Sophia Parnok

by Diana Lewis Burgin

Author of five volumes of poetry and lover of Marina Tsvetaeva, Sophia Parnok was the only openly lesbian voice in Russian poetry during the Silver Age of Russian letters. Parnok, however, was not a political activist, and she had no engagement with the feminism fashionable in young Russian intellectual circles. Yet, from a young age, she deplored all forms of male posturing and condescension and felt alienated from what she called "patriarchal virtues." Parnok's approach to her sexuality was equally forthright. Accepting lesbianism as her natural disposition, Parnok acknowledged her relationships with women, both sexual and nonsexual, to be the center of her creative existence. Diana Burgin's extensively researched life of Parnok is deliberately woven around the poet's own account, visible in her writings. Parnok's poems, translated here for the first time in English, added to a wealth of biographical material, make this book a fascinating and lyrical account of an important Russian p