Sofia Parnok. History of Russian Sappho.

Parnok (real name - Parnokh) - Volkenshtein Sofya Yakovlevna -
Russian poetess, translator, literary critic. Author of collections
"Poems" 1916, "Roses of Pieria", "Vine" 1923, translations from
French and German. She often wrote in “sapphic” stanza.
Close friend of Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva. Tsvetaeva's cycle is dedicated to her
poems "Girlfriend".

...How do they become poets? By God's permission? A game of chance? The willfulness of the stars, whose laughter confuses and confuses the reading of predestination and segments of the path? It’s difficult to say, it’s difficult to see and unravel the tangle of contradictions, no, but something more complex and clear only at that Height that is inaccessible from the Earth, no matter how you stretch your hands to it! How do they become poets? Nobody knows, although thousands of lines have been written about it. I’ll add a few more to the multi-volume epic. About the one who was called "Russian Sappho".

Sofya Yakovlevna Parnokh became a Poet soon after she broke the threads of Love entangling her. Before that, of course, she wrote poetry, and very good ones, and appeared in print with critical literary reviews under the pseudonym Andrei Polyanin... But a real sea of ​​poetry poured at her feet when she let Love go to the free wind, following the Gospel parable: “Let go of the bread to sail on the waters." She painfully let go of what she wanted to keep, perhaps for eternity, with herself and her soul, and received in return a Gift that can put the Creator beyond the brink of sin and sinlessness...

Sofia Parnokh was born on July 30, 1885, in Taganrog, in the family of a pharmacist. Her mother died quite young, after giving birth to twins, Valentin and Elizabeth. Sonechka was only six years old at that time! Her father, Yakov Parnokh, (having begun his literary career, the poetess and critic considered it best to give the surname a more refined form - Parnok, rather than reminding her of the name of the legendary Parnassus - author), a man of fairly independent views and a tough character, soon married a second time.

Sonya’s relationship with her stepmother, and even with her father, did not work out. Loneliness, alienation, isolation in her own world were the constant companions of a cocky, steep-headed girl with a shock of unruly curls and a strange, often self-absorbed look. She played the piano very well, studied diligently, studying difficult scores of operas, claviers, Mozart sonatinas and Liszt scherzos at night. She played "Hungarian Rhapsody" easily. Sonya graduated from the Taganrog gymnasium with a gold medal, and in 1903 - 1904 she went to Geneva. There she studied at the conservatory, piano class. But for some reason I didn’t become a musician.

Elena Kallo writes about the failed pianist-musician Sonya Parnok: “Undoubtedly, Parnok had a musical gift, moreover, we can say that it was through music that she felt the world. No wonder the shock experienced from the sounds of an organ in a Catholic church awakened her creative element in her early youth (the poem "Organ"). With the development of poetic skill, the musicality of her verse became more and more obvious, to which the actual musical characteristics are quite applicable: duration, modulation, change of mode, rhyme sounds in thirds, then the interval changes, vibration refined rhythm... These properties appeared not only in her mature work, but much earlier:

Where is the sea? Where is the sky? Is it above or below?

Am I taking you across the sky or across the sea?

My dear?

Low tide. We are sailing, but we can’t hear the oar,

As if we were carried away from the shore

Azure, running back.

It was one o'clock. - Or wasn't it? - There is a coffin in the chapel,

A forehead ennobled by calmness, -

How strangely distant he is!

The memory was covered with autumn leaves.

The wind babbles about joy and yours

Scattered curl.

Sofia Parnok kept music “within herself”. This gave her a lot as a Poet. Returning to Russia, she entered the Higher Women's Courses and the Faculty of Law of the university. She was also passionately fascinated by another element - literature. Translations from French, plays, charades, sketches and the first... helpless cycle of poems dedicated to Nadezhda Pavlovna Polyakova - her Geneva... love.

Sofya Yakovlevna realized very early on this strange oddity of hers, the difference from ordinary people. “I have never been in love with a man,” she would later write to M.F. Gnessin, friend and teacher. She was attracted and attracted to women. What was it? An unconscious craving for maternal warmth, affection, tenderness, which was missing in childhood, for which her soul yearned, a certain complex of immaturity, which developed into passion and vice later, or something else, more mysterious and still unknown? Irina Vetrinskaya, who has been researching the problem of “female” love for quite a long time, and who has devoted many articles and books to this, writes the following about this:

"Psychiatry classifies this as a neurosis, but I have a completely opposite opinion: a lesbian is a woman with an unusually developed sense of self. Her partner is her own mirror image; by what she does in bed, she says: "This I am, and I am she. This is the highest degree of a woman’s love for herself.” (I. Vetrinskaya. Afterword to the book “Women who loved.. Women.” M. “OLMA-PRESS” 2002.) The opinion is controversial, of course, but not without foundation , and explaining a lot in this strange and mysterious phenomenon - “female” love.

She does not hide her natural inclinations from society and is not ashamed of them - probably, this required considerable courage, you must admit! - Sofya Yakovlevna, nevertheless, in the fall of 1907, shortly after returning from Geneva to Russia, she married V.M. Wolkenstein - a famous writer, drama theorist, and theater critic. A year and a half later, in January 1909, the couple separated on the initiative of Sofia Yakovlevna. The official reason for the divorce was her health - the inability to have children. Since 1906, Sofya Yakovlevna made her debut in the magazines “Northern Notes” and “Russian Wealth” with critical articles written in a brilliant, witty style. Parnok quickly won the attention of readers with her talent, and since 1910 she was already a permanent contributor to the newspaper “Russian Rumor”, leading its artistic, musical and theatrical sections. In addition, she was constantly engaged in self-education and was very demanding of herself. Thus, she could not help but attract the attention of many. This is what she wrote to L. Ya. Gurevich, a close friend, in a frank letter on March 10, 1911: “When I look back at my life, I feel awkward, as when reading a pulp novel... Everything that is infinitely disgusting to me in a work of art , which can never be in my poems, obviously exists somewhere in me and is looking for embodiment, and here I look at my life with a disgusted grimace, like a person with good taste looks at someone else’s bad taste." And here in another letter to the same to the addressee: “If I have a gift, then it is precisely of the kind that without education I will not do anything with it. Meanwhile, it happened that I began to think seriously about creativity, almost without reading anything. What I had to If only I could read it, I can’t now, I’m bored... If there is a thought, it is not nourished by anything other than itself. And so, one fine day, with not a penny to your name, you will write fairy tales and nothing else." Her Tales were not satisfied. She preferred to hone her wit in critical articles and music reviews. However, not poisonous.

“On duty,” Sofya Yakovlevna often had to attend theater premieres and literary and musical salon evenings. She loved the secularity and brightness of life, attracted and attracted attention not only with her originality of views and judgments, but also with her appearance: she wore men's suits and ties, had a short haircut, smoked a cigar... At one of these evenings, in the house of Adelaide Kazimirovna Gertsyk - Zhukovskaya, October 16, 1914, Sofya Parnok and met Marina Tsvetaeva.

This is how Marina Tsvetaeva - Efron was seen by her contemporaries at that time: "... A very beautiful person, with decisive, daring, to the point of impudence, manners... rich and greedy, in general, despite the poetry, - a woman - a fist! Her husband - a beautiful, unhappy boy Seryozha Efron - tuberculosis

Consumptive." This is how R.M. Khin-Goldovskaya, in whose house Tsvetaeva’s family and her husband’s sisters lived for some time, spoke about her in her diary on July 12, 1914." Pozoeva E.V. left the following memories: “Marina was very smart. Probably very talented. But she was a cold, hard person; she didn’t love anyone. ... She often appeared in black... like a queen... and everyone whispered: “This is Tsvetaeva... Tsvetaeva has come..."). In December 1915, the romance with Parnok was already in full swing. The novel is unusual and captivates both of them at once. By the power of mutual penetration into each other's souls - and above all, it was a romance of souls, it was like a dazzling solar flare. What was Marina, who was not yet such a famous poet, looking for in such an unusual feeling? Re-reading the documents, research by Nikolai Dolya and Semyon Karlinsky devoted to this topic, I became increasingly convinced that Marina Tsvetaeva, being by nature passionate and powerful, like a tigress, could not be completely satisfied only with the role of a married woman and mother. She needed a consonant soul, over which she could reign supreme - whether publicly, secretly, openly or hidden - it doesn’t matter!

To rule over poems, rhymes, lines, feelings, soul, opinion, the movement of eyelashes, fingers, lips, or some kind of material embodiment - the choice of an apartment, a hotel for a meeting, a gift or

A performance and concert that should end the evening...

She willingly gave Sofya Yakovlevna a seemingly “leading” role in their strange relationship. But only at first glance.

Marina's influence on Sofya Parnok, as a person and as a Poet, was so comprehensive that by comparing the lines of their poetic cycles, written almost simultaneously, one can find common motifs, similar rhymes, lines and themes. The power was unlimited and great. Submission too!

