Description
A chatty memoir recounting Clark's friendship with Auden and Kallman targets the partners for scrutiny from the 1950s on the island of Ischia to their life together in Austria. The 30 year relationship has its highs and lows, of course, exacerbated by the societal difficulties of being homosexual. Clark spotlights Auden's eccentricities, intellect, and both the creative and destructive life he shared with Kallman. Lacks an index and bibliography. An enclosed errata indicates that the ISBN number is printed incorrectly in the CIP data (the corrected number is shown above). Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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The first nuanced, personal portrait of Auden and Kallman's relationship of more than thirty years, Wystan and Chester opens a window on a central aspect of Auden's life that has been overlooked by most biographies and critical studies.In a series of witty, poignant, and occasionally disturbing vignettes, Clark recounts the artists at work and at play: the raucous, Bacchanalian dinner parties on Ischia and the quiet mornings of writing on the porch of their house in Kirchstetten, Austria. She chronicles the early years of their friendship, when Auden and Kallman became her young daughter Lisa's constant companions, and when their nurturing partnership helped to foster unparalleled creative output for both. Remembering also Kallman's steady decline in his later years, Clark paints a sympathetic picture of the talented and troubled artist and of Auden's abiding love for him.Clark's story is generously sprinkled with glimpses of Auden's eccentricities. She recollects his fascination with female anatomy and with the process of birth; his unusual mix of moral seriousness and intellectual frivolity; his love for church ritual and his conviction that homosexuality was wrong.
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