Empire. Her father was a Jewish pharmacist and the owner of an apothecary. Her mother was a physician, one of the first women doctors in the empire. The oldest of three children, Parnokh, was the only one to have been raised by her mother, as Alexandra died shortly after giving birth to her twins Valentin, known as "Valya", and Yelizaveta, known as "Liza". The family was intellectual and taught by their father at home until ready to enter gymnasium or secondary school. From a young age, they were taught to read and received training in French and German, as well as music. Parnokh and her brother both wrote poetry from childhood; she began writing at age six and he, at the age of nine. Valentin would later introduce jazz to Russia and Yelizaveta became a noted author of children’s literature. Shortly after Alexandra's death, Yakov remarried with the children's German governess. While they materially were brought up in comfort, the children had little emotional support from their step-mother. As a result, Parnokh felt that she had been forced to grow up too fast and did not have a childhood. In 1894, she entered the Mariinskaya Gymnasium and from this period, began writing profusely, producing around 50 poems which are representative of her juvenilia. Unlike her brother's teenage writings, Parnokh's works from the period do not reflect influences of the decadent or symbolist artists who were prolific at this time. Instead, her work explored her feelings, burgeoning lesbianism, and fantasies with a more psychological, than artistic purpose. Through her poetry, she became unperturbed by disapproval and seemed to accept her lesbianism as an innate trait that made her unique and different. In addition, she suffered from Graves' disease, which affected her looks and made her feel increasingly unusual, as did her intense identification with both Russia and her Jewishness—a position not shared by her father's indifference to his religion nor her brother's loathing of Russia and the antisemitism he faced. In 1902, Parnokh spent the summer in the Crimea, where she had her first real romance with Nadezhda "Nadya" Pavlovna Polyakova, her muse for the next five years. From this point on, a pattern of muse-lovers was established which would fuel Parnokh’s creativity throughout her career. Her devotion was not steadfast and though Nadya inspired Parnokh, as with other lovers, she was not monogamous. As she approached her graduation, Parnokh and