Pre-World War I period To escape her father's influence and gain independence, Parnok and Volkenstein married in September 1907 and moved to
Saint Petersburg. As she had suspected, living in the capital widened her circle of literary friends. She soon made friends with
Liubov Gurevich, the most important woman journalist at the time and the married couple, Sophia Chatskina () and Yakov Saker (). The couple owned the journal
Northern Annals (), publishing the works of poets such as
Alexander Blok,
Mikhail Kuzmin,
Vyacheslav Ivanov,
Fyodor Sologub, and
Maximilian Voloshin. Parnok enrolled in the
Bestuzhev Courses to study law and continued publishing poems in various journals. She also began to do translation work, having been invited in 1908 by Gurevich to co-edit a French-Russian translation of
Petits poèmes en prose by
Charles Baudelaire. The Baudelaire project fell apart, her Graves' disease flared up, and she became increasingly unhappy with her work. In January 1909, finding her marriage to be stifling, Parnok left her husband and settled in Moscow. Volkenstein finally agreed to a divorce in the spring, but their break-up embittered the two and their earlier friendship never recovered. Between 1910 and 1917, Parnok worked as a journalist under the pseudonym Andrei Polianin, specifically choosing to separate her literary works from her journalism. She lived a nomadic existence, moving five times in the period to various addresses around Moscow, spending at least six months of 1911 in Saint Petersburg. Her health problems intensified leading to bouts of severe depression, despite the acceptance of some of her poems in prestigious journals like
Messenger of Europe () and
Russian Thought (). Her father's death in 1913, both freed and imprisoned her, removing the physical, yet strained relationship but forcing her to earn her own living. When Gurevich, who had become both a mother-figure and creative advisor took over as head of the literary section of
Russian Talk (), she hired Parnok as a literary critic. She wrote a series of articles in
Northern Annals in 1913, including
Noteworthy Names, a review of works by
Anna Akhmatova,
Nikolai Klyuev and
Igor Severyanin and
Seeking the Path of Art, an anti-
acmeist essay. Parnok's literary taste was conservative and decidedly anti-modernist. She valued the classical works of writers such as
Dante,
Goethe and
Pushkin. Since her divorce, Parnok had not had a permanent partner. In the spring of 1913, she fell in love with the Moscovite socialite, Iraida Karlovna Albrecht (), who spurred her into a creative period. After spending the summer together in Butovo, she returned to working on a novella,
Anton Ivanovich, began a collaboration with
Maximilian Steinberg on an opera based on the
Arabian Nights and rented the first permanent housing she had held in a long time, even acquiring a monkey. She also accepted a position at
Northern Annals where she wrote reviews. In the spring of 1914, Parnok and Albrecht began an extended trip abroad, traveling through
Ascona to the Italian area of
Switzerland, and then visiting
Milan,
Rome and
Venice before heading north to
Hamburg. Continuing to
Shanklin on the
Isle of Wight and eventually
London, Parnok continued to write reviews and poems. Learning that
World War I had broken out, the couple made immediate plans to return to Moscow, where Parnok frantically tried to locate her siblings. She found they were abroad—Valya in
Jaffa and Liza in
Dresden. Moving into a new apartment, Parnok's life at the beginning of the war was calm and productive.
Marina Tsvetaeva period In 1914, at one of the literary
salons hosted by
Adelaida Gertsyk, Parnok met the young poet
Marina Tsvetaeva, with whom she became involved in an affair that left important imprints on the poetry of both women. Around the same time, Parnok read, and later rewrote some of the works of the Greek poet
Sappho. By October, Tsvetaeva had committed to the affair, disregarding her obligations to her husband and daughter by writing her first love poem to Parnok. Prior to her affair with Tsvetaeva, Parnok's poetry had not shown the originality of expression that her later works would evidence. Each of the two women drove the other to excel, revealing that Parnok had the upper-hand in love while Tsvetaeva was the more refined poet. On a personal level, Tsvetaeva was both attracted to and repelled by Parnok's passion, increasing her feelings of insecurity. On a professional level, both were surprised at the depth of their own jealousy, channeling their envy into a creative duel of words. In Tsvetaeva's
Podruga (Girlfriend) cycle, she acted as a
seer, peering into Parnok's future, predicting she was a doomed, tragic figure cursed by her passions. In her later works (poems 54 and 58 in her first book of verse,
Poems), Parnok responded with calm to the dire predictions that the couple would break up. To Tsvetaeva's constant worries about who would be the conqueror of their battles, Parnok replied that they were equals. There was a mother-daughter aspect to the relationship and the poems written during it, in that Tsvetaeva entered the relationship as a novice to lesbian passion, though not to its attraction, later maturing in her relationship. On the other hand, Parnok entered their union as the less experienced poet, benefiting in her later writing from the seeds of her collaboration with Tsvetaeva. Rather than the typical stereotypical older-woman-seducer, Tsvetaeva assumed the male lover's role as pursuer in her poems, taunting Parnok with her desire to be the betrayer rather than the betrayed.
