By Diana L. Burgin
The climate in Moscow is sweet, there is not any cholera, there is additionally no lesbian love...Brrr! Remembering these people of whom you write me makes me nauseous as though i might eaten a rotten sardine. Moscow does not have them--and that is marvellous."
—Anton Chekhov, writing to his writer in 1895
Chekhov's barbed remark indicates the weather during which Sophia Parnok used to be writing, and is an extra testomony to to the energy and self assurance with which she pursued either her own and creative lifestyles. writer of 5 volumes of poetry, and lover of Marina Tsvetaeva, Sophia Parnok used to be the one brazenly lesbian voice in Russian poetry throughout the Silver Age of Russian letters. regardless of her certain contribution to fashionable Russian lyricism besides the fact that, Parnok's existence and paintings have basically been forgotten.
Parnok was once no longer a political activist, and she or he had no engagement with the feminism vogueish in younger Russian highbrow circles. From a tender age, even if, she deplored all varieties of male posturing and condescension and felt alienated from what she referred to as patriarchal virtues. Parnok's method of her sexuality used to be both forthright. Accepting lesbianism as her common disposition, Parnok said her relationships with girls, either sexual and non-sexual, to be the centre of her artistic existence.
Diana Burgin's widely researched lifetime of Parnok is intentionally woven round the poet's personal account, obvious in her writings. The ebook is split into seven chapters, which replicate seven common divisions in Parnok's lifestyles. This lends Burgin's paintings a selected poetic resonance, as a result of its structural affinity with considered one of Parnok's final and maximum poetic achievements, the cycle of affection lyrics Ursa significant. devoted to her final lover, Parnok refers to this cycle as a seven-star of verses, after the seven stars that make up the constellation. Parnok's poems, translated right here for the 1st time in English, further to a wealth of biographical fabric, make this publication a desirable and lyrical account of a tremendous Russian poet. Burgin's paintings is key interpreting for college students of Russian literature, lesbian historical past and women's studies.
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Additional info for Sophia Parnok: The Life and Work of Russia’s Sappho
Example text
In saying this, I am not trying to attribute contemporary, western, politically correct (or incorrect) attitudes to a poet who lived in a time and culture different from ours and thought about her gender, sexuality, and creativity in her own way, and more important, in a way that can at best merely be surmised. Like any reader of Parnok, all I can hope to understand and convey is her presentation of herself in her poems and other writings. Parnok was not a political activist, and she was not a feminist in the sense that word had for her generation of Russian intellectuals.
Like many Victorian families, Parnok’s presented a proper appearance to the world that probably covered up its share of dark secrets. One fact is obvious and compelling. The poet carried away from her childhood the strong feeling that she had had no childhood, that she had emerged into adulthood at too young an age. 17 Perhaps her too-Jewish understanding of the world can be seen in the expression of her pensive, sad, aged-child’s eyes in the one surviving childhood photograph of her. 19 Parnokh therefore studied religion, Russian, French, German, mathematics, history, geography, physics, science, drawing, needlework, gymnastics, choir singing, and dancing.
Katherine O’Connor has been with me through all the intensity and joy of the “Parnok years,” a distinct period in our long friendship. I shall always be grateful for her love, good advice, and insights into Parnok’s poems that have enriched this book, and especially for her unique habit of listening, no matter how crazed my rantings. This book would hardly have been possible without the inspiring scholarship, personal encouragement and generosity of Sophia Polyakova, whom I did not know when I “discovered” Parnok, but whom I was fortunate soon to have as a colleague and a dear dear friend for several years.