On the pages of a short biographical article, it is not very appropriate to talk about the literary merits and demerits of the works of Sofia Parnok or Marina Tsvetaeva. I won't do that. I will only say that Sofya Parnok, as a lyrical poet, has reached in these poems, dedicated to her painful feelings for Marina and the break with her, such heights that put her on an equal footing with such personalities in Poetry as Mirra Lokhvitskaya, Karolina Pavlova or even Anna Andreevna Akhmatova. Why do I say this?

The fact is that, in my opinion, Parnok, as a Poetess of considerable magnitude, still unsolved by us today, with her poems, was able to express the essence of the Spirit of the Poet, namely, that He - if true, of course - then owns all the secrets of human souls, regardless of gender, age and even, perhaps, accumulated life experiences. Here is one of the poems written by Sofia Parnok in 1915, at the height of the romance, in the “Koktebel summer”, when their painful romance was added to the burning feeling of Maximilian Voloshin for Marina - a sudden and rather complex feeling (encouraged by Marina, by the way):

Quirks of treacherous thoughts

The greedy spirit could not overcome, -

And so, out of a thousand hired ones,

You gave me the night.

Indifference taught you

The dashing art of love.

But suddenly, accustomed to prey,

Your embrace trembled.

A mad look, touched by melancholy,

A sullen, jealously clenched mouth, -

By tormenting me, you are taking revenge on fate

For my late arrival.

If the researchers had not precisely identified the addressee of this poem - Marina Tsvetaeva, then one would think that we are talking about a loved one, a beloved man... But what is the difference in essence? The main thing is that the person is Beloved...

They took risks, but were not afraid to shock society; they spent the Christmas holidays of 1914-15 together in Rostov. The family of Marina and her husband, Sergei Efron, knew about this, but could not do anything! Here is one of E. O. Voloshina’s letters to Yulia Obolenskaya, which somewhat characterizes the nervous situation that developed in the Tsvetaev-Efron house.

(*E. O. Voloshina was a close friend of Elizaveta Efron (Lili), the sister of Tsvetaeva’s husband. - author) Voloshina was worried about how Sergei Efron would react to what was happening: “What did Seryozha tell you? Why are you scared for him? (...) It's a bit scary about Marina: things got really serious there. She went somewhere with Sonya for several days, kept it a big secret. This Sonya had already quarreled with her friend, with whom she lived together, and rented a separate apartment for herself on Arbat. This everything confuses and worries me and Lilya, but we are not able to break this spell.” The spell intensified so much that a joint trip was taken to Koktebel, where the Tsvetaevs had spent the summer before. Here Max Voloshin falls unrequitedly and passionately in love with Marina, as already mentioned. There are endless proceedings and disputes between Marina and her friend.

Sofya Parnok experiences pangs of jealousy, but Marina, having shown her “tiger essence” for the first time, does not submit to timid attempts to return her to the channel of her previous feeling, which belonged only to them, the two of them. That’s not the case!

Marina, changeable, like a true daughter of the sea, (*Marina - sea - author.) encouraged Voloshin's courtship, suffered with all her soul and worried about her husband, who left for the front in March 1915 with a hospital train. She wrote to Elizaveta Yakovlevna Efron in a frank and warm letter in the summer of 1915: “I love Seryozha for the rest of my life, he is dear to me, I will never leave him anywhere. I write to him every day, sometimes every other day, he knows my whole life. ", only about the saddest things I try to write less often. There is an eternal heaviness on my heart. I fall asleep with it, I wake up with it."

“Sonya loves me very much,” the letter continues, “and I love her - it’s forever, and I can’t leave her. The tornness of the days that must be shared, the heart combines everything.” And a few lines later: “I can’t hurt and I can’t help but do.” The pain of having to choose between two loved ones did not go away and was reflected in both creativity and uneven behavior.

In the cycle of poems “Girlfriend,” Marina tries to blame Sophia for leading her into such “love jungle”... She tries to break off the relationship, makes several drastic attempts. To Mikhail Kuzmin, she describes the end of her love affair with Sofia Yakovlevna: “It was in 1916, in the winter, I was in St. Petersburg for the first time in my life. I had just arrived. I was with one person, that is, it was a woman - Lord how I cried! - But it doesn’t matter! She never wanted me to go to the evening. (a musical evening at which Mikhail Kuzmin, the author, was supposed to sing) She couldn’t do it herself, she had a headache - and when "She has a headache... it's unbearable. But I didn't have a headache, and I really didn't want to stay at home."

After some bickering, during which Sonya declares that “she feels sorry for Marina,” Tsvetaeva takes off and heads out for the evening. Having been there, she soon begins to get ready to return to Sonya and explains: “I have a sick friend at home.” Everyone laughs: “You say that as if you have a sick child at home. Your friend will wait.”

I thought to myself: “The hell with it!”

And as a result, the dramatic ending was not long in coming: “In February 1916 we parted,” Marina Tsvetaeva wrote in the same letter. - “Almost because of Kuzmin, that is, because of Mandelstam, who, without finishing an agreement with me in St. Petersburg, came to Moscow to negotiate. (*Probably about the novel - the author) When I, having missed two Mandelstam days, came to her - the first absence in years - another woman was sitting on her bed: very big, fat, black... We were friends with her for a year and a half. I don’t remember her at all. That is, I don’t remember. I only know that I will never forgive her for not stayed!"

A kind of monument to Sophia’s tragically cut short love was the book “Poems,” published in 1916 and immediately remembered by readers, primarily because Sophia Yakovlevn spoke about her feelings openly, without silence, half-hints, or encryption. It’s as if she painted a captivating portrait of a Beloved Person, with all his harshness, tears, breaks, sensitivity, vulnerability and all-encompassing tenderness of this captivatingly passionate soul! The souls of her beloved Marina. Girlfriends. Girls. Women. There was the now famous:

"I'm looking at your profile again, your cool head

And I sadly marvel at your strangely close features.

Something happened that could not have happened:

There was no room for two of us on the way.

Oh, the strength of these blunt and short fingers,

And under the straight eyebrow this wildly motionless eye!

Repentance, say, a tear watered,

Did you water it or fog it at least once?

Isn’t that why the enmity in us was mutual?

And a hundred times more passionate than love and truer than love,

That we found a double in each other? Tell me,

Didn’t I execute you, my brother, by executing myself?

("Again I look at your profile, cool-headed...")

Love had to be let go. And she let go. She lived with past memories, melted them into poetry, but around her there were new friends, new faces: Lyudmila Erarskaya, Nina Vedeneeva, Olga Tsubilbiller.

Parnok wrote poetry better and better, her images became stronger and more psychologically subtle, but these were by no means poetic times. The October Troubles broke out. For some time, Sofya Yakovlevna lived in the Crimea, in Sudak, and did literary “menial” work: translations, notes. Reports. She didn't stop writing.

In 1922, in Moscow, with a circulation of 3,000 copies, her books were published: “Roses of Pieria” - a talented stylization of lines by Sappho and old French poets. And the collection “Vine” in which she included poems from 1916 to 1923. They were received by the public seemingly well, but somehow the hungry and ruined Russia had no time for poetry, and the public was refined, understanding the rhythmic stanzas, thoroughly “There are no others, others are far away”...

Sofya Yakovlevna's life was difficult and hungry. In order to somehow survive, she was forced to do translations, lessons - they paid a pittance - and gardening.

Love gave her strength. God sent her, a sinner, people who adored her and were devoted to her in soul - such as physicist Nina Evgenievna Vedeneeva. Parnok met her a year and a half before her death. And she died in her arms. She dedicated the most heartfelt and lyrical lines of her poems to Nina Evgenievna. But while dying, she incessantly looked at the portrait of Marina Tsvetaeva, standing on the nightstand, at the head of the bed. She didn't say a word about Her. Never after February 1916. Maybe she wanted to suppress love with silence? Or - strengthen? No one knows.

Shortly before her death, she wrote the lines:

"Now, without rebelling, without resisting,

I can hear my heart beating

I'm weakening and the leash is weakening,

Tightly knitting us with you..."

"Let's be happy no matter what!" (Excerpt)

At the beginning of the poem there were two barely distinguishable capital letters: "M.Ts." So she said goodbye to her Beloved-Friend, not knowing what She said when she heard about her death, in June 1934, far away in a foreign land: “So what if she died, you don’t have to die to die!” (M. Tsvetaeva. “Letter to the Amazon”).

Her awkward little Marina, her "de
"vochka is a friend," she was, as always, imperious - merciless and harsh in her judgment! But - is she right? In the end, they only hate very much those whom they previously loved just as much...

_____________________________________

*Sofya Yakovlevna Parnok died on August 26, 1933, in the village of Karinskoye near Moscow. She was buried a few days later at the German cemetery in Lefortovo. Her work and the history of her relationship with Tsvetaeva have not yet been fully studied, as has the archive, which contains two unpublished collections, “Music” and “Sotto Voce.”

*** The author in no way claims that the point of view expressed in this article is “fundamental and infallible”! Readers are free to each have their own opinion.
___________________________________________

Essay - afterword “And again the sign to sail has been given to us...”

Articles on the Internet are read very inattentively, fluently and superficially. People are in a hurry to close their web browser and run away about their business... But I still hope that my article about one of the most beautiful and subtle poetesses of the Silver Age was at least understood and not read hastily.

