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