[.ca] First Love (ISBN 0974607894)

too melancholic..but beautiful:
Before reading this novel, I have expected something really bittersweet and warm from its title...however, was kinda depressed by its dark mood and the melancholic air covering the entire story. Neverthless....however melancholic it is, it is never too heavy, but beautifully sad. Turgenev have catched that naive feeling of teenage and the infatuation of first love.

Another Tragic Love Story...Plus:
Turgenev creates prose so spare, yet so elegant you find yourself rereading entire paragraphs just to try to net some hidden agenda behind the simplicity. Turgenev's influence on Hemingway was probably never more brilliantly expressed than in these understated words from A Moveable Feast: "I had read all of Turgenev...(of Dostoevsky) frailty and madnesss...were there to know as you knew the landscapes and roads in Turgenev..." This book is more than a simple love story between a young man and an older woman, though the idea of the shortness and depthlessness of young love is an important theme. There are also such themes as the dissolution and fall into poverty of the Russian nobility as seen in Zinaida and her mother, a former princess; the idea of 19th century Russia shrugging off the chains of serfdom and royal dominance is also explored in the vastly superior Fathers and Sons. Another noteworthy theme is alienation from parents and society in general; Vladimir Petrovich is dominated utterly by his menacing father and carking, gossipy mother. He grows to become a bachelor, rehashing his tragic story before a fireplace in an inn. Towards the end of the book, when Vladimir's father, who shares with Vladimir a strong affection for Zinaida, flogs the young girls arm with a riding crop, as well as the threat the father gives to one of Zinaida's numerous suitors, we are made to wonder exactly what part romantic relationships have in the alleviation or exacerbation of violent mental illness, or at least a violent and cold mindset. This book, however deep and lovingly crafted, is a cipher next to Fathers and Sons. It's also a lot shorter; first time Turgenev readers might want to start here.

Adolescent innocence.:
An old man reflects on his most dearest love in his life: his first love at 16 for a girl of 21. His love is not requited for a truly astounding reason. This short novel is a masterful evocation of an adolescent love, pure and without interest, but dramatic and cruel (whipping). An unforgettable masterpiece.

A Tight Effort:
Turgenev, a friend of Flaubert, makes a good effort at this slow moving eternity in the ephemeral type novel. The ephemeral being beauty eternity being the cycle of life ending in death. He made every epigram and scene intertwine in a pricking of subconscious introspection. It almost worked. Chekhov seemed to have greater success in creating this sort of ambiance with less words but Turgenev is no less interesting. The translator was Isaiah Berlin.

"During the past month, I had grown much older...":
Turgenev's brief novel, "First Love" is about growing older and lossing innocence. Vladimir, the central character who tells the story, makes a large memory excersice to remember, to write and to communicate his unusual first love experience when he was sixteen. He does that in beautiful prose, realistic and lyric simultaneusly. Love in this novel for Vladimir is mainly an emotional experience, not physichal. There is no sex and, more important, not explicit sexual desire. This could be considered old fashioned or artificial by contemporary readers but somehow Turgenev manages to make it credible and moving. The translation by Isaiah Berlin is excellent, at least much better that the one I've read into Spanish.