Poems appeared shortly before Parnok and Tsvetaeva broke up in 1916 and displayed the mastery of her craft. The lyrics in Parnok's
Poems presented the first, non-decadent,
lesbian-desiring subject ever to be included in a book of Russian poetry. Parnok's poems about their affair were more restrained than Tsvetaeva's, but Parnok planned to have hers published in contrast to Tsvataeva who presented
Podruga to Parnok as a gift. In the summer of 1915, Parnok and Tsvetaeva, both of their sisters, and
Osip Mandelstam were guests at Maximilian Voloshin's
dacha in
Koktebel. Parnok did not care for Mandelstam though Tsvetaeva was openly friendly and would later have an affair with him. By July, the lovers left Koktebel, just before Tsvetaeva's husband arrived, after which they spent a month on holiday in
Sviatye Gory. In January 1916, Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam met at a literary salon in Saint Petersburg, possibly by chance, and recognized each other's talents. The meeting caused a heated quarrel with Parnok. The following month, Mandelstam's attempt to maintain contact with Tsvetaeva ended her relationship with Parnok. Tsvetaeva had taken Mandelstam to see the sites of Moscow, and when she came home from the outing, she found Parnok entertaining the actress
Lyudmila Vladimirovna Erarskaya. It is unknown exactly when Parnok and Erarskaya met, but theirs would be the longest relationship of the poet's life, lasting for the next sixteen years. In a pique, Tsvetaeva asked Parnok to return her
Podruga and her manuscripts. Parnok was outraged that Tsvetaeva wanted her gift returned, considering it an attempt to conceal the origin of the poems in their affair. The long-reaching effects of their liaison would last until their deaths. In her later years, Parnok's works often reminisced on the best and worst aspects of their stormy affair. Tsvetaeva, on the other hand, tried to eliminate Parnok completely from her life and her works. By summer, Tsvetaeva, who had returned to her husband, was pregnant and Parnok and Erarskaya were living together in an apartment at 2 Sukharevskaya Sadovaya Street. As a result of the
February Revolution in 1917,
Northern Annals closed, ending abruptly Parnok's career as a critic and her most constant source of income. Illness for each of the couple, famine and the political upheaval of the war, forced them to make plans to move to the
Crimea by fall.
Sudak period Parnok left Moscow in late summer 1917 and spent the
Russian Civil War years in the Crimean town of
Sudak with Erarskaya. Soon after their arrival, she was approached by
Alexander Spendiaryan (known in Russia as Alexander Spendiarov) and asked to prepare the
libretto for a 4-act opera
Almast, based on an
Armenian legend. Parnok immediately set to work, sourcing her dramatic verse on the
epic poem,
The Taking of Tmuk Fortress, by
Hovhannes Tumanyan and using Erarskaya as her inspiration. She finished the libretto by the winter of 1918, long before Spendiaryan had completed the musical score, and returned to reading Sappho. At that time in Russia, as elsewhere, Sappho was considered a heterosexual poet because she wrote about desire. Both physical love and desire, were perceived as masculine traits, thus women poets who wrote erotic lyrics without shame, regardless of their sexual orientation, were often given the label
Sapphic. Simultaneously, she and
Eugenia Gertsyk, Adelaida's sister, became closer friends, reveling in their spiritual quest. She viewed her relationship with Eugenia as that of an older and wiser guide, who could help her mature spiritually and break her addiction to love. Sudak proved to be a productive writing time for Parnok and in 1919, she published in an almanac a substantial number of lyrics, which focused on her new-found spiritual journey. She prepared most of the poems for two journals which would be published later. These demonstrated her poetic evolution from her past to her future. Her collection
Roses of Pieria (1922) clearly evoked the influence of Sappho, with her acknowledgement of the first lesbian poet. The poems reflected her attempt to write of her experiences and desire as a sexually active lover of women, but she stylized her
homoerotic verse in a way that was almost alien to her natural poetic voice. She was unsatisfied with the collection and knew before it was published that her next collection was more authentically her own.
