Turgenev's novella First Love is one of the most resonant books on young love I have had the pleasure of reading. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Turgenev shows us how Zinaida’s family is clinging to a shabby social respectability; Vladimir’s mother dismisses Zinaida as an “adventuress.” But Vladimir is drawn into the circle of suitors around the young beauty, and, while he is aware he is acting the fool, can not help himself–he becomes obsessed with the girl. Yet the pain, and the guilt, mirror that of “First Love.”. The good thing is that this situation usually goes away without leaving permanent damage and we remember those days of erotic madness with nostalgia, with tenderness and with the feeling that since then we have become better people and we check our feelings more effectively. Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links, Also available in translations by Isaiah Berlin (1950) and Richard Freeborn (1999), "(T)he tale that exploits most effectively Turgenev's gifts of pathos and humor, insight and self-awareness -- the strengths of his own passivity, so to speak -- is, "Passion in all its forms always excited Turgenev, but he was happiest portraying its earliest intimations; fulfilment made him uneasy. All these unusual feelings overwhelm you and youthful immaturity makes them impossible to manage. As Joseph Finder notes in “Where Have All the Strivers Gone?” in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, it isn’t fashionable to write about the intersection of class and commerce; he argues that perhaps only Tom Wolfe and Jay McInerney “remain defiantly old-school in their portrayal of ambition as a basic aspect of the human character.”. [ she falls in love with his own libertine father, Recently I have found myself drawn to novels about looking back to the past, about nostalgia and youth. Fresh off the success of her World Fantasy Award–winning novel Witchmark comes a standalone romantic fantasy from author C.L. But first love is not restricted to the very young. Turgenev could never write the same story today, with its driving force the conflict between romantic love and a rigid social order. First Love was published in March 1860 in the Reader's Library. Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure. I think the two things I was reminded from this novella is the reminder that life will not wait for us and that often we hurt the ones we love the most. I felt so much nostalgia while reading this. An only child of ill-matched parents -- his "still young and very handsome" father having married a woman ten years older ("from mercenary considerations") -- he's meant to be studying, preparing for university, but no one is pressuring him very hard and he enjoys great freedoms. An impassioned tale of first love and unrequited love in its truest form. Like a park at night....... and what Vladimir discovered that night! Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818-1883: Translator: Hapgood, Isabel Florence, 1850-1928: Title: First love, and other stories Contents: First love -- A correspondence -- The region of dead calm -- It is enough -- The dog. The triangle becomes a complex one: Zinaida wants to treat Vladimir as a younger brother, but she also responds to his resemblance to his father (“‘The same eyes,’ she added, sinking into thought, and she hid her face in her hands.”) Vladimir spends much of the story blind to Petr and Zinaida’s entanglement, and only realizes late on that he is not the only one consumed by passion, his remote and seemingly masterful father is transfixed by it as well. Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs. In an age of divorce, it may be harder for novelists to make star-crossed lovers believable, and consequently few try. He doesn't beat you over the head with a message. Refresh and try again. Turgenev requires only a few pages of understated prose to completely expose his subject: Despite the intolerable pain of heatbreak, and the fact that one might view love as folly, in hindsight or with age, young love nonetheless has an enduring, preternatural strength, against which life's other fruit seem pale in comparison. The iPod-Facebook generation rides the same emotional roller-coaster as did their mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, when it comes to l’amour. I like Turgenev's style. Language: English: LoC Class: PG: Language and Literatures: Slavic (including Russian), Languages and Literature: Subject First love is not an easy thing. It’s not as if there are significant negative social consequences to the break up of modern marriages–personal consequences, perhaps, but we seem to have exchanged the tragedy of being trapped for the tragedy of being abandoned. Oh, I do like how Turgenev writes. The protagonist of this novel, young Vladimir, quietly adores his father, but is estranged from his (abusive) mother. Indeed, the author claimed it was the most autobiographical of all his works. The translation is hideous. An impassioned tale of first love and unrequited love in its truest form. We begin the story thinking that we are exploring Vladimir’s coming-of-age initiation into the mysteries of love; we quickly learn that Zinaida and Petr Ivanych, Vladimir’s father, are not immune to the power of love and desire. Turgenev's novella captures not only the ecstatic shamelessness of first love, but the fogginess of being young in general - that feeling of not understanding the action you're taking part in.

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