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    First Love (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
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    First Love (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
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    First Love (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
    Ebook122 pages1 hour

    First Love (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

    By Ivan Turgenev and Mary Albon

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    First Love captures both the exhilarating enchantment of adolescent infatuation and the exquisite torment of adult passion. Written by Ivan Turgenev, one of the masters of Russian literature, First Love tells the story of sixteen-year-old Vladimir's first bruising brush with love. The boy falls under the spell of Zinaida, a capricious and imperious beauty who delights in toying with her many suitors. Turgenev movingly details Vladimir's overheated emotional state as he blunders toward the knowledge that will shatter his innocence. Although at first glance this short work may seem a mere trifle, Turgenev manages to achieve the sublime. Anyone who has ever been in love will be touched by this tale of passion and disillusionment.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble
    Release dateSep 1, 2009
    ISBN9781411431461
    Unavailable
    First Love (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
    Author

    Ivan Turgenev

    Ivan Turgenev was a Russian writer whose work is exemplary of Russian Realism. A student of Hegel, Turgenev’s political views and writing were heavily influenced by the Age of Enlightenment. Among his most recognized works are the classic Fathers and Sons, A Sportsman’s Sketches, and A Month in the Country. Turgenev is today recognized for his artistic purity, which influenced writers such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad. Turgenev died in 1883, and is credited with returning Leo Tolstoy to writing as the result of his death-bed plea.

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    Reviews for First Love (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