More than ten years have passed since this essay was written. Marina Tsvetaeva’s archive has been opened. Ariadne Efron. Almost everything is printed. Mountains of letters and comments. Photos and lectures about the work and life of Tsvetaeva. Facsimile of rough notes and scraps of workbooks. Tsvetaeva in gloss and without gloss.
All her enemies and enemies, friends and acquaintances, casual acquaintances, and - fictional and real lovers, significant relationships and fleeting meetings are described in detail.. But the mysterious image of Sofia Parnok - Wolkenstein - stands out among all this abundance of materials and discoveries.
Me myself, in my book. dedicated to the fate of Ariadne Efron, I’m talking about Parnok, and about trying to understand their friendly relations with Marina, their unusual attraction to each other, mutual and complete and then equally complete rejection from each other...
Sofya Yakovlevna Parnok, a person of a complex and unusual fate, a loner in her own family, despite the presence in it of sisters and brothers, a circle of intelligent acquaintances who were keenly and sensitively interested in an extraordinary girl with her brilliant musical abilities, despite an acutely developing disease (thyroid gland complicated by heart attacks).

She could not have children, although she was a passionate, loving, addicted person. Very tender, deeply feeling. She had a pet monkey and dogs. She gave affection and unspent affection to animals. She loved flowers very much. In her meager garden in the twenties, the hungry Moscow years, flowers grew: tea roses, forget-me-nots, marigolds, some kind of porridge. Along with the quinoa that was cooked for lunch...
From documents and diaries, I know for sure that this extraordinary woman had an unsuccessful pregnancy attempt, a difficult miscarriage and the tragedy of motherhood that did not take place and was forbidden after the incident, Sofya Yakovlevna felt very deeply and acutely together with her husband, Vladimir Volkenshtein, known in the legal circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg attorney and lawyer. They separated from him later, lived separately, but, perhaps, there was no deliberateness, no malice, or anyone’s particular guilt in this...

Being people who were sufficiently educated and mentally developed, they both were simply able to let each other go. Until the end of her life, Sofya Yakovlevna was interested in the fate of her husband and his son from his second marriage, Fyodor. Some traces of their correspondence, communication, and meetings with friends have been preserved. It is possible that after the death of Sofia Yakovlevna, the Wolkesteins received part of her archive and things. I can't say for sure.
If Sofia Yakovlevna did not have a deep poetic and literary gift, she would undoubtedly have gone into music. She was a brilliant pianist.

There was always a piano open in the house and sheet music lying around. Very complex. She could play etudes by Thalberg, Liszt, Scriabin. This will not tell a musician, a rocker, or a rapper - nothing. He will tell a musician and a person with a deep soul - more than necessary.. Alechka Efron, who came with her mother to visit Sonechka, recalled with surprise and reverence how Sofia Yakovlevna played.. There are people for whom “music flows from their hands” Lives in them.
Sonya was just like that.

And her hands were very beautiful. Marina Tsvetaeva, Marinushka, with her love for gesture, for beauty, for the Spirit, which is significant at all times, but always trampled by cruel times, will write about Parnok’s hand like this:
The hand to which the whip would go,
And - in silver - opal.

A hand worthy of a bow,
Gone into silk,
Unique hand
A wonderful hand.
“Gone into silk”... So, feminine - I constantly think...
And I don’t understand and clearly understand Elena Ottobaldovna Voloshina’s fear of Parnok, who for her was something like “Enchantment,” a sorceress...

Equally enchanting. strict, harmonically clear, magical, based on the classical tradition, Latin, Greek myths, stanzas of Theocritus, Sappho, Horace, on Scandinavian legends and melodies, Breton quatrains of troubadours and German “sharply lunar” ballads, Parnok’s poems, her translations... They are not complicated , for them you just need to have a big soul and a free imagination. Flying, not gloomy. Free, harmony-seeking, soaring and possessing the clear maturity of a very sensual, sensing possession with all six organs, the whole vast world - a person...

In her, in the “tragic lady”, with the youthful precipice of her sloping forehead, in this Sonechka Parnok, misunderstood by no one, the vice – the soaring – the rolls of her surname – hormones were playing all the time. Either there was less testosterone, then there was more... The disease was looking for a way out... I tried to dictate my own, tough, harsh....

And so, running away from her, from her, from everyone and everything, without sobbing and not dying, although she could have died dozens of times from coughing attacks and cardiac fainting, Sonya either put on a man’s suit, then took it off, worrying the men she knew - pages with a soft, slightly hoarse voice and music flowing from under her hands, poems that everyone vied with each other to read in the living rooms. It was not possible to learn by heart. The smoothness and volume of sound and syllable was disturbing. .

She teased both men and women... She took her illness away from herself, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin into the waters of the Soul, looking for new, exciting notes, new steps to play, for an unequal dance with death. So it seems to me. Both Iraida Albrecht and Marina Tsvetaeva picked up this game and played along very skillfully.

We created a novel...

With humility, they took on the roles of jealous pages and enchanted fairies in the retinue of the sorceress. Literary rivalry, the setting of decadent colors for the portrait of the Beloved and Loving to the heat of the pupils - all this was there. Poems were not hidden. They were discussed lively, laughing, perplexed, and asking each other about something, in living rooms and salons, snorting and making up new charades. And they bet and copied the cut of the suit and remembered the length of the boa on Sonya’s shoulders and the width of Marina’s pince-nez.

But there were also frank ones - about everything and everyone - and about the death of a loved one - too - conversations after midnight and trips to church in Rostov the Great, in flirty, feminine fur coats sparkling from the snow and dresses that looked like Amazonian cloth and a monk’s cassock - at the same time , and the delight of reckless cab drivers: “Eh, ladies, I’ll give you a ride!” - with an eye on the strange, thin, girlish figures, every now and then bursting with laughter, because they were whispering something in each other’s ears.. Wonderful and coherent...

Alya, by the way, was with them, a bright and big-eyed angel in a plush fur coat, and I can’t believe the angry, nervous and overly sensual tone of the novel, in which, according to Max’s jealous mother, Marina “should have burned out.” But also sensuality can be different. This is a game, and just a search for the lines of Fate on the hand, and covering with a plush blanket, and some secrets of women, ladies, simple, perhaps a sweet and clear longing for a home with chocolate walls, with a portrait of Beethoven in the living room, or for beautiful linen , dishes, the aroma of homemade bread and tea... The melancholy of orphanhood. Abandonment. Abandonment.

Sonya, with her hidden heat of maternal instinct and thirst for love, could extinguish it. Or - calm down. He did not blaze with the more furious fire of the elderberry bush in separation from Seryozha and his loved ones. ..Concern was received gratefully, almost like a child, with laughter and jokes. And it was given - the same way.
One more thing. We can hardly imagine the refined, graceful ordinariness of things from the Silver Age, things from the nineteenth century. Let me explain a little. What do I want to say? A lyrical digression of personal impressions….

One day they brought and showed me a lady's album with clasps for poems and notes.
...In this album, luxurious despite the passing of two centuries, with sheets of velium, a watermark of the owner, a gold edge and a velvet cover, there was kept a piece of a handkerchief from those times... Taking it in my hands, with a sank heart - not to mention trepidation - I suddenly, and without the harsh frames of the film, S. Govorukhina understood what Russia was like, which we lost there, in the whirlwind of the seventeenth.. Or maybe we never found it.. And I never dreamed of this wonder and subtlety of things, nor this Latin, nor this snow on squirrel fur coats and Rostov the Great, with its bells and churches and icons in ancient frames.. “I want her!” - said Sonya Parnok, as soon as she entered the church and saw the eye of the Mother of God and her clear mouth, with a bitter fold.
And she hurried to venerate the icon with her lips. I do not see any blasphemy in this phrase. This is the essence of Parnok, the paradox of her inner, passionate nervousness and unevenness - sensually, in colors and sounds. The great Obraztsova, for example, said exactly the same thing about Maruja Garruda, having seen her passionate, scorching barefoot dance and bitter song - with her throat and heart - in one of the taverns of modern Spain...

Now you can understand more. Otherwise. With a different sign and apostrophe... I'm trying.

The cult of sensuality, the touch of the world for an extraordinary creative personality in all its facets is necessary, as important as air... The cult of love and play... Worship and abandonment. A troubadour, a tournament, albeit a deliberate one, comprehension, conquest, seduction. Temptation..

The cult of feeling in all its sharpness, as Vertinsky once sang... It was all there. In silver, in the muddy amalgam of a century that has floated away from us - forever. And we don't understand this. We attribute our colors, which are clearer, more visible, frottage, crumbling with the stylus. Evil, often stupid... But there is also so much play and buffoonery in them, in these new colors of the relationship between Tsvetaeva and Parnok, “clarified” by Diana le Burgin, L. Aniskovich and many, many more.
These relationships, cultic for our strange and terrible, unreal time, are torn into quotes, parts, epigraphs, epithets. All the poems of the “Girlfriend” cycle are stunning in their subtlety and lyricism, nakedness - chaste and playful, amazing with the skill of conveying all shades of the Soul and full-fledged inner musicality - as if Chopin or Mozart were suddenly translated into words - so the researchers have impoverished them with everyday biased, frankly vulgar commentary - and there is such a thing! - that I don’t want to talk about it now and here... I’ll try to finish with strokes the portrait of Sofia Parnok - the tragic lady of the last third of the Silver Age, which smoothly turned into an iron - bloody one, with prison castles and the coldness of the Kolyma camps...

