VV(12): Her Left Eye

[Dave Monroe]

Hm ... somewhere in the process of keying in part of
my "Her Left Eye" post over and over again yesterday,
looks like my intertext was lost here ...

Praz, Mario.  The Romantic Agony.  2nd ed.
   Trans. Angus Davidson.  New York: Oxford UP,
   1951 [1933].  Cleveland: Meridian, 1956.

Also seems that Yahoo! truncated it as well, but it's
complete in the Digest, and, presumably in the
Archives, so ... but here's another relevant bit, on
Barbey D'Aurevilly's Le Bonheur dans le crime ...

"The woman's eyes are green ('les deux etoiles vertes
de ses regards'), as is usual in such cases (the eyes
of sadistic characters in popular Romantic literature
are, as a rule, green)....

"In Le Dessous de cartes d'une partie de whist the
company is even more sinister.  A mother who poisons
her sons for the pleasure of sadistic pollution .... 
The woman has green eyes (... 'ces deux emeraudes,
striees de jaune' ...)"  (313)

Again, much on D'Annunzio, Byzantium, et al., as well,
 but just catching up myself here, so ...

--- Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at hotmail.com> wrote:

> "As the distance between them gradually diminished
> Mondaugen saw that her 
> left eye was artificial: she, noticing, his
> curiosity, obligingly removed 
> the eye and held it out to him in the hollow of her
> hand.  A bubble blown 
> translucent, its 'white' would show up when in the
> socket as a half-lit sea 
> green.  A fine network of nearly microscopic
> fractures covered its surface.  
> Inside were the delicately-wrought wheels, springs,
> ratchets of a watch, 
> wound by a gold key which Fraulein Meroving wore on
> a slender chain round 
> her neck.  Darker green and flecks of gold had been
> fused into twelve 
> vaguely zodiacal shapes, placed annular on the
> surface of the bubble to 
> represent the iris and also the face of the watch." 
> (V., Ch. 9, Sec. ii, p. 
> 237)



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