    4/5

    298 ratings15 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A whirlwind of feelings, rapture and intensity of first love at 16, the crush of abandonment, disappointment, and a twist of fate (albeit slightly predictable) in the end... And even though Turgenev is not the first writer to dwell on this theme, he certainly claims the reader's attention with his compelling and beautiful prose. Sentimental? Yes. But a very touching novella nevertheless.
    • 4/5
      It's official, I need more Turgenev in my life. He could narrate the mundane and I'd be engrossed. His portraits and scenes are so vivid. A sixteen year old boy falls in love with the impoverished, capricious princess next door, so does a decent chunk of the neighborhood. Her heart, however, belongs to his father - this doesn't stop her from demanding adulation from the other poor sods. Things never end well for russian heroines though!
    • 4/5
      I know this is usually regard as one of, if not the best, short story Turgenev wrote.Yet while there are some wonderful elements here - such as Zinaida's character and the games she plays with her suitors - it always felt to me as if the heart were missing from this tale. Perhaps that is because the narrator is himself youthful and so the grand introspection of Turgenev's great novels is not present here.It's a very good short story, but I'd be tempted to rate "Asya" as more memorable.
    • 4/5
      "First Love" is similar in tone to "Spring Torrents", also by Turgenev. In both, the whirlwind of falling in love with a beguiling woman is shown to overwhelm a young man. It reveals that the pain and awkwardness of being "over your head" was the same in 1860 Russia as it is today; on the other hand, there are also charming little touches that show how different life was then, e.g. the belief a character has that drinking ice water can cause one to catch cold and die. I think reactions will vary to this type of book, but I'm a sucker for the sentimental touches of looking back on one's youth and of "first love" in general, and enjoyed this little story.Favorite quotes: On taking control of one's life; advice that Turgenev heard from his real father :"'Take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life,' he said to me once. ...'Do you know what really makes a man free?''What?''Will, your own will, and it gives power which is better than liberty. Know how to want, and you'll be free, and you'll be master too.'"On love (Ok, on first love, natch :-):"I remember how both our heads were suddenly plunged in a close, fragrant, almost transparent darkness, and how close to me in this darkness her eyes shone softly; and I remember the warm breath from her parted lips, the gleam of her teeth, and how her hair tickled and burnt me. I was silent. She smiled mysteriously and slyly, and finally whispered to me, 'Well?' But I only blushed and laughed and turned away, and could scarcely breathe."Also this one:"She quickly turned towards me, and opening her arms wide, put them round my head, and gave me a strong, warm kiss. God only knows for whom that long farewell kiss was seeking, but I tasted its sweetness avidly. I knew that it would never come again.'Good-bye, good-bye,' I kept repeating.She tore herself from my embrace, and was gone. I went too. I cannot even begin to convey the feelings with which I left her. I never wish to experience them again, but I should count it a misfortune never to have had them at all."On sentimental feelings of lost youth:"Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love - where are you? Where are you?"And this last one which I love:"O youth! youth! you go your way heeding, uncaring - as if you owned all the treasures of the world; even grief elates you, even sorrow sits well upon your brow. You are self-confident and insolent and you say, 'I alone am alive - behold!' even while your own days fly past and vanish without trace and without number, and everything within you melts away like wax in the sun ... like snow ... and perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do; it is this that you scatter to the winds - gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose. Each of us feels most deeply convinced that he has been too prodigal of his gifts - that he has a right to cry, 'Oh, what could I have not done, if only I had not wasted my time.'"..."What has come of it all - of all that I had hoped for? And now when the shades of evening are beginning to close in upon my life, what have I left that is fresher, dearer to me, than the memoirs of that brief storm that came and went so swiftly one morning in the spring?"Last point: I love the cover of the book in the Penguin Classics edition, wihch is from "Summer Landscape" by Ilya Repin in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
    • 4/5
      Another Melville House novella I'd never heard of but bought mostly just because of the Melville House endorsement. I had very little in the way of expectations going in, but the book still managed to surprise me. Rather than being about a "first love" where two young people are breathlessly in love with each other, it's about that kind of "first love" that is an unrequited romantic obsession with an inscrutable other.With its themes of decaying Russian aristocracy, I expected this little tale to be far more tragic than it was. Don't get me wrong, there is certainly squalor, cynicism, and heartbreak here. But somehow it all felt on a more ordinary, human scale, rather than epic, and I think I liked it better for that.Another excellent Melville House pick.
    • 4/5
      Late evening after dinner, three middle-aged men remember their first love. For two of them the experience had no noteworthy aspects, but the third gave an account of his passion for an "older" woman when he was sixteen. As the daughter of a coarse, impoverished princess she had several admirers when mother and daughter moved next door to Petrovich. He was immediately smitten. Nothing has changed for lovelorn teenagers in the almost two hundred years since this story was written, they are still beyond help or advice, with no choice but to wait and see what happens. Beautifully written with an excellent translation by Isaiah Berlin, this slim book is well worth reading.
    • 5/5
      A beautiful little book.
    • 4/5
      This is a slight novella and though evocative of the time (19th century Russia), is not fulfilling.Although framed by the narrator, Vladimir Petrovich, recalling his first love, the story is almost exclusively about his 16 year old self and his infatuation that summer with Zinaida, the 21 year out who holds "court" to her numerous suitors in the summer house next door. Although you do not read stories like this for their suspense, I really felt that Vladimir's blindness to the love that Zinaida has for another beggared belief (mine anyway).I read the beautifully bound and illustrated Folio Society edition, and this may have detracted from the story by being such a beautiful physical object!
    • 3/5
      St. Barts 2013 #9 - Another ok novella by Turgenev......very accurately capturing the pangs of teenage first love....with an interesting twist.....one I think we all figured out early on, but the book was about the teen discovering the truth of the situation. I enjoyed and have no regrets.
    • 4/5