After Marina left, after a possible quarrel, the cooling of the carnelian in her heart, sailing, detachment - everything is possible, this is just the natural course of things, nothing more, I think - there was still a lot left in Parnok’s life: overcoming the monstrous conditions of existence, and working in the library, and life with a friend, Nina Vedeneeva, was lonely, difficult, they themselves carried water in heavy buckets to water the garden and tea roses. And a memory of Marina.

She loved her as if she were her unborn and born child, she cherished in her soul these unfinished conversations, the endless: “You know...” or the plucking of the guitar, the silver plucking, like the bracelets on Marina’s hands... She tried to remember her voice. Musically clear and pure, like silver splashes... Did she succeed? I can not tell…. I wrote incorrectly that Marina Ivanovna hated Sofia Yakovlevna later and vehemently rejected even memories of her.. Based on indirect evidence from T. Kvanina, I can now say that during a meeting with Fyodor Wolkenstein, at the Writers' Holiday House, in Bolshevo,

Tsvetaeva talked for a very long time with an old acquaintance, and in this friendly conversation, the names of Sofia Yakovlevna and her relatives probably flashed through. It couldn't be otherwise. After this conversation, Marina Ivanovna looked thoughtful and focused. Moore had difficulty getting her to talk during the meal.
Sofia Parnok died from exhaustion and complications of the disease, and was buried in one of the little-known German cemeteries in Moscow... It breaks your heart to look at the collapsed cross, the tombstone - unkempt and desolate...

And the breaking of spears at the false knightly tournament in honor of the unusual relationship between Sofia and Marina continues... And the tea rose on the wild grave still blooms.. timidly and inescapably..
At least this is consoling...
________________________________________________

St. Makarenko - Astrikova. May 2015.
To the reader:
The main text of the essay was written by me in 2006 - 07. I would like to add only the fact that, according to my personal information, the tombstone and cross on the grave of S. Ya. Parnok (Parnokh) were restored not by Maria Ivanova alone, but by a group in memory of the poetess created on the social network. Members of the group-club take care of the grave. For which I bow to them. The group holds literary evenings and concerts. There is also a website on the network entirely dedicated to the work of Sofia Yakovlevna. Parnok's books are still very difficult to get.

Each creative personality has its own muse, a stimulus in the flesh, which ignites a storm in the poet’s heart, helping to give birth to artistic and poetic masterpieces. This was Sofia Parnok for Marina Tsvetaeva - the love and disaster of her life. She dedicated many poems to Parnok, which everyone knows and quotes, sometimes without even realizing to whom they were addressed.

Girl with Beethoven's profile

Sonechka was born into an intelligent Jewish family in 1885 in Taganrog. The father was the owner of a chain of pharmacies and an honorary citizen of the city, and the girl’s mother was a very respected doctor. Sonya's mother died during her second birth, giving birth to twins. The head of the family soon married a governess, with whom Sofia did not have a good relationship.

Sofia Parnok

The girl grew up willful and withdrawn; she poured out all her pain in poetry, which she began to write at an early age. Sonya created her own world, into which outsiders, even her previously idolized father, had no access. Probably, from then on, a tragic hopelessness appeared in her eyes, remaining forever.

Life in her home became unbearable, and the gold medalist of the Mariinsky Gymnasium went to study in the capital of Switzerland, where she showed amazing musical abilities, having received an education at the conservatory.

Upon returning to her homeland, she began attending higher Bestuzhev courses. At this time, Sofia began a short-term romance with Nadezhda Polyakova. But the poetess quickly cooled down towards her lover. And this closeness almost ended tragically for the latter.

Soon Parnok married the famous writer Vladimir Volkshtein. The marriage was concluded according to all Jewish canons, but did not withstand even a short test of time. It was then that Sofia realized that she was not interested in men. And she again began to find solace with her friends.

Sappho Pierced by an Arrow

Before the war, the salon of literary critic Adelaide Gertsyk was a haven for talented Moscow poetesses. It was there that the meeting between Tsvetaeva and Parnok took place. Then Marina turned twenty-three, and her two-year-old daughter Ariadne and her loving husband Sergei Efron were waiting for her at home.

Parnok Sofia Yakovlevna (1885-1933) - Sofia Parnok, nee Parnokh.

A woman entered the living room in a cloud of aroma of exquisite perfume and expensive cigarettes. Her contrasting clothes, white and black, seemed to emphasize the contradictory nature: a sharply defined chin, powerful lips and graceful movements. She radiated an attractive aura of sin as she gently manipulated her husky voice.

Everything in her cried out for love - the tremulous movement of graceful fingers taking out a scarf from a suede bag, the seductive look of her inviting eyes. Tsvetaeva, reclining in a chair, succumbed to this destructive charm. She stood up and silently brought a lit match to the stranger, giving her a light. Eye to eye - and my heart raced.

Marina was introduced as Adelaide's named daughter. And then there was the clinking of glasses, a short conversation and several years of overwhelming happiness. Marina's feelings for Sofia strengthened when she saw Parnok riding in a cab with a young pretty girl. Then Tsvetaeva was consumed by the fire of indignation, and she wrote her first poem dedicated to her new friend. Now Marina knew for sure that she did not want to share Sonya’s heart with anyone.

Sofia Parnok and Lyudmila Erarskaya

In the winter of 1915, disregarding public opinion, the women went on vacation together, first to Rostov, then to Koktebel, and later to Svyatogorye. When Tsvetaeva was told that no one does this, she replied: “I am not everyone.”

Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergei Efron.

Efron patiently waited for this destructive passion to burn out, but soon went to the front. During this period, Tsvetaeva created a cycle of poems “To a Friend,” openly confessing her love to Parnok. But, oddly enough, her love for her husband did not leave her.

Rivalry

By the time she met Sofia, Tsvetaeva, although she was already a mother, felt like a child who lacked tenderness. She lived in her poetic cocoon, an illusory world that she created herself. She probably had not yet felt passion in an intimate relationship with her husband, which is why she so easily fell into the web of the experienced and erotic Parnok. A woman with lesbian inclinations became everything to her: both an affectionate mother and an exciting lover.

But both women were already recognized poetesses, published a lot, and little by little literary rivalry began to arise between them.

Literary rivals Sofia Parnok and Marina Tsvetaeva.

At first, Sofia Parnok restrained this feeling, because the first place for her was the satisfaction of carnal desires. But soon Tsvetaeva’s ambivalent attitude towards her friend begins to prevail. In her work of this period, gloomy notes can already be traced in relation to her beloved Sonya. Then Marina still believed that loving men was boring. She continued to indulge in bliss in an apartment on Arbat, which her muse had specially rented for meetings.

A sinful relationship is always doomed. This happened to two talented poetesses. In the winter of 1916, Osip Mandelstam stayed with Tsvetaeva for several days. The friends wandered around the city, read their new poems to each other, and discussed the works of their brothers. And when Marina came to Sonya, “under the caress of a plush blanket” she found another woman, as she would later write, black and fat. My heart was cut with unbearable pain, but proud Tsvetaeva left in silence.

Since then, Marina has tried to forget all the events associated with Sofia. She even accepted the news of her death with indifference. But it was only a mask; it is impossible to escape from memory.

Grave of Sofia Parnok.

As for Sofia Parnok, after breaking up with Tsvetaeva, she still had several affairs with ladies. Her last passion was Nina Vedeneeva, to whom the poetess dedicated a wonderful series of poems. In the arms of her last muse, Sophia, the Russian Sappho, died of a broken heart. But until the last day there was a photograph of Marina Tsvetaeva on her bedside table...

Sofia Parnok. Marina Tsvetaeva

One of Parnok's closest Moscow friends was Adelaide Gertsyk, a memoirist, translator, literary critic and poet, whose only book of poetry, Poems, was published in 1910. As a child, Adelaide Gertsyk was withdrawn and not prone to expressing feelings; she was far from the life around her and was in some kind of fantastic world, excluding adults, “big ones”. In her youth, Adelaide had a passionate love story with a young man who died tragically, dying literally before her eyes in the hospital. As a result of this shock, she became partially deaf.

At the age of thirty-four, she married Dmitry Zhukovsky, who came from a prominent military family, and the following spring gave birth to the first of her two sons. The Zhukovskys settled in Moscow on Krechetnikovsky Lane and began building a house in Sudak. Adelaide was very fond of this Crimean city on the Black Sea, near Feodosia.

In the pre-war period, the Moscow house of Adelaide Gertsyk became a place where young poetesses gathered. Her sister recalled her two “domestic” roles - on the one hand, she oversaw the education and upbringing of her sons, on the other, “with an absent-mindedly affectionate smile, she listened to the outpourings of the girl poet who clung to her. There were several of them in those years around Adelaide. More Since 1911, acquaintance and closeness with Marina Tsvetaeva has been going on: now the second sister Asya, a philosopher and storyteller, has appeared with us.[...]Perhaps Parnok was also a frequent guest at the Gertsyk-Zhukovskys.

