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. "but at that point my attention was arrested by the appearance of a speckled woodpecker who busily climbed up the slender stem of a birch-tree and peeped out uneasily from behind it, first to the right, then to the left, like a musician behind the bass-viol. The sixteen-year-old boy, Vladimir Petrovich, has fallen in love for the first time. Even the nature symbolism is rