-eyed mother and a 
> blue-eyed Ouen could have a child with brown eyes.)
> 
> As for Valeria, "She had dark, curling hair, like
> Thecla's, but her eyes 
> were dark too. Thecla's were violet." Here Severian
> deliberately contrasts 
> the two women's eye color. (Perhaps, in Valeria's
> paraphrase of "I am all 
> the daughters of my father's house, And all the
> brothers too," you are 
> confusing her with Twelfth Night's Viola -- whose
> name indeed suggests 
> violet.)
> 
> Two others, however, come a little closer to violet,
> if not all the way 
> there.
> 
> Apheta's eyes are "large and luminous and of the
> deep, deep blue of her sea, 
> unfaded by age." While the little girl Sev
> encounters in the antechamber of 
> the House Absolute has "sparkling midnight eyes."
> 
> So it seems b sharp's original assertion is still
> correct.
> 
> em
> 
> 
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