Adelaide Gertsyk played an important role in Parnok’s personal life during these years. In mid-October, while visiting Gertsyk, Parnok met Marina Tsvetaeva, a young romantic friend and the so-called “daughter” of Adelaide Gertsyk.

Adelaide Gertsyk

We learn about the details of this meeting, which had such important consequences, from Tsvetaeva’s poetic memoirs: in January of the following year, she wrote the tenth poem of the “Girlfriend” cycle, addressed to Parnok.

In this poem, Tsvetaeva writes about Parnok, starting from the moment she entered the living room “in a knitted black jacket with a winged collar.” The fire crackled behind the grate, and the air smelled of tea and White Rose perfume. Almost immediately, someone approached Parnok and said that there was a young poetess whom she needed to meet. She stood up, slightly bowing her head, in a characteristic pose, “biting her finger.” As she stood up, she noticed, perhaps for the first time, a young woman with short, curly blond hair who stood up with a "gratuitous movement" to greet her.

They were surrounded by guests, “and someone [said] in a joking tone: “Meet me, gentlemen!” Parnok put her hand in Tsvetaeva’s hand “with a long movement,” and “gently” a shard of ice “lingered” in Tsvetaeva’s palm. “Tsvetaeva” she was reclining in a chair, twirling a ring on her hand,” and when Parnok “took out a cigarette,” instinctively taking on the role of a knight, “he gave [her] a match.”

Later, during the evening, Tsvetaeva recalled, “over the blue vase, how [their] glasses clinked.” When they drank, and their gazes crossed for a moment, she thought: “Oh, be my Orestes!” Judging by the further lines of the same poem, she snatched the flower and gave it to her interlocutor.

Throughout the evening she piercingly felt the presence of her “Orestes”. At some point, hearing Parnok’s soft, deep, hoarse laugh nearby, she asks herself if the woman for whom she already feels love is laughing at her joke. She looked back and saw Parnok take “out of a gray suede bag” with “a long gesture and drop[a] handkerchief.”

When Tsvetaeva met and fell in love with Parnok, she was twenty-three years old, married to student Sergei Efron, and Ariadne, her daughter, was two years old.

Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergei Efron

Parnok was her first female lover.

The combination of femininity, boyishness and inaccessibility that she sensed in 29-year-old Parnok was irresistibly attractive to her, not to mention the mysterious and romantic aura of sinfulness that surrounded this woman’s reputation:

And your power-hungry forehead

Under the weight of a red helmet,

Not a woman and not a boy,

But something is stronger than me!

Despite the fact that by the time she met Parnok, Tsvetaeva herself was already a mother, she cultivated in herself the sense of self of a child. Obviously, she never experienced either real passion or the ability to achieve satisfaction in her intimate life. And their relationship with Parnok was sadly affected by the fact that Tsvetaeva was extremely closed in her cocoon, as if protecting her infantile purity, and simply could not respond to Parnok’s mature eroticism, which excited and satisfied her.

Many researchers of Tsvetaeva’s work interpret the history of her relationship with Parnok, following a stereotypical point of view, implicitly hostile to this kind of love. They present Parnok as a “real lesbian,” an active, masculine, sinister seducer, and Tsvetaeva as a “normal” woman, a passive, sexually uninterested victim of temptation. This point of view largely corresponds to Tsvetaeva’s own view of this kind of love relationship. In several poems of the “Girlfriend” cycle, she paints Parnok as a “young tragic lady”, with a “dark fate”, over which “like a thundercloud is sin!” Indeed, the decadent aura of Baudelaire's femme damnee excited Tsvetaeva and brought a delightful sense of risk to her love for Parnok, as if she were going on a dangerous adventure, plucking her own personal fleur du mal. .).Baudelaire's collection "Flowers of Evil" includes the poem "Cursed Women."] By giving a decadent literary appearance to her friend, who did not share decadent tastes, Tsvetaeva asserts her purity, at least in poetry. But in that In the very same poem, where she calls Parnok a “tragic lady,” she reveals evidence of her own sophistication, in accordance with her stereotypes, admiring the “ironic charm that you are not him” (“Girlfriend,” No. 1).

It is even more interesting that the poems of the “Girlfriend” cycle testify: Tsvetaeva perceived herself as the personification of the active, masculine (boyish) principle in her relationship with Parnok. Tsvetaeva persistently portrays herself as a boy, a page, a courteous and flattering lover of a powerful creature who is “neither a woman nor a boy”; she sees herself as a knight who strives to perform heroic, romantic and reckless deeds to gain the favor of her mysterious lady. Tsvetaeva’s lyrical self-portrait had its basis in real life. She wooed Parnok and succeeded in her courtship, leaving far behind Iraida Albrecht, with whom her lover had had an affair before.

In addition, Tsvetaeva’s poems dedicated to Parnok allow us to trace the growth of her ambivalent feelings as she succumbed to her passion, which threatened her and her appearance of a pure “Spartan child”, which she carefully guarded. She felt that she was losing control of their relationship and was filled with hatred and anger. From that moment on, hostile (and passionate) feelings move her more than love.

Parnok’s feelings for Tsvetaeva formed and manifested themselves more slowly, and they are more difficult to interpret. She immediately recognized Tsvetaeva’s talent, unconditionally fell in love with her gift, carefully raised and cherished it, never ceasing to appreciate it. It is possible that this generous and noble attitude was mixed with a feeling of involuntary envy of the poetic gift of her young friend, but Parnok skillfully controlled her emotions and wisely refrained from direct literary competition with Tsvetaeva.

For Tsvetaeva, Parnok played the role of a muse, and she did it superbly: she inspired her Bettina Arnim (as she called Tsvetaeva in one poem) to new creative achievements, to several of the best poems of the early period. At the same time, she herself gradually began to write more, especially in 1915.

However, avoiding a “duel of willfulness” with Tsvetaeva in the literary sphere, Parnok challenged her in the field of personal relationships, a challenge, if not a provocation, and emerged from this duel a proud and powerful winner.

Sofia Parnok

So, the women challenged each other to a fight, forcing each other to overcome their usual self-image; they forced each other to take risks. Of course, this did not create conditions for calm, balanced relationships, and perhaps even increased subconscious hostility and mutual claims that are difficult to resolve. And it was like a natural disaster, when the post-shock state lasts much longer than the earthquake itself. Tsvetaeva felt these consequences and freed herself from them with a terrible effort, surpassing her former love, and Parnok realized what creative seeds Tsvetaeva’s love had planted in her only in the last year of her life, and only partially.

A day or two after the first meeting at the Gertsyk-Zhukovskys, Tsvetaeva makes her first poetic declaration of love for Parnok in a somewhat capricious and perky spirit, as if at first she did not want to realize that she was in love:

Are you happy? - Will not say! Hardly!

And it’s better - let it be!

I think you kissed too many people

Hence the sadness.

She boldly and openly confesses her love at the beginning of the fourth stanza, and the rest of the poem lists why she loves, concluding with the most shocking and perhaps most important confession:

For this trembling, for the fact that really

Am I dreaming?

For this ironic charm,

That you are not him.

A week later, Tsvetaeva responded with a poem to her first love date with a woman, which she “evoked” in her memory the next day as “yesterday’s dream” and which took place at her home, in the presence of her Siberian cat. The unusualness and novelty of sensations disturbs her, she does not know what to call them, she doubts whether what she is involved in can be called love. She did not understand the distribution of roles; everything, as she writes, was “devilishly the other way around.” In her mind, a “duel of willfulness” took place, but she did not know who won:

And yet - what was it?

What do you want and regret?

I still don’t know: did she win?

Was she defeated?

The next day her feelings became calmer. “The look is sober, the chest is freer, again at peace.” And she concludes at the end of the third poem from the “Girlfriend” cycle:

Oblivion cute art

The soul has already mastered it.

Some great feeling

Today it melted in my soul.

At the very beginning of their relationship, Parnok’s behavior seemed cold and aloof to Tsvetaeva. When Tsvetaeva once invited her to her place late in the evening, Parnok refused, citing her laziness and the fact that it was too cold to go out. Tsvetaeva playfully took revenge for this refusal in the fourth poem of “Girlfriends”:

You did it without evil,

Innocent and irreparable. -

I was your youth

Which passes by.

The next evening, “at about eight o’clock,” Tsvetaeva (or rather, her lyrical self) sees Parnok, who, together with the “other,” is riding on a sleigh, sitting “eye to eye and fur coat to fur coat.” She realized that this other woman, “desired and dear, is more desirable than I am,” but she perceived everything that was happening as if in a fairy-tale dream, inside of which she lived, like “little Kai,” frozen in captivity of his “Snow Queen.” ".