The Vine (1923) incorporated the influence of Eugenia Gertsyk, presenting her own account in lyrical form of her development as a lesbian poet. Using biblical symbolism, she wrote of the physical rapture and suffering of her body which diverted her quest to grow spiritually and produce poetry as her dedicated vocation. As a group, the intellectual community in Sudak worked on productions for their own entertainment. Parnok and the two Gertsyk sisters wrote verse; Spendiaryan, who was still struggling with opera, wrote songs; Erarskaya, who had taken a job with the Ministry of Education, staged plays. Fighting was fierce in the Crimea and food was scarce. Civil employees were paid in rations, rather than wages, and to supplement their meager food supplies, Parnok tried to work a vegetable garden. In early 1921, she was arrested and sent to a prison in Sudak, where she contracted a severe case of
tuberculosis. Adelaida and Spendiaryan were also arrested for failing to support the
Red Army but all were released by the following spring. The experience of prison, and survival soon thereafter of a train crash, increased Parnok's
fatalism. She had switched seats with another passenger, who was killed when the train derailed. She sustained no injury and for the rest of her life, was plagued by the memory. In June, the
General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press (GLAVLIT) was created to censor propaganda, state secrets, misinformation, fanaticism and pornography. Fairly quickly, the bureau would begin making lists of banned materials and authors. In December, Parnok and Erarskaya left the Crimea during the terrible
famine in a special hospital train, thanks to Voloshon who had specifically requested their right of passage.
Return to Moscow In early 1922, Parnok returned to Moscow with Erarskaya and was assisted by
Vladimir Mayakovsky, who helped her find lodging and join the Writer's Union. Almost as soon as she arrived, she began experiencing trouble with the censors. Her attempts to help Maximilian Voloshin publish a collection of poems were repeatedly refused. When she tried a few months later to publish a collection of her own works,
Centuries-Old Mead, the censors stopped the publication because there were too many religious references.
Centuries-Old Mead was placed in stasis by the censorship bureau and never made it to press. She also feared that
The Vine would have trouble with the censors because of its references to God. She had learned from previous experience that religious references were problematic. By fall, she was ill, suffering from both
bronchitis and stomach problems caused by her Graves' disease. Erarskaya was also sick, having contracted
tuberculosis. In the beginning of 1923, Parnok embarked on a friendship with
Olga Nikolaevna Tsuberbiller, a mathematician at
Moscow State University. The exact nature of her relationship with Tsuberbiller is unknown as, while she occupied a significant place in the poet's life, Parnok did not describe Tsuberbiller in the same sexual context as her lovers. Instead, Tsuberbiller was a protector. Parnock would later describe her as almost a
guardian angel in her collection of poems
Half-Whispered. She joined the group known as the "Lyrical Circle", which included members like Lev Gornung, ,
Vladislav Khodasevich, and
Vladimir Lidin. The members critiqued each other's work, which she hoped would help her find clarity and harmony in her works. Short of money, Parnok briefly took an office position, but soon quit and depended upon freelance translations and literary critiques to pay her bills, though critiques were beginning to be censored as well. By 1925, Parnok and Tsuberbiller had become the closest of friends, and when Erarskaya was hospitalized for a mental break, Tsuberbiller was the one to whom she turned to regain her peace of mind. Parnok was distressed, feeling that her life had ended, and was unable to work because of her depression and worry over her lover. Erarskaya's
paranoia and violent outbursts, led to unsettling trauma for Parnok, causing several fainting spells. In 1926, Parnok moved in with Tsuberbiller on Neopalimovsky Lane at Smolensky Boulevard. After a year in the
sanatorium Erarskaya was finally pronounced well and released. Increasingly Parnok felt isolated from her readers and alienated from her peers, in part because by 1926, GLAVLIT's authority had been extended to cover both public and private publishing. Parnok feared that her cycle
Music would not be accepted for publication. The censorship of her works, but also the unspoken censorship of herself, made her feel invisible, inspiring her poems such as
Prologue (1928). She joined another group of poets, known as "The Knot" which was founded to publish the works of the members to secure that one of the group's first releases was the publishing of
Music. The censors allowed "The Knot" to exists because their publication runs were limited to 700 copies or less.
