(urth) Thea and Thecla

[Lee Berman]

>Jeff Wilson:  Whos there - the Katharine maid can't have been been strangled, since 
>she is either alive or some sort of non-neck-dependent robot. And if she 
>and Catherine are the same person, Catherine can't have been strangled 
>either.
 
Well, depends on how many "Catherines" there are. Borrowing from the Dave Tallman theory,
perhaps there are at least 4, the Contessa Carina and her three cloned (and beheaded) maids
from Dr. Talos' play.
 
Trying to be concise, I didn't qualify this as referring back to my own theory that the woman 
in the coffin, in the opening pages of the story, with dark hair and a pale gown is the same 
woman Severian sees on the Path of Air with the same hair and gown. The strangulation is guessed 
from her livid face and the undue attention paid to one particular torture device, Allowin's 
Necklace. The strangulation penalty for adultery is mirrored with Catherine's mirror image, 
Cyriaca.
 
 
>Jerry Friedman: To pick a nit, a heart-shaped face seems to be one with a narrow chin but wide 
>at the top.  A triangular face is wider than usual at the bottom and narrower 
>than usual at the top.  (I wouldn't describe that shape as "triangular", but 
>what do I know?)

Heh, funny what a small difference in interpretation will do. When I hear "triangular face" I think
the opposite- an upside down triangle, pointy chin and wider forehead. So upside down triangle and 
heart are almost the same. 
 
I'm pretty confident this is what Wolfe meant because in 5HoC there is the "planetary look" that 
Number Five and his clones share. The four-arm slave they encounter has a triangular face and the
planetary look involves a narrow, pointed chin. 
 
>We have the Hollywood ideal of sunken cheeks (high cheekbones), which look emaciated to cultures that 
>see beauty in person rather than in photographs.
 
My idea leans in the opposite direction. Sunken cheeks in BotNS may be an indication of being a blood
donor in the khaibit scheme of things. We have the bat-on-cheek dream. And Thais has the sunken cheeks.
 
 
>That dream sounds familiar, but I couldn't find it...In my opinion, temporarily dilating pupils with 
>belladonna is much less foul than creating clones for exploitation.

The dream is mushroom induced in the hetman's house. And thanks for correcting me, I shouldn't call it
belladonna which is about pupil dilation. This is more permanent and abusive:
 
>"I watched a parade of women from the court...and their eyes made large as Thecla's had been by the 
>application of certain poisons in childhood-.."
 
 
On twins:
>I know twin brothers who I can't tell apart, but they assure me they're fraternal twins.  ("Two placentas", 
>one of them said.)  I admit that the fact that they always wear turbans doesn't help, but still, Agia and 
>Agilus could be like them but different sexes.
 
One difference though: the Khalsa brothers are twins through an accidental process. The twinhood of Agia and 
Agilus is part of an elaborate and carefully designed plan. Both their extreme similarity and their incestuous 
relationship must be for an important purpose. We shouldn't ignore it. 
 
(FWIW, some detect a hint of homoeroticism in Severian's perception of Agilus. For me it is part of a pattern 
of concealed homo- and pedo- eroticism that periodically swerves beneath the text. Surely a theme worth its
own thread...but for now I'll just ponder how Severian knows what a "catamite" is [I didn't] and how he is able
to identify one at a glance in the frenzy of battle and flight).