This morning I put on a pot of water to boil. I carefully peeled the first cocoon from the dried leaf surrounding it. When the water started a rolling boil I turned down the heat just a little bit. Then I dropped the cocoon in. In order to get the silk from the cocoon you must kill the larva inside. If the moth hatches then the silken strand will be break into unusable short bits. This is the dark underside of the silk process (though there are some silkmoths that have been bred to emerge from there cocoons without disturbing the silken thread, these wild Samia cynthia are not those). Before I dropped the cocoon into the water I gave it a gentle shake. I could hear something rattling inside, like a small bean. As it cooked, steam lifted from the pot and floated over the stove. I did not like boiling the cocoon.
Unfortunately, what came to mind during this ordeal was the final section of WG Sebald’s Rings of Saturn which is devoted to a history of sericulture — including the Nazis’ enthusiasm for silkworm cultivation and the importance it would have “in the formation of a self-sufficient economy of national defense”. Here is Sebald’s grizzly description of what he saw in an educational film on German silk cultivation: The cocoons, spread out on shallow baskets, have been kept in the rising steam for upwards of three hours, and when a batch is done, it is the next one’s turn and so on until the entire killing business is completed.