Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross
Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross
Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross
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Sofia Parnok<br />
Koktebel and Moscow<br />
1914 -1916<br />
<strong>Mar<strong>in</strong>a</strong> <strong>Tsvetaeva</strong>, 1914 Sofia Parnok, Koktebel ,1914<br />
At Koktebel <strong>in</strong> the fall of 1914 <strong>Mar<strong>in</strong>a</strong> met the poet Sofia Parnok,“Sonya”, n<strong>in</strong>e years<br />
older then she. The encounter grew <strong>in</strong>to a lesbian affair that lasted two years. What were<br />
<strong>Mar<strong>in</strong>a</strong>'s motives is not clear. Why did she tempt her happ<strong>in</strong>ess, her relationship with<br />
Seryozha, with Alya <strong>in</strong> this fierce fire Was it the emotional plateau she had reached, the<br />
tranquility offered by Seryozha's quiet temperament A flood of new poems of an as yet<br />
unexpressed <strong>in</strong>tensity, erupted like a volcano from her soul. Sofia Parnok derailed her<br />
completely. All the dormant chasms between her sensuality, her poetic sensibilities, and<br />
the guilt feel<strong>in</strong>gs of her upbr<strong>in</strong>g<strong>in</strong>g were torn open. Aga<strong>in</strong> her poems are filled by the<br />
torments of the most exalted and darkest sides of her character.<br />
Sofia Parnok had been briefly married and divorced. Driven by an <strong>in</strong>satiable need for<br />
freedom from all moral codes she had publicly declared herself a libert<strong>in</strong>e and taken a<br />
lesbian lover. She was well known <strong>in</strong> Moscow. The fashionable woman literature of their<br />
times was full of such hero<strong>in</strong>es. Asya swears that they had never read Verbitskaya or<br />
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