Music was generally well received and earned praise from both Eugenia Gertsyk and Voloshin, pleasing Parnok. She made plans to spend the summer with Erarskaya and Tsuberbiller in and was revived by the natural surroundings, writing eight poems. Though still inspired and writing poetry when they returned, Parnok increasingly suffered from ill health and depression. These feelings were acerbated by the continuing failure of Spendiaryan to complete the scores for
Almast. The poems she wrote in early 1927 showed her growing loneliness and resignation to the inevitability of her own death. By spring, sales of "The Knot"′s publications had been quite good and Parnok felt revived enough to spend the summer with Erarskaya and Tsuberbiller in the small town of Khalepye in the
Kiev Oblast of
Ukraine. Once again the time in nature revived her spirit but she continued to suffer from bad health. Returning to Moscow, she was constantly ill, though she managed to finish her collection
Half-Whispered by the end of the year.
Last loves By early 1928, Parnok was bedridden, though still translating. She was depressed, "The Knot" had been forced to close after publishing
Half-Whispered, she was suffering from writer's block with her poetry, and Spendiaryan had died without finishing the score to
Almast. As censorship clamped down, Parnok's poetic voice became "unlawful", leading to prohibition on publication of her works in 1928. She made her living solely by translating poems by
Charles Baudelaire, novels by
Romain Rolland,
Marcel Proust,
Henri Barbusse and others. In May 1928, Maximilian Steinberg took it upon himself to complete
Almast and Parnok agreed to try to get it approved for the
Bolshoi Theatre to produce it. In 1929, Tsuberbiller's brother died, and she and Parnok became responsible for the care of his five-year-old twins. In August 1929, Parnok had word from the Bolshoi that they would produce the opera, only if she wrote a Communist-themed prologue and epilogue to the production. In an effort to see the production completed, she agreed, but that created a rift with Steinberg, who claimed she was bowing to political pressure. She felt trapped between the theater managers and Steinberg. In the spring of 1930,
Almast finally went into production, but the conductor made changes, deleting the management's requested prologue and epilogue. He also placed it on the schedule so that it would only have a two-day run. Spendiaryan's widow interceded by having Steinberg called to Moscow to rein in the wayward conductor and move the project to completion. When the opera finally debuted at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow on 24 June 1930, it was a resounding success. The premier was so popular with the public, if not the critics, that it led off the Bolshoi's following fall season. When
Maria Maksakova left the title role, Parnok severed her interest in the project, though it toured successfully in
Odessa (1930),
Tbilissi (1932),
Yerevan (1933) and in
Paris (1951), among others. By the end of the year, both Parnok and Tsuberbiller were exhausted and spent several weeks at
Uzkoye to regain their health. When they returned to Moscow, they moved to a new apartment, which gave them more room, as well as space to entertain many colleagues from Tsuberbiller's work. Parnok began pursuing Maksakova, attending all her performances, and was re-inspired in her work. She began work on a libretto for an opera ''Gyul'nara'' by
Yuliya Veysberg, which was dedicated to Maksakova. Though Parnok's infatuation was not reciprocated, it fueled a creative period and by the end of 1931, she had completed the libretto, which was first performed in 1935. Parnok's last great love was the Georgian physicist,
Nina Vedeneyeva. The two may have met as early as 1927, through Tsuberbiller, a colleague of Vedeneyeva. Vedeneyeva's son, Yevgeny, was living in exile at that time and Tsuberbiller, who had written a textbook used for decades in the high schools of Russia, helped her obtain books for him to maintain his studies. In January 1932, the relationship turned to romance, despite the facts that Parnok was still living with Tsuberbiller and Yevgeny disapproved of the relationship. As had happened before, her lover became her muse, inspiring her to write two cycles of poems,
Ursa Major and
Useless Goods. The frantic pace of her writing foretold the exhaustion she would suffer, which hastened her death, but Parnok was aware of the consequences. The references between these last two cycles and Parnok's adolescent poetry, make it clear that she had always known what she wanted to say, but until she reached her maturity, she did not know how to express her words. Their emotional bond, which accelerated after a trip to Vedeneyeva's summer cottage in
Kashin in April, was destined to remain hidden from most of Vedeneyeva's family and friends. To keep up appearance of a mere friendship, they spent their summers apart. Cutting herself off from all activities other than her work, her love and her immediate family, Parnok's poetry became paramount and with help from Tsuberbiller and Vedeneyeva she stopped translation work. By winter 1932, her body had become swollen with
edema, signalling that her Graves' disease had affected her heart. For the next six months, Parnok was mostly bedridden and Vedeneyeva visited daily. In an attempt to improve Parnok's health, Tsuberbiller suggested that they summer in and despite the arduous trip, they arrived safely. Vedeneyeva vacationed separately in the Crimea. While they were apart the lovers were plagued with poor mail service, which exacerbated Parnok's stress. On 31 July 1933, she penned her last complete poem, as a farewell to Vedeneyeva. ==Death and legacy==