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A Scarf as Protection and Solace / "The Common Life (for Chester Kallman)"
In my own practice, crocheting is a forgiving and gifting type of art. The scarf is inspired by the quiet comfort and support that the home offers Auden and Kallman. Further, the scarf is a physical barrier from the cold, as if shielding the wearer from more harm than just strong winds. The embrace holds in the warmth of their closeness even when they are far apart. The movements of crochet are fluid and natural, yet they take a mechanical type of repetition that requires a slowing down and stopping of my daily life to perform. The scarf’s red and blue pattern suggests a warm inside and a cold outside. These dichotomies connect to the poem, which evinces an appreciation of the home and a confidentiality about the relationships cultivated inside it. Wearing the homemade scarf suggests a similarly dichotomous message: despite displaying a façade, only the wearer and the giver know the true character and experiences of their relationship. NADYA BREMNER ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US: My inspiration for the scarf emerged out of a brainstorming session on crocheted objects that I believed would fit into Auden and Kallman’s home. Crocheting a scarf evokes imagery of a quiet home, a serene room warmed by a fireplace and by the love running through the halls. Gifting a crafted object is like giving a piece of yourself over to the receiver because of the time and effort that went into the gift’s weaving and knotting. This act of crocheting felt parallel to the intention behind W.H Auden’s “The Common Life” because the poem was a gift to Kallman to encapsulate their life inside the home together. The scarf lies close to the mouth and around the neck, hiding and concealing the words and secrets of the wearer. Auden teases the reader about this secretive nature by taunting that Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t know much past “a quick glance / at book-titles [that] would tell him / that we belong to the clerisy and spend much / on our food. But could he read / what our prayers and jokes are about, what creatures / frighten us most, or what names / head our roll-call of persons we would least like / to go to bed with?” (Auden, 27- 34). As a piece of apparel, however, the scarf shows the outside world a glimpse of the wearer’s personality. I wanted the scarf to be a different medium for the concept of concealing the precious and personal moments shared within the home, while still exhibiting a facet of the self through stylistic choices. Then, through the scarf-making process, I gleaned more about the type of homely acts that bring you closer to the people around you and the type of comfort that would spur the writing of a poem, or the making of a scarf, to demonstrate gratitude to this person. I have had trouble finding critical reviews about the publication and information about the reception of Auden’s “The Common Life” at its time of release in 1963. However, much of the information on Auden and Kallman as partners is contradictory and converging. Many outlets present the two men as only working partners and colleagues, while others reveal the romantic nature of their relationship alongside their collaborations as artists. Despite the truth or the realities of the two men’s relationship, “The Common Life” depicts a closeness to and a familiarity with one another that hold love and affection unbeknownst to the outside world. For the couple, the home they shared would be where they were able to express themselves freely without input and threats from bigoted outsiders. The home is a place of refuge and comfort for its residents. The house holds the power to keep outsiders away and allows free expression of the self within its walls. While the poem calls upon the reader’s own inclination to their house, the home that Auden and Kallman relied upon was necessary for their wellbeing and relationship. I read an interview conducted by Polly Platt in the spring of 1967, when Platt visited the home that is described in “The Common Life”. The interview was brief but connected with the points made within the poem, with a few interjections from Kallman himself. The interview was an informal view into the life of the men inside the house, with Platt joining Auden and Kallman in their routines of doing crosswords and taking tea. Platt received a tour of the home: “The poet smiled with the memory of last night’s dinner, declined to describe it, and opened the door to the guest room. This space that he had called the “shrine to friendship” held two simple iron beds, two windows to the woods outside and in the corner a crucifix. A great orange cat was curled up on the floor” (268, Platt). This quotation displays Auden’s ability to represent the home as more than a resting place—that is, as a symbol of the men’s relationship through the meaning attributed to even the most mundane of features. The interview concludes with a drawing of Auden’s home in Austria, demonstrating the influence that the space holds over its visitors and suggesting why the house was such a prominent figure in Auden’s writing. The implicit query about the nature of their relationship (platonic or romantic?) does nothing to discredit the connection between Kallman and Auden, as connection and closeness are not exclusive to particular kinds of relationships. Nevertheless, my final project was not to discover the truth of their relationship but to imbue a physical object with the same feeling that reading this poem evokes within me. Further, the use of the home as a vessel for this knowledge is what drew me to the poem in the first place and what my continued study has been focusing on– not others’ perceptions of Kallman’s and Auden’s relationship. The scarf thus became my own method of imbuing a crafted object with a sense of belonging. In my previous projects for this course, I spent my time trying to make an object that would resonate with a feeling of familiarity and safety that a home produces for its residents. The types of crafts that we experimented with varied from paper quilling to embroidery to typesetting. I looked to resources on the history of crocheting and crafting to connect its historical roots to the types of experiences that I embarked on this semester. The article “'Use Your Hands for Happiness': Home Craft and Make-Do-and-Mend in British Women's Magazines in the 1920s and 1930s” by Fiona Hackney in the Journal of Design Rings aided the comparison between my own crafts and the history of female-led creating as signs of homemaking. While the idea of women as homemakers can have restricting and misogynistic tones, I found that reading about crafting as a way to express a belonging in the home suggested Auden’s appreciation for his own space. Hackney writes, “A home craft feature in Woman assured that ‘although men don't like fripperies and modern rooms scorn odd bits and pieces, both will accept joyfully this distinguished chair back in crisp crochet’. Not just an antimacassar, this example of hand work symbolized women’s skills, tastes and values, smuggling these back into the modern interior under the guise of ‘distinguished’ design” (Hackney, 29). The change from seeing crafting objects as frivolous decor to viewing them as pieces of art helped construct my own view of the scarf as more than a piece of apparel. This idea of rebranding and revitalising craft culture connects with changing crochet from a purely functional art to a source of decorative and personalized gifts. During the crafting process for the scarf, I spent a lot of time thinking about the poem as an art form that is meant to be read, shared, and seen. Yet Auden manages to reveal his feelings for Kallman without divulging the true nature of their relationship—or any true experiences they had within the home’s walls. For example, in the paper module, I created a linocut based on the line “every home should be a fortress, / equipped with all the very latest engines / for keeping Nature at bay,” which refers to using windows and glass as physical barriers from the cold and judgemental outside world (Auden, 60-62). A scarf, however, is a handmade object that is a portable tool for keeping its wearer protected from the elements. The scarf becomes a portable memento of the safety that the home brings to the men. Auden proposes an idea of what makes a home rich, not in the monetary sense but in the sense of a richness of life and of fulfillment. The idea is familiar in the lines “the homes I warm to, / though seldom wealthy, always convey a feeling / of bills being promptly settled / with cheques that don't bounce)” (10-13). Making a scarf connected with this idea of wealth in my own consideration of what luxury is: for me, luxury has never been about having the most expensive possessions but about the possessions I do keep holding an importance based on their origins. Crocheting a scarf or receiving a made item, even if the scarf or item is not crafted of the most expensive yarn or perfect stitches, imbues the object with a value that is unmatched by fame or status.