First Love (novella)

First Love (Pervaya ljubov) is a novella by Ivan Turgenev, first published 1860. It is one of his best loved and most celebrated pieces of short fiction.

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Vladimir (Voldemar), a 16-year-old, is staying in the country with his family and meets Zinaida, a beautiful young woman, staying with her mother, Princess Zasekina, in the wing of the nearby manor house. This family, as with many of the Russian minor nobility with royal ties of that time, were only afforded a degree of respectability because of their titles; the Zasekins, in the case of this story, are a very poor family. The young Vladimir falls irretrievably in love with Zinaida, who has a set of several other (socially more eligible) suitors whom he joins in their difficult and often fruitless search for the young lady's favour. Zinaida, as we find throughout the story, is a thoroughly capricious and somewhat playful mistress to a set of rather love-struck suitors. She fails to reciprocate Vladimir's love in a sensible and honest manner, often misleading him, mocking his comparative youth in contrast to her early adulthood. But eventually her true feelings, the real object(s) of her affections and a rather tragic conclusion to the story are revealed.

Template:Spoiler In the tragic and devastatingly succinct closing 2 chapters, we learn of Pyotr's death, and then an older Vladimir learns of his first love's death. Mysterious circumstances surround the sending of money to the Zasekin household, a 'twist' which is very much open to speculation. Before this, however, we the readers are given one last awkward meeting between Pyotr and Zinaida, at which Vladimir was an unwitting and unknown spectator.

The storyteller, at the time of narration a 16-year old boy; the protagonist of the story.

The object of Vladimir's affections. Capricious, mocking and difficult, she is inconsistent in her affections towards her suitors, of which Vladimir is the one to whom she shows (outwardly) the most affection. However, it is the affection of sister to brother rather than between lovers.

Vladimir's father, a stoic symbol of 19th century masculinity; very 'British' in outlook and apparently unreceptive to emotion.

The book has one introductory chapter followed by 24 chapters over a length of between 60 and 70 pages depending upon translation.

Dec 1860

Vladimir is recounting the story (of his first love) - as above - to friends around the dinner table, many years after his encounter with Zinaida.

The three stories, 'Spring Torrents', 'Asia' [or 'Asya'], and 'First Love' work well when read in combination; they are often found published together and deal with similar topics and take place in similar contexts.

The story First Love is a true Russian 'classic' (for want of a better phrase) although perhaps it does not really withstand in-depth analysis (the plot is rather tiresome in its length and protracted nature). It remains an important book for young Russians. The ending itself is of some interest - clearly designed as a surprise of sorts but, crucially, it encourages the reader to reassess what he thought of the characters and causes the reader to muse a little over the content. The text is regularly used in the teaching of Russian at schools and colleges.

First Love and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics) (Translator: Richard Freeborn). This edition contains 6 stories which all contain the best of Turgenev.

In 1970, Austrian director Maximilian Schell wrote, directed and starred in a version of Ivan Turgenev's novella, called Erste Liebe (American and British name: First Love), starring Schell as Pyotr, Dominique Sanda as Sinaida (Zinaida in the story) and John Moulder-Brown as Vladimir. The film is quite obscure but in 1971, it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in the Academy Awards, losing to Vittorio de Sica's Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini, which ironically starred Sanda (see [1]). It won the 1971 German Film Award. In the UK, it is frequently shown on Actionmax on Sky Digital.

• First Love, along with two other Ivan Turgenev's short stories, The Torrents of Spring and Mumu, are available online as a collection in
• The Torrents of Spring at Project Gutenberg
• [2]|Internet Movie Database entry for film of First Love (1970)]