      I had read "First Love" before - somewhere in my early teens, in Russian. I knew what the story was about, I knew the end (or so I thought) and I had always appreciated Turgenev. About 20 years later, I get the chance to read it again, in English this time. And the story is still as good as ever - the narrative of the middle-aged man about his first love, at the time when he was 16; a first love that never happened really - the woman, a few years his senior, fell in love with someone else instead. What I did not remember (or maybe I did not have the experience - both in reading and in life - to see) is how early in the story are the hints about who Zinaida will end up in love with. I knew it was clear long before the protagonist figured it out but the signs are there from almost the start. Maybe I saw them because I knew what was coming... What I don't remember for sure was the end of the story - the fact that our protagonist almost meets Zinaida a few times later in his life. In my memory this story finished when his family came back in the city - apparently my younger self did not like what happened after that and just forgot it. The story is worth reading but only if the reader is ready to immerse themselves in the Russian mid-19th century. What sounds silly and annoying now is what had been the norm back then - complete with the bad poetry (and some good one) and the poor princesses and the men that were surrounding them. And the reader should never forget that this is the story of a 16 years old - even if it is told by him when he is a bit older - things at 16 look different.
    • 4/5
      Very good book about a young boy's first love with a flirtatious older girl. Setting is 18th century Moscow. All of the characters play their part well with the exception of the boy's father, who is devious and quite unlikable (by me that is). A good twist that was easy for the reader to see coming, but not so easy for the boy. A short book and an easy read.
    • 5/5
      This is a damn good little novel providing rolling emotions of joy, giddiness, loathing, sorrow, and more. With themes mirroring his own life, especially his distant father and less desirable mother, Turgenev tells the tale of Vladimir Petrovich’s first love, in the countryside of Moscow, in the summer of 1833. The narration is autobiographical, with Petrovich discovering his first desires of adult love at the age of 16, immediately after which he finds his new impoverished neighbor, Princesses Zinaida, age 21, to be the object of his adoration and endless affections. Add a snuff-snorting princess mother, five other overly eager suitors, the aforementioned distant father who isn’t happy in his marriage and a mother who fears her husband, the comedy and the inevitable tragedy virtually writes itself. To say the story is predictable would not be a fair statement. We know it can’t end well. The beauty of the book is its flow, its word usage (fantastic translation by Isaiah Berlin), and the affecting footprint that it leaves, despite the brevity. A boy’s first love going awry, the revelation of the truth, his regret at the end are simple but effective. The passages of love – the desire, the enchantment, the loss of innocence, the first falling, being lost in it, yielding to it, crushed by it, to leave it, the shock of it, and its eventual passing – are all in these pages, without sappiness. His first love was his most memorable. My last love was my most memorable. Good-bye.Some Quotes:In the Foreword, advice from Turgenev’s father:"'Take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.” On love – the youth desiring love:“I remember that at that time the image of woman, the shadowy vision of feminine love, scarcely ever took definite shape in my mind: but in every thought, in every sensation, there lay hidden a half-conscious, shy, timid awareness of something new, inexpressibly sweet, feminine… This presentiment, this sense of expectancy, penetrated my whole being; I breathed it, it was in every drop of blood that flowed through my veins – soon it was to be fulfilled.”On love – the enthrallment:“…I forgot everything; my eyes devoured the graceful figure, the lovely neck, the beautiful arms, the slightly disheveled fair hair under the white kerchief – and the half-closed, perceptive eye, the lashes, the soft cheek beneath them… I blushed terribly…, fled to my room, threw myself on the bed and covered my face with my hands. My heart leaped within me. I felt very ashamed and unusually gay. I was extraordinarily excited.”On love – the youth sinking into the first love, innocence gone:“… the image of Zinaida still hovered triumphant over my soul, though even this image seemed more tranquil. Like a swan rising from the grasses of the marsh, it stood out from the unlovely shapes which surrounded it, and I, as I fell asleep, in parting for the last time clung to it, in trusting adoration.Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love - where are you? Where are you?”On love – better to have loved than not at all:"She quickly turned towards me, and opening her arms wide, put them round my head, and gave me a strong, warm kiss. God only knows for whom that long farewell kiss was seeking, but I tasted its sweetness avidly. I knew that it would never come again.'Good-bye, good-bye,' I kept repeating.She tore herself from my embrace, and was gone. I went too. I cannot even begin to convey the feelings with which I left her. I never wish to experience them again, but I should count it a misfortune never to have had them at all."Lastly – on youth and its inevitable passing:"O youth! youth! you go your way heeding, uncaring - as if you owned all the treasures of the world; even grief elates you, even sorrow sits well upon your brow. You are self-confident and insolent and you say, 'I alone am alive - behold!' even while your own days fly past and vanish without trace and without number, and everything within you melts away like wax in the sun ... like snow ... and perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do; it is this that you scatter to the winds - gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose. Each of us feels most deeply convinced that he has been too prodigal of his gifts - that he has a right to cry, 'Oh, what could I have not done, if only I had not wasted my time… What has come of it all - of all that I had hoped for? And now when the shades of evening are beginning to close in upon my life, what have I left that is fresher, dearer to me, than the memoirs of that brief storm that came and went so swiftly one morning in the spring?..."
    • 1/5
      A long short story/ novella about a young man / adolescent's first more or less innocent love where he is consumed by a passion for a young woman who is also involved with his father and several other men. All very aristocratic and Russian. Odd story didn't enjoy it.
    • 5/5
      Even if you pick up on the hints of a tragic ending to this first young love, you can't help but be taken in by the agonies and divinity of falling in love for the first time. Every moment, every description of the tragic despair coupled with the heart wrenching passion is perfectly depicted.
    • 4/5
      A party is over, but two men remain late with the host, smoking cigars. After midnight the talk turns to first loves, and one of the men, Vladimir Petrovich, admits he has a story to tell. So much of a story, in fact, that he insists on taking the time to tell it properly -- by writing it down. His first-person narrative thus becomes Ivan Turgenev’s coming-of-age novella, First Love. Initially published in 1860, it's translated from the Russian by Isaiah Berlin and now published as part of Penguin Books’ 20-title Great Loves series.Petrovich is a sensitive, 16-year-old Muscovite who spends the summer of 1833 with his parents at a country house. He’s dazzled to discover that an aging princess and her beautiful, 21-year-old daughter, Zinaida, occupy an adjoining house. Estranged a bit from his parents and on his own most of the time, young Petrovich is drawn into the adult world of Zinaida and the men who court her. Though a mere hundred pages, the novella captures not only 19th-century Russia, but also the thrill of first love, betrayal and the loss of innocence, and the complications of a later opportunity to reunite.“I never wish to experience [those feelings] again,” Petrovich writes, “but I should count it a misfortune never to have had them at all.” Ah yes, that’s first love! Highly recommended.