The weather in Moscow is good, there's no cholera, there's also
no lesbian love...Brrr Remembering those persons of whom you write
me makes me nauseous as if I'd eaten a rotten sardine. Moscow
doesn't have them--and that's marvellous."
--"Anton Chekhov," writing to his publisher in 1895
Chekhov's barbed comment suggests the climate in which Sophia
Parnok was writing, and is an added testament to to the strength
and confidence with which she pursued both her personal and
artistic life. 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. Despite
her unique contribution to modern Russian lyricism however,
Parnok's life and work have essentially been forgotten.
Parnok was not a political activist, and she had no engagement
with the feminism vogueish in young Russian intellectual circles.
From a young age, however, 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
non-sexual, to be the centre 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. The book is divided into seven chapters, which reflect
seven natural divisions in Parnok's life. This lends Burgin's work
a particular poetic resonance, owing to its structural affinity
with one of Parnok's last and greatest poetic achievements, the
cycle of love lyrics Ursa Major. Dedicated to her last 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 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 poet. Burgin's work is essential
reading for students of Russian literature, lesbian history and
women's studies.
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