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Queer as Fact

Sofya Parnok

Queer as Fact

Queer as Fact

History

4.8644 Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2018

⏱️ 69 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today's episode is about the life of Sofya Parnok, an early 20th century Russian poet who wrote openly about her relationships with women, owned a pet monkey, and died surrounded by her loving girlfriends. Transcript available here Sources

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to Queer as Fact, the podcast bringing you queer history from around the world and throughout time.

0:05.5

I'm Irene. I'm Alice. I'm Eli. And today we're going to be talking to you about Sophia Parnock,

0:11.3

a lesbian poet from early 20th century Russia, often called Russia's Sappho.

0:27.6

Before we start, we have some content warnings for this episode.

0:32.9

There will be a mention of someone being outed without their consent,

0:41.1

descriptions of chronic illness and institutionalisation for mental health issues and mentions of the Russian Civil War and related famine. If any of this is something you don't want to hear,

0:46.7

feel free to listen to one of our other episodes instead. It has different content and different

0:51.9

warnings. Sophia Parnock was born in Tagunrog, which is in Russia.

0:56.2

If you start it in Moscow and go directly south till you hit the sea, you will be in Taganrog.

1:01.9

It's a small seaside town.

1:03.4

Okay.

1:03.8

So you're just near the border to Ukraine.

1:05.8

She was born on July 30, 1885, to an ethnically Jewish family who was not particularly

1:13.1

actually religious, but definitely culturally Jewish. It was also a highly educated family.

1:19.0

Her mother was a doctor, which is in 1885 particularly remarkable. That's pretty cool.

1:24.9

And both parents valued education highly. She had a governess to

1:29.7

teach her German, like before she was five. I envy Europeans at all times. Yeah. When she was

1:36.7

six years old, her mother died giving birth to her twin younger siblings. But her father continued her education in that vein,

1:46.4

and by the time she was age six, she wrote her first poem.

1:49.7

Oh, okay.

1:51.1

Unfortunately, I don't know what was in her first poem.

1:53.9

We just know that she wrote it.

...

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