First Love

This is must be one of the most beautiful and impactful short stories I've ever read.

“¡Y estoy sentado delante de ella! –pensaba.- ¡He llegado a conocerla! ¡Qué felicidad, Dios mío!”

Iván Turguéniev junto a Fiódor Dostoievski y Lev Tolstói continuó la profunda reforma y modernización literaria que iniciaron Alexandr Pushkin y Nikólai Gógol en la Rusia zarista del siglo XIX. Luego llegaría el enorme Antón Chejov para dejar a Rusia junto a los alemanes, los ingleses y los franceses en lo mejor de la literatura de su tiempo.
Independientemente de su estilo que tal vez difería un poco de Dostoievski o Tolstói, fue un gran escritor de cuentos y novelas siendo “Primer amor” su cuarta novela, publicada en 1860.
Con marcadas reminiscencias del Romanticismo que aún dominaba Europa, Turguéniev nos deja una novela fresca pero correcta que nos narra el ardiente primer amor de un joven de dieciséis años llamado Vladímir Petrovich hacia una joven cinco años mayor que él llamada Zenaida.
El despertar sentimental de Vladímir irá transformándose en un torbellino de pasiones ante una mujer que juega con sus sentimientos así también como de otros cuatro aspirantes de su corazón.
Con el correr de la historia, naturalmente se suscitarán complicaciones entre los personajes.
Cabe destacar que Turguéniev trabaja el argumento de la novela con aplomo dándonos la posibilidad de inclinarnos hacia uno u otro personaje, pero de alguna manera hacia Vladimir puesto que quién no ha tenido un primer amor y se ha deshecho en lágrimas ante un amor no correspondido.
Hacia este punto se orienta la historia y algunos personajes como Piotr, el padre de Vladimir tendrán singular importancia.
Como escribí anteriormente, es una novela correcta pero no de las mejores de Turguéniev como por ejemplo “Relatos de un cazador”, “Padres e hijos” o “Nido de nobles” aunque deja un interesante recuerdo en el lector, puesto todos alguna vez hemos sucumbido ante el amor de alguien por primera vez y en alguna manera es un hecho que recordaremos por habernos marcado para toda la vida.
Tengo que destacar que tuve la inmensa suerte de conseguir un ejemplar antiquísimo, publicado en España en 1893 (33 años después de la publicación de la novela), lo que hizo aún más interesante mi lectura. Dejo una foto en mi reseña para que se pueda apreciar este hermoso y antiguo volumen de “Primer amor”.

n  n

n  Not my kind of "love" story.n


n  UNUSUAL FIRST RUSSIAN LOVEn

Ivan Turgenev was the first Russian writer to become popular and successful in Europe, even way way WAY before of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy,, thanks to that Turgenev left Russia and he was living several years in different countries of Europe, but still, it’s undeniable that due the impact of his novels and short stories, that European and American readers became interested to read other authors from Russia, getting better the chances to Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and others.

First Love is one of his most known and popular works, along with one of the most autobigraphicals about Turgenev…

…and with that in mind…

…Yikes! If Turgenev’s adulthood wasn’t an usual one, his childhood neither was!

I guess that due the title of the story and the basic premise, I was expecting a little cute love story between two young persons in the Russia of the 19th Century, but while in the basic thought, that was it…

…also it wasn’t that…

…at all…

A 16-years-old boy falls in love with a 21-years-old girl, in the Russia of the 19th Century. The boy is from a family with a lot of money, and while the girl is from a family with royalty background, it doesn’t have money. He’s quite infatuated by her, however while she got aware since the very first moment that he was in love of her, she keeps teasing him, sometimes even cruel.

However, this isn’t a regular love story, even I questioned myself if it is a love story at all, at least between the two main characters.

There are developments, unexpected twists in this tale that I just couldn't cope about it, they're not just right, in the first twist, and when you think that the worse is over, you meet with yet another twist that it's just too sad.

I can’t detailed more, because I fear to spoil the key angles of the story, that I found awful but still if someone else want to try the book (it’s quite quick to read), well, I won’t be the one to spoil the relevant moments of this hard to digest tale, but I can't deny that it's a bold tale, well written.

Dosvedanya, folks!

Some books are gender specific I think. Many of Virginia Woolf’s or Jane Austen’s for example, are distinctly written with a female audience in mind. Despite the romantic title, do not be deceived. First Love is not a romance novel, and it is written very much for a male audience.

We are in Russia, Summer, 1833, a dacha near Moscow. A boy is in love with the girl next door. While this seems like a cliché premise for a novel, Turgenev’s compact classic is anything but a trite teenage holiday romance. This is the ultimate coming of age story, universal in its emotional reach.
Oh, the palpating thrill and frustration of first love! This story is told from the view of forty year old Vladimir Petrovich, who, amongst friends, reflects on a pivotal period in his youth – a time when he is rudely initiated into the complicated and painful world of adulthood.

Turgenev deftly explores a roller coaster ride’s worth of human emotions in a concise two hundred odd pages. The teenage Vladimir confusedly navigates the dangers of infatuation, jealousy and ultimate torture that is unrequited love. The object of his burning affection, is the alluring Zinaida, the neighbours daughter. Several years his senior, the more mature Zinaida is both playful and dangerously seductive, and critically aware of her attractiveness – basically, a “conceited minx.” She is not short of suitors, who fall over each other to capture her attention and oblige her by taking part in her silly games.

However, dear Vlad is vastly underexperienced and really no match for his rivals, though Zinaida still loves to ‘toy’ with him and distract his from his study – “I was jealous; I was conscious of my insignificance; I was stupidly sulky or stupidly abject, and all the same, an invincible force drew me to her, and I could not help a shudder of delight whenever I stepped through the doorway to her room…she amused herself with my passion, made a fool of me, petted and tormented me…I was like wax in Zinaida’s hands…” She expertly plays one off against the other, pushes them away, only to pull them back, ambivalent to their devotion. It seems they will do anything for her. and then she changes, she loses her frivolity and gains a seriousness. She is in love. But it is not with any of her admirers….and this bitter twist in the tale is a particularly shocking and painful one for Vladimir. Much later in the novel, we realise that Zinaida too, suffers the fate of a love that can never be realised fully. So, they are both pained by the tortures of first love, just not with each other.

Turgenev delves deeper into the dissection of relationships through Vladimir’s parents – the coolness and strain between them, his mother’s refusal to treat him as an adult and her general neglect; his father’s inconsistent moods and at times blatant indifference towards his son. This friction on the home front further drives Vlad towards next door and his is drawn to the charms of Zinaida like a moth to the flame.

Without completely divulging the plot, Turgenev covers loss and betrayal, the blurry line between infatuation and love, and the pitfalls and pains of growing up, letting go and moving on – “a man must stand on his own feet, if he can get nothing but a rock to stand on…” Despite the line, “fear the love of a woman; fear that bliss, that poison…” Turgenev is not really sounding alarm bells for men around the world about the “dangers” of the femme fatale, but rather prompting us (both men and women alike) to question whether the only thing worse than being in love is not being in love at all.

n  "Que resultou de tudo isso... de tudo o que eu esperava? E agora, quando as sombras da noite começam a fechar-se sobre a minha vida, que me resta que seja mais puro, mais querido, que as recordações dessa breve tempestade, que chegou e partiu tão rapidamente, numa manhã de Primavera?"n

(Ilustração de Anna e Elena Balbusso)

seems like a classical and PG version of Birthday Girl to me

4⭐️ Love is a feeling that doesn't change over time. However, the expression of that same feeling has undergone transmutations throughout history. In “First Love”, Turgenev tells the love story of Vladimir Petrovich, a 16-year-old boy who falls in love with Princess Zinaida Zasyekina who is 5 years older than him, and in addition has numerous suitors.

The novel focuses on Petrovich's first love and the implications it had on his personality, turning a passion into an incessant obsession. The disillusionment in love echoes through the novel as well as the naivety of a young man who experiences feelings of love for the first time.

As a teenager, this experience leads to a sudden change in Vladimir Petrovich's personality. He experiences for the first time the feeling of voluptuousness and, on the other hand, the feeling of rejection, aspects that will certainly have had an impact on his development. Vladimir loses his naivety and gradually, over the course of the novel becomes aware of the bitter unpleasantness of unrequited love. Curiously, the novella also touches on the theme of maternal interference in the child's feelings, creating a stir in a house where the female figure passes from the mother to the beloved.

Passion is a theme that Turgenev explores throughout his bibliography. And in this short novel he demonstrates his mastery of pathos, of the psychological construction of the characters.

Without leaving anyone indifferent, “First Love” takes us back to our own experience of love, to the discovery of a feeling so ineffable that it “burns without being seen”. The style is captivating and it is a short read that takes us back to our youth, to the blindness of a naive passion that like a fruit only time will ripen.

Russian classics just hit differently