Click Ivan Turgenev: First Love
Before you read the book:
I was not expecting a lot from First Love (1860) because Turgenev has always been overshadowed by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy when this period of Russian literature comes up.
But this was a great read - short and packed! I was able to read it in one commute. Despite the train noises and the people coming and going, First Love really affected me with its powerful depiction of innocent love teamed up with overwhelming passion and a desire to be a martyr according to the whims of the one you love.
This book begins with a few older gentlemen sitting around a fireplace. The host asks them to share the story of their first love. Most are typical stories, a crush that dies with time or when someone new pops into the picture. but one says he has a great story but will have to write it down first – a great shout out to the power of writing! He does this, and when the gentlement reconvene, we get the story.
At first I wondered why this literary device was used. It only lasts a few pages, and it seemed to be superflous. However, as I put myself in the place of those gentlement listening that night, I was haunted. Furthermore, when we realize that this has stuck with the narrator and has influenced his perspective not only on love but also on life and death, the setting of where and when this is told takes on more importance.
The story is packed with powerful images and scenes that will stay with me. While sometimes brutal, they seem all too real, even in our own pedestrian lives. The sixteen year-old boy, Vladimir Petrovich, has fallen in love for the first time. The twenty-one year-old girl, Zinaida, is independent and powerful and somewhat cruel to all of her suitors, yet they cannot get away from her. Incidentally, was this just the way it was back then, all boyfriends coming at once to play “friendly” games? Anyway, some of the suitors are proud and think she will choose them, but the young boy and the doctor know they are ensnared. They realize that it is almost pathetic, but they have no other desire to stay away. The scenes with the suitors are enlightening and very interesting, but the story really picks up when we come to understand that the young girl too is involved in a love affair where she is being dominated by her passions and by her own secret lover.
After you read the book:
That last chapter’s glance at life and death and love’s role in it is one that sticks with me. Profound and haunting!
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 memories of that brief storm that came and went so swiftly one morning in the spring?
And those prayers for Zinaida, his father, and him? I am struck, but I can’t put words around it. How does this tie into the moment when Vladimir sees his father strike Zinaida?
I read this too in the same edition and loved it. I was also genuinely surprised by the denouement, which I thought I had predicted but hadn’t!
As to the ‘framing’ device through which the story is told, this is quite common in European literature of the time. I’m not a literary scholar so I don’t know the origins, but it seems as though it was considered inadequate simply to tell a story in the first person: it always had to be related to the narrator by someone else (usually someone he met in a railway carriage!). Even into the mid-20th century writers such as Stefan Zweig – whom I think you would love – were using this device. Try Zweig’s Chess Story, The Invisible Collection or Twilight – all reviewed on my blog! – for a taster.
John: Thanks for the insight into the framing device. I have to admit, now I am not so impressed by its uniqueness or by my ability to play the role of one of the gentlemen (though my little exercise did help me see the book from a different perspective). Also, I’m already feeling a nagging desire to check out Zweig. I thought my addiction to reading hurt my finances before I started blogging! Nevertheless, please keep suggestions coming!