Sophia Parnok

Who was Sophia Parnok?

Sophia Yakovlevna Parnok, was a Russian poet and translator, sister of poet Valentin Parnakh and children's author Yelizaveta Tarakhovskaya.

Sophia Parnok was born in the city of Taganrog to a pharmacist's family. She studied at the Mariinskaya Gymnasium in 1894–1903, traveled through Europe and then studied at the Geneva Conservatory, although a lack of financial means made her return to Taganrog in 1904. She entered Saint Petersburg Conservatory in late 1904, but abandoned her studies and left again for Geneva, where she had her first experience as a playwright with the play The Dream. In June 1906, she returned to Taganrog. In 1907, she married Vladimir Volkenstein and moved to Saint Petersburg. In January 1909, Parnok divorced her husband and settled in Moscow.

At the beginning of World War I, she met the young poet Marina Tsvetaeva, with whom she became involved in a passionate love affair that left important imprints on the poetry of both women. Parnok’s belated first book of verse, Poems, appeared shortly before she and Tsvetaeva broke up in 1916. The lyrics in Poems presented the first, non-decadent, lesbian-desiring subject ever to be heard in a book of Russian poetry.