Sophia Parnok: One of the First Openly Lesbian Voices of Russian Poetry

Discover the life and work of the influential Russian-Jewish poet whose work was banned from publication

Sophia Parnok was a Russian-Jewish poet born in 1885 and was considered the only openly lesbian voice of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.

During her lifetime, she published five volumes of poetry, a substantial body of literary criticism, and authored the libretti of several operas. Yet, despite her achievements, her work still remains relatively unknown.

Self-acceptance

Sophia was born at the time of the Russian Empire in Taganrog, a provincial city outside the Pale of Settlement. She began writing poetry aged six and, during her teen years, her writing became an outlet for exploring her feelings, sexuality, fantasies, Russian identity, and Jewish identity, helping her to accept herself for who she was and not be fazed by the disapproval of others. She suffered from Graves’ disease, which also impacted the way she looked, but Sophia embraced being different.

At the age of 21, Parnok was published in a literary journal for the first time. At this time in her life, she often published her literary reviews under the male pseudonym Andrey Polyanin so that they would be taken more seriously.

178. A Song
from Half-Voiced (1928) by Sophia Parnok
translated by Diana Lewis Burgin

Drowsily an aged pine
Rustles in its sleep.
Leaning on the coarse-grained trunk,
Here I stand and speak.
“Little pine, same age as me,
Give me of your strength!
Not the usual nine months,
Forty years I carried,
Forty years I had been bearing,
Forty years I had been begging,
Begged my heart out, over-begging,
Brought to term
My soul.” - January 28-29, 1926

Russia’s Sappho

Sappho was the Ancient Greek lyric poet from the island of Lesbos. She was incredibly popular in Ancient Greece, with people creating statues, coins, and pottery in her honor, centuries after her death. The fragments that remain of her work suggest she was a lesbian and the words “sapphic” and “lesbian,” which both refer to female same-sex relationships, are inspired by her name and the name of the island she was from.

Sophia Parnok considered Sappho a great muse, at times writing to the the Ancient Greek poet in her work. Given that Parnok wrote so openly about her relationships with women, including the famous Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (who would heavily influence her work), she is often referred to as “Russia’s Sappho.”

9. [To Marina Tsvetaeva]
from Poems (1916) by Sophia Parnok
translated by Diana Lewis Burgin

Blindly staring eyes of the
Holy Mother and Savior Child.
Smell of incense, wax, and oil.
Sounds of soft weeping filling the church.
Melting tapers held by young, meek women
In fists stiff with cold and rough-skinned.
Oh, steal me away from my death
You, whose arms are tanned and fresh,
You, who passed by, exciting me!
Isn’t there in your desperate name a
Wind from all storm-tossed coasts,
Marina, named after the sea! - August 5 1915 Sviatye gory

Same-sex Relationships in Russia and the Soviet Union

The following quote from a letter that Anton Chekhov wrote to his publisher in 1895 gives an idea of people’s attitudes towards same-sex relationships in Russia at the time:

“The weather in Moscow is good, there's no cholera, there's also no lesbian love… Brrr! Remembering those persons of whom you write makes me nauseous as if I'd eaten a rotten sardine. Moscow doesn't have them--and that's marvelous."

During the Soviet Union, Stalin’s government recriminalized male same-sex activity after it had been decriminalized when the constitution was rewritten in 1918, even though there is doubt about whether this decriminalization was intentional or not. Homosexuality was officially labeled a disease and a mental disorder in the late 1920s.

Sophia’s sexuality caused conflict at home. She once wrote: “In the eyes of my father, I am a wild slip of a girl and nothing more. My way of thinking and my tastes offend his patriarchal values, and he condescends me.” (The translator of this quote points out that the Russian word for “tastes” is often used to describe desire that isn’t heterosexual).

81. In the Crowd
from The Vine (1923) by Sophia Parnok
translated by Diana Lewis Burgin

You came in the way thousands had entered,
But the doors for an instant breathed fire,
And I realized: your hand has been hewn with
That selfsame prophetic sign.
Yes, I knew it, the ring – of Venus
Marks your palm in the very same way:
For your walk is entirely too measured,
And the light far too dimmed in your gaze,
And your face powder covers up tear stains,
And your lipstick is smeared over blood –
Yes, my sister, I know, that’s precisely
How it chokes you with kisses – love!

The only way out for Sophia to gain independence from her family and move to St. Petersburg, where she would finally be able to meet other queer people and feel part of a family, was to come to an agreement with one of her male friends that they would marry. While it was made clear from the beginning that the marriage was not anything more than an arrangement, Sophia eventually found it too stifling and decided to get divorced and live completely independently in Moscow.

Selected Work

Sophia’s first collection, Poems, was published in 1916 and has been described as “the first, revolutionarily nondecadent, lesbian desiring subject ever to be heard in a book of Russian poetry,” by Diana Burgin, author of Sophia Parnok: The Life and Work of Russia's Sappho.

Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Parnok moved to Crimea, where she continued to write. Her other selected writings include Roses of Pieria (1922); The Vine (1923); Music (1926); In a Hushed Voice (1928); Almast (libretto, 1930).

After 1928, Sophia’s poetry was censored and banned from being published. To avoid Soviet censorship, Sophia and her friends tried to set up a cooperative publishing house called Uzel (meaning "knot" or "group"), however, the government soon learned of this operation and quickly shut it down.

Sophia’s health continued to deteriorate due to her illness, and she eventually died due to a heart attack in August 1933 in Moscow, surrounded by three of the women who loved her. Her poems were mostly forgotten until they were rediscovered nearly fifty years after her death.

138.
from Music (1926) by Sophia Parnok
translated by Diana Lewis Burgin

To L.V.E
Is it thinkable taming a lynx,
So why play the feline with me?
How you soften your fateful face
With your smile so skillfully!
Thus an actress should play spoiled girls:
By training a gold, gypsy eye
From under her lashes downcurled
She looks at you while looking aside.
Oh that ominous calm before storms:
It’s just like the quietude when
Don Jose says, “The Devil himself,”
And Carmen replies, “So I am.”

Rediscovering her work

Parnok’s work was rediscovered by Sophia Polyakova, a Russian philologist and former professor of classics, who published Sophia Parnok: Collected Works with Ardis Press in Michigan, USA in 1979. The publication was the first complete collection of Parnok's poems. This has since prompted interest in her work and given rise to the publication of books about her life and new translations of her poems.

Sophia Parnok is an icon, having persisted in writing in an utterly unique and bold style at a time where others tried to silence her and disregard her voice because she was both a woman and a lesbian. More and more, her work and life story reaches a broader audience, inspiring new generations to embrace being different and never give up in the face of bigotry.

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