Given the stormy beginning of this love story, it seems strange that throughout November it did not leave any traces in the biography or poetry of either woman. It is possible that Tsvetaeva, who nevertheless remains the only source of information about the initial period of this novel, simply exaggerated the intensity of her and Parnok’s feelings. Perhaps both women were distracted by family concerns: Tsvetaeva was busy with her husband suffering from tuberculosis (at the end of the year he completed treatment in a sanatorium), Parnok was busy with her brother, who returned from Palestine to St. Petersburg in November.

Tsvetaeva’s poem, written on December 5, after a six-week silence, and addressed to Parnok, indicates that passions are running high. The poem is permeated with Tsvetaeva’s boyish swagger, especially in the last stanza, where she decides to compete in the name of her friend with “shining pupils,” that is, she strives to fight her off from “jealous companions” (other friends), it is implied that they are not so purebred:

As if from under a heavy mane

Bright pupils shine!

Are your companions jealous?

Blood horses are light.

As Tsvetaeva put it in a later poem, she understood her friend, realized that her “heart was being taken by storm!”, and this made changes in the development of their relationship. In mid-December, Parnok quarreled with Albrecht, left the apartment on Myasnitskaya, taking her pet monkey with her, and rented a room in Arbat. Soon Tsvetaeva left with Parnok for several days, without telling any of her close friends where she was going. They were concerned, especially Elena Voloshina (Pra), the mother of the poet Voloshin.

Elena Voloshina

Voloshina had known Tsvetaeva for several years and treated her with maternal sympathy and jealous care. Like most of Tsvetaeva’s friends, Pra disliked Parnok and perhaps saw her as a rival.

“It’s scary about Marina: things got really serious there. She went somewhere with Sonya for several days, kept it a big secret. [...] This all confuses and worries me and Lilya [Efron], but we don’t has the power to break this spell."

Tsvetaeva and Parnok were leaving for the ancient Russian city of Rostov the Great. Upon returning to Moscow, Tsvetaeva enthusiastically described the fantastic day they spent there. They started the day by wandering around the Christmas market in their fur coats, strewn with sparkling snow flakes, where they "looked for the brightest ribbons." Tsvetaeva “ate up on pink and unsweetened waffles” and “was touched by all the red horses in honor” of her friend. “Red-haired salesmen in undershirts, swearing, sold [them] rags: the stupid women marveled at the wonderful Moscow young ladies.”

When this magnificent crowd had dispersed, they saw an ancient church and entered it. Parnok’s attention was simply riveted on the icon of the Mother of God in a richly decorated frame. "Having said, Oh, I want her!" - She left Marina’s hand and walked up to the icon. Tsvetaeva watched as the “secular hand with the opal ring” of her beloved, the hand that was “all [her] misfortune,” carefully inserted “a yellow candle into the candlestick.” With her characteristic reckless impulse, she promised Parnok the icon “to steal it tonight!”

At sunset, “blessed as birthday girls,” the friends “rushed” into the monastery hotel, “like a regiment of soldiers.” They ended the day in their room playing and telling fortunes with cards. And when Tsvetaeva got the king of hearts three times, her friend “was furious.”

Already at home, in Moscow, Tsvetaeva recalled in her poems how this fabulous day ended:

How you squeezed my head,

Caressing every curl,

Like your enamel brooch

The flower cooled my lips.

Like me on your narrow fingers

I moved my sleepy cheek,

How you teased me as a boy

How you liked me like this.

The romance reached its highest point in the first half of the following year. Love for Tsvetaeva eventually inspired Parnok, whose muse had been silent for almost a year, to write new poems, and for the first time since her adolescence she began putting dates on her poems. This indicates a creative revival, an appeal to historical certainty and to facts of an autobiographical nature, which have always been a fruitful source of inspiration for her best poems.

In 1915 - 1916, Parnok continued to be at a crossroads, choosing between her own sources of life and sensations, characteristic only to her, and alien, bookish, but from the point of view of taste, impeccable aesthetic standards, which narrowed her possibilities, not allowing them to be expressed. Tsvetaeva also felt constrained by the same aesthetic norms and the unspoken censorship of the Russian cultural tradition, which did not allow the depiction of real life and, in particular, was hostile to lesbian themes in serious poetry. Her poems dealing with this relationship were in many ways more explicit than Parnok's because she did not write them for publication, whereas Parnok always had publication in mind.

It is possible that it was precisely in compensation for the forced submission to Puritan literary norms that Parnok and Tsvetaeva took pleasure in flaunting their love in the literary environment. One contemporary recalled:

“Twice I was invited [to the Rimsky-Korsakovs] to such very strange sessions. Marina Tsvetaeva was then considered a lesbian, and there, at these sessions, I saw her twice. She came with the poet Sofia Parnok. Both sat in an embrace and together ", we took turns smoking one cigarette."

Sofia parnok

Proud of his poet friend, Parnok introduces her to his friends, including Chatskina and Saker. Since January 1915, Tsvetaeva's poems have been published mainly in the journal Northern Notes. Since she does not want to receive money for her poems, Chaikina and Saker pay her with gifts and their hospitality.

In the winter of 1915, Parnok's sister, Lisa, came to see her in Moscow. They rented two rooms in an apartment building on Khlebny Lane, around the corner from the house where Tsvetaeva lived. Tsvetaeva often visited them. She and Parnok, sometimes together with other female poets, read their poems to each other and told fortunes. According to sister Parnok, expressed in the unpublished “Memoirs,” when she was already an elderly woman, Tsvetaeva did not pay much attention to her husband and daughter.

Sometimes she took her two-year-old daughter with her, as Ariadne Ephron recalled years later:

“Mom has a friend, Sonya Parnok, - she also writes poetry, and my mother and I sometimes go to visit her. Mom reads poetry to Sonya, Sonya reads poetry to mom, and I sit on a chair and wait for them to show me the monkey. Because that Sonya has a real live monkey that sits in another room on a chain."

In her creative work, Tsvetaeva was completely immersed in her feelings for Parnok, and only in January she dedicated three enthusiastic poems to her. In the eighth poem from the series "Girlfriend", she admires everything about her, focusing on the peculiar features of her appearance. This is the neck “like a young shoot”, “the curl of the dim lips is capricious and weak”, “the dazzling ledge of Beethoven’s forehead” and, especially, her hand:

Absolutely pure

Faded oval

The hand to which the whip would go,

And - in silver - opal.

A hand worthy of a bow,

Gone into silk,

Unique hand

beautiful hand

Four days later, Tsvetaeva wrote the ninth poem from the “Girlfriend” cycle, which most strongly expresses her passionate love and attraction to Parnok:

The heart immediately said: “Darling!”

I forgave you everything at random,

Without knowing anything, not even a name!

Oh love me, oh love me!

This winter period of enthusiastic love includes Tsvetaeva’s perhaps impossible, but psychologically understandable desire to have a child with Parnok. She justified such a wild desire by the fact that it expressed a “normal” maternal feeling, but it is not difficult to see in such self-justifications a latent feeling of guilt caused by the pure, non-binding pleasure that she received from her “abnormal” love for Parnok.

This represents a certain cruelty of Tsvetaeva’s fantasy towards her beloved in view of Parnok’s “desperation” that she (for medical reasons) cannot have children. Tsvetaeva indirectly understands Parnok's mental wound when she describes the "elder's" fear of losing the "younger's" love and her jealousy of all the men the younger one might date.

Even in the early spring of 1915, Parnok had apparently already begun to “accuse” Tsvetaeva of a hidden desire to leave her, and that she would inevitably do so due to the fact that Parnok would not be able to give her what she wanted most . As one might expect, Parnok’s jealousy was directed towards Tsvetaeva’s husband, and the very existence of such jealousy revealed a weak spot in her friend’s “black shell”. Once Tsvetaeva realized that her “caustic and burning lady” was vulnerable, her “will to power” played out. Tsvetaeva's impossible desire soon became an obsession.

On the one hand, Tsvetaeva’s feminine side wanted a child from Parnok, on the other, her “masculine” role was explained by another reason: Tsvetaeva, like Pygmalion in the myth, wanted to reveal to the world the still hidden genius in her Galatea (Parnok). Tsvetaeva’s creative will, yearning to create her friend as a work of art, and so reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s desire for the invention of her friend, Vita Sackville-West, in the novel “Orlando,” could not help but collide with Parnok’s equally strong will, yearning for self-creation. Despite her still modest successes in poetry, Parnok did not want to give up the role of Pygmalion to her young lover. She never allowed anyone to dare to think that he had “discovered” her. The last stanza of the ninth poem of the “Girlfriend” cycle, in which Tsvetaeva asserts herself as the discoverer of the “stranger” (Parnok) for Russian poetry, perhaps evoked ambivalent feelings in Parnok herself:

Parrying all smiles with verse,

I reveal to you and the world

Everything that is prepared for us in you,

Stranger with Beethoven's brow.

By the end of January, Tsvetaeva’s friends and family had already lost hope of saving her from this passion. “Marina’s [romance] is developing rapidly,” Voloshina wrote to Obolenskaya, “and with such an unstoppable force that nothing can be stopped. She will have to burn out in it, and Allah knows how this will end.”

Tsvetaeva seems to confirm this opinion with her poetic recollection of her first meeting with Parnok (No. 10, “Girlfriend”). In the remaining five poems of the cycle, however, there is a sense of hostility towards Parnok because of her “damned passion.” These verses suggest that in the spring Tsvetaeva had already begun to recover from her “burns” and therefore felt pain.

Parnok's discovery of Sappho coincided with the beginning of her romance with Tsvetaeva, so it is not at all surprising that her first sapphic imitations are thematically connected with individual moments in their relationship. Poem "As a little girl.." has two addressees, Sappho and Tsvetaeva, and treats three interconnected novels: firstly, Sappho’s romance with Attida, the “little girl” to whom, according to the traditional point of view, this one-liner by Sappho is addressed; secondly, Sappho’s romance with Parnok’s lyrical self “singlely pierced Sappho with an arrow,” and she creatively desired and fell in love with Sappho; and thirdly, Parnok’s romance with Tsvetaeva, who is the “little girl” and Parnok’s lover.

Pierced by Sappho's arrow, the lyrical self reflects on its sleeping friend:

“You seemed awkward to me as a little girl” -

Ah, Sappho’s one-liner pierced me with an arrow!

At night I thought about the curly head,

The tenderness of a mother replaces passion in a frenzied heart, -

In Parnok’s poem, Sappho’s archaic one-liner plays the role of a lyrical refrain, evoking various memories of an intimate nature: “I remembered how I pulled away a kiss with a trick,” “I remembered those eyes with an incredible pupil” - a mention, perhaps, of a date on October 22, when Tsvetaeva had her the impression that “everything is the devilish opposite!” Marina’s girlish pleasure with her “new thing” dates back to this time, when “you entered my house, happy with me, like a new thing: / With a belt, a handful of beads or a colored shoe, -.” And finally, Parnok’s very last memory, already repeated after this, is about Tsvetaeva’s bliss and unmaiden’s malleability “under the blow of love”:

But under the blow of love you are like malleable gold

I leaned towards the face, pale in the passionate shadow,

Where it was as if death had passed like a powder of snow...

Thank you also, sweet one, that in those days

“You seemed awkward to me as a little girl.”

The enthusiastic mood of this poem contradicts the far from harmonious relationships between the friends, which are reflected in two other poems written by Parnok in the winter of 1915: “My window was covered with patterns” and “This evening was a dull fawn.” On February 5, Parnok sent both poems to Tsvetaeva’s sister-in-law, Lila Efron, who asked for them. Neither poem indicates a specific addressee, but both contain details regarding the part of Moscow where Parnok and Tsvetaeva lived during their affair: the Georges Bloch sign (No. 56) was visible from the window of an apartment in a building in Khlebny Lane, where Parnok lived, and the Union cinema, which is mentioned in the poem “That Evening Was a Dull Fawn,” was very close, at the Nikitsky Gate.

Both of these poems can be considered a kind of predecessor of Parnok's mature lyrical element: an interpretation of sapphic love in a non-decadent, slightly romantic, conversational style. Stylistically and thematically, they represent a striking contrast with the stylized and anachronistic sapphic interpretation of a similar theme in the poem “A Little Girl.” The poem “My window is covered with patterns” expresses, as one can easily imagine, one of Parnok’s typical painful moods after a quarrel with Tsvetaeva:

Covered with patterns

My window. - Oh, day of separation! -

I'm on rough glass

I lay my longing hands.

I look at the first cold gift

With desolate eyes

How the ice moire melts

And bursts into tears.

A snowdrift has overgrown the fence,

More frosty and fluffy,

And the garden is like a brocade coffin

Under the silver fringe and tassels..

No one is going, no one is going,

And the phone is cruelly silent.

I'm guessing - odd or even? -

According to the letters of the Georges Bloch sign

In the poem “This evening was a dull fawn,” the city landscape, as in “It was covered with patterns...”, expresses the emotional state of friends who quarreled at the end of a love date. The feeling of alienation continues in the cinema, where the friends went at the request of the addressee:

This evening was a dull fawn, -

For me he was fiery.

This evening, as you wished,

We entered the Union Theater.

I remember my hands, weak from happiness,

The veins are branches of blue.

So that I could not touch your hand,

You pulled on your gloves.

Oh, you came so close again,

And again they turned off the path!

It became clear to me: no matter how you look,

The right word cannot be found.

I said, "In the darkness, brown

And your alien eyes."

The waltz dragged on and views of Switzerland -

A tourist and a goat are on the mountains.

I smiled - you didn’t answer...

Man isn't right about everything!

And quietly, so that you don’t notice,

I stroked your sleeve.

The day before Parnok sent these two poems to Lila Efron, Voloshina unexpectedly came to her, whose concern for Tsvetaeva finally forced her to confront the one who, it seemed to her, should be responsible for all her and Marina’s anxiety. Pra left Parnok, understanding a little differently how things were than when she arrived, as she wrote to Obolenskaya the next day: “.. I was with Sonya yesterday and we talked with her for many hours, and there were many failures in her speeches which offended me, and there were moments in conversations when I was ashamed of myself for talking about her with other people, condemning her, or pronouncing coldly categorical sentences worthy of an executioner.”

Sofia Parnok

Two days later, Parnok wrote a poem that predicts “inevitable death” for the lyrical self on the path that her heart has chosen:

Once again the sign to set sail has been given to us!

We left the pier on a wild night.

Again the heart is a crazy captain -

The sail is heading towards inevitable death.

The whirlwinds of the moon ball started dancing

And the heavy waves tousled the surrounding area...

Pray for the unrepentant, for us,

O poet, oh companion of all seekers!

Once, in a letter to Gurevich, Parnok described herself as a “seeker” who “spent a lot of time and effort” in search of “effective” communication and a person with whom she could share her life. It seems that already at the beginning of February 1915 she realized that Tsvetaeva would not be that person.

Towards the end of this month, Tsvetaeva also begins to express ambivalent feelings about her relationship with Parnok. The eleventh poem of the “Girlfriend” cycle is simply permeated with the irritation and hostility of a spoiled child. If Parnok suffered because of her devotion to her husband, her fantasy of a child she could not give her, and her flirtation with men, then Tsvetaeva was jealous of Parnok of her other friends and especially of her reputation as a person known for her “inspired temptations,” like mentioned Tsvetaeva in the first poem "Girlfriends". Tsvetaeva suspected that Parnok was having affairs with others while she was in an affair with her, although there is no evidence of this after Parnok quarreled with Iraida Albrecht. In the eleventh poem of “Girlfriends,” Tsvetaeva reveals her desire to surpass Parnok with the art of betrayal:

All eyes under the sun are burning,

A day is not equal to a day.

I'm telling you in case

If I change...

In the same poem, however, she says that “no matter whose lips she kissed” “in the hour of love,” she remains completely devoted to Parnok, as devoted as the German writer Bettina Arnim was faithful to her poet friend, Caroline von Genderode. In the last stanza of the poem, Tsvetaeva quotes Bettina’s oath of eternal fidelity to Caroline in the phrase: “... - just whistle under my window.”

The stormy relationship continued in the spring at the same time that the lyrical duel between the poet-friends flared up. As before, Tsvetaeva went on the offensive, and Parnok countered the lyrical and emotional “jabs” of her “little girl” mostly with silence, and once with a sonnet (“You were watching the boys’ games”). Tsvetaeva was oppressed by Parnok with her “damned passion...”, demanding “retribution for an accidental sigh” (“Girlfriend”), but most of all she was angry that she was in captivity of her own thirst, excited by Parnok, “scorched and scorching fatal mouths ", as she (Tsvetaeva) wrote in a poem on March 14th.

Judging by the thirteenth poem in “Girlfriend,” written at the end of April, Tsvetaeva sometimes felt unhappy that she “met Parnok on her way.” She both respected and hated her friend because she

Eyes - someone, someone

They don’t give a look:

Requiring a report

For a casual glance.

Still, in the same poem, Tsvetaeva insists that even “on the eve of separation” - she also predicted the end of the affair with Parnok almost from the very beginning - she will repeat “that she loved these hands / Yours in power.”

This spring, Tsvetaeva considers herself a “Spartan child” who is completely at the mercy of the older femme fatale, whose name is “like a stuffy flower” and who has “hair like a helmet” (“Girlfriend”). Tired of her friend always “demanding an account and retribution,” Tsvetaeva begins to throw stones at Parnok, expressing fear and foreboding that her “heroine of the Shakespearean tragedy” will invariably leave her to her fate. And Tsvetaeva wanted to “extort, at the mirror,” “where you [Parnok] should go and where is shelter” (“Girlfriend”).

After one of her frequent quarrels with Parnok, Tsvetaeva gave a scolding to her friend and all those close to her who, as it seemed to her, were overly burdening her with emotional demands, in a poem written on May 6, which was excluded from the final composition of the “Girlfriend” series:

Remember: all heads are dearer to me

One hair of your head.

And go yourself... You too,

And you too, and you.

Stop loving me, stop loving everyone!

Watch out for me in the morning,

So that I can go out calmly

Stand in the wind.

The lyrical flow of Tsvetaeva’s hostile feelings finally evoked a response from Parnok, albeit a very moderate one, in the “Sonnet,” written on May 9:

Did you watch the boys' games?

I rejected the smiling doll.

From the cradle straight to the horse

There was too much fury in you.

Years have passed, power-hungry outbursts

The evil one does not darken with his shadow

In your soul - how little of me it has,

Bettina Arnim and Marina Mnishek!

I look at the ashes and fire of curls,

In hands, more generous than royal hands, -

And there are no colors on my palette!

You, passing to your destiny!

Where does the sun rise equal to you?

Where is your Goethe and where is your False Demetrius?

Based on materials from the book by D. L. Burgin "Sofia Parnok. The life and work of Russian Sappho"

After reading “The Experience of the Creative Biography of Sofia Parnok”

Elena Romanova (by the way, it was not so easy to buy this book

and simply, in my hometown in bookstores there is such a book

I can’t find it, I bought it in a city 5000 km from mine, and even then

the book was in a single copy), I most of all

interested in the chapter dedicated to the latter

meeting of Marina Tsvetaeva and Sofia Parnok in 1922

year. Elena Romanova discovered the fact from documents,

that on one of the creative poetry evenings

the protocol indicates that they performed on the same day

and Sofia Parnok and Marina Tsvetaeva. Which means

the probability is maximum that they met.

And then one cannot dispute the fact that the poem

Marina Tsvetaeva from 1922 could well have been

dedicated to Sofia Parnok.

Fascinating! Cross Cross folding hands! Disappointment! Not a cross You are passion, like death and like separation. And the image of the “bewitching” one really resembles the image the “tragic lady” who captivated Tsvetaeva in 1914. And years later, Marina Tsvetaeva rethought her attitude towards Sofia Parnok, previously she thought that she loved Sonya, and by the age of 22 Marina Tsvetaeva already perceives her feelings for Parnok were like a passion that she could not resist. And passion, unlike love, is fickle and passes over time. Only now have the feelings finally passed... I think the trace of those feelings remained in my soul for the rest of my life. Dissolving infusion The sweetness of a swoon... That insisting to us is yours Wheezing, voiceless diva - Marina Tsvetaeva apparently never heard those poems Sofia Parnok, who captivate us now, and who put she is on a par with the best poets. But the hobby of Sofia Parnok in those terrible times of antiquity it is quite clear to me. This helped to survive, even dying of hunger in Sudak. Marina Tsvetaeva did not understand this, despite the fact that she herself was an extraordinary person, and her creativity rarely depended on surrounding political events. Life! - Without a voice he enters the house, Makes vows in full memory, In a gentle half-male voice - Voiceless good Lethe... A gentle half-male voice... Also reminds me of earlier the so-called voice of Sofia Parnok “with a slightly hoarse gypsy voice”... I call only a few to you, I forget the importance of smiles... - That’s along the entire voice mile Disappointments continue. January 29, 1922 And disappointment reminds of their separation. And the line “I call few to you” permeates me... With each There are fewer such people every year. So close "you" and such a distant “You”... And an unfinished version of another poem written Marina Tsvetaeva around the same time:

Unprecedented

Unprecedented:
For the first time!
Didn't kiss
And she didn’t swear.

Unprecedented:
Gift and mercy.
Didn't suspend
And she didn’t bow down.

And at the thawed window -
It was another one -
She.

.............................
.............................
Don't put a spell on me!
I didn't swear.

If she built it -
That house is broken.
With this other one
I don't remember the relationship.

.............................

With this maid

I don't bother.

.............................
.............................

Don't call me, -
Reckless.

January 1922

Kisses, vows, distances, building relationships... words are lost... Unusually strangers, but previously such relatives, such loved ones. And now Marina Tsvetaeva sees herself differently. And resentment not forgiven, communication is impossible. Two strong personalities... Why... There are dying feelings in the air... and a piece of the soul, who leaves with them. Or he doesn’t even leave, but hides to the farthest corners. If you think about a previously close person, then the feelings begin to resurrect, just like the previous sensations. Therefore, the opportunity to think about Sofia Parnok Marina Tsvetaeva I just excluded it, eliminated it. Killed love.

Each creative personality has its own muse, a stimulus in the flesh, which ignites a storm in the poet’s heart, helping to give birth to artistic and poetic masterpieces. This was Sofia Parnok for Marina Tsvetaeva - the love and disaster of her life. She dedicated many poems to Parnok, which everyone knows and quotes, sometimes without even realizing to whom they were addressed.

Girl with Beethoven's profile

Sonechka was born into an intelligent Jewish family in 1885 in Taganrog. The father was the owner of a chain of pharmacies and an honorary citizen of the city, and the girl’s mother was a very respected doctor. Sonya's mother died during her second birth, giving birth to twins. The head of the family soon married a governess, with whom Sofia did not have a good relationship.

The girl grew up willful and withdrawn; she poured out all her pain in poetry, which she began to write at an early age. Sonya created her own world, into which outsiders, even her previously idolized father, had no access. Probably, from then on, a tragic hopelessness appeared in her eyes, remaining forever.

Life in her home became unbearable, and the gold medalist of the Mariinsky Gymnasium went to study in the capital of Switzerland, where she showed amazing musical abilities, having received an education at the conservatory.

Upon returning to her homeland, she began attending higher Bestuzhev courses. At this time, Sofia began a short-term romance with Nadezhda Polyakova. But the poetess quickly cooled down towards her lover. And this closeness almost ended tragically for the latter.

Soon Parnok married the famous writer Vladimir Volkshtein. The marriage was concluded according to all Jewish canons, but did not withstand even a short test of time. It was then that Sofia realized that she was not interested in men. And she again began to find solace with her friends.

Sappho Pierced by an Arrow

Before the war, the salon of literary critic Adelaide Gertsyk was a haven for talented Moscow poetesses. It was there that the meeting between Tsvetaeva and Parnok took place. Then Marina turned twenty-three, and her two-year-old daughter Ariadne and her loving husband Sergei Efron were waiting for her at home.

A woman entered the living room in a cloud of aroma of exquisite perfume and expensive cigarettes. Her contrasting clothes, white and black, seemed to emphasize the contradictory nature: a sharply defined chin, powerful lips and graceful movements. She radiated an attractive aura of sin as she gently manipulated her husky voice. Everything in her cried out for love - the tremulous movement of graceful fingers taking out a scarf from a suede bag, the seductive look of her inviting eyes. Tsvetaeva, reclining in a chair, succumbed to this destructive charm. She stood up and silently brought a lit match to the stranger, giving her a light. Eye to eye - and my heart raced.

Marina was introduced as Adelaide's named daughter. And then there was the clinking of glasses, a short conversation and several years of overwhelming happiness. Marina's feelings for Sofia strengthened when she saw Parnok riding in a cab with a young pretty girl. Then Tsvetaeva was consumed by the fire of indignation, and she wrote her first poem dedicated to her new friend. Now Marina knew for sure that she did not want to share Sonya’s heart with anyone.

In the winter of 1915, disregarding public opinion, the women went on vacation together, first to Rostov, then to Koktebel, and later to Svyatogorye. When Tsvetaeva was told that no one does this, she replied: “I am not everyone.”

Efron patiently waited for this destructive passion to burn out, but soon went to the front. During this period, Tsvetaeva created a cycle of poems “To a Friend,” openly confessing her love to Parnok. But, oddly enough, her love for her husband did not leave her.

Rivalry

By the time she met Sofia, Tsvetaeva, although she was already a mother, felt like a child who lacked tenderness. She lived in her poetic cocoon, an illusory world that she created herself. She probably had not yet felt passion in an intimate relationship with her husband, which is why she so easily fell into the web of the experienced and erotic Parnok. A woman with lesbian inclinations became everything to her: both an affectionate mother and an exciting lover.

But both women were already recognized poetesses, published a lot, and little by little literary rivalry began to arise between them.

At first, Sofia Parnok restrained this feeling, because the first place for her was the satisfaction of carnal desires. But soon Tsvetaeva’s ambivalent attitude towards her friend begins to prevail. In her work of this period, gloomy notes can already be traced in relation to her beloved Sonya. Then Marina still believed that loving men was boring. She continued to indulge in bliss in an apartment on Arbat, which her muse had specially rented for meetings.

A sinful relationship is always doomed. This happened to two talented poetesses. In the winter of 1916, Osip Mandelstam stayed with Tsvetaeva for several days. The friends wandered around the city, read their new poems to each other, and discussed the works of their brothers. And when Marina came to Sonya, “under the caress of a plush blanket” she found another woman, as she would later write, black and fat. My heart was cut with unbearable pain, but proud Tsvetaeva left in silence.

Since then, Marina has tried to forget all the events associated with Sofia. She even accepted the news of her death with indifference. But it was only a mask - it is impossible to escape from memory.

As for Sofia Parnok, after breaking up with Tsvetaeva, she still had several affairs with ladies. Her last passion was Nina Vedeneeva, to whom the poetess dedicated a wonderful series of poems. In the arms of her last muse, Sophia, the Russian Sappho, died of a broken heart. But until the last day there was a photograph of Marina Tsvetaeva on her bedside table...

One of the most famous poems by Marina Tsvetaeva is “I want to be at the mirror, where the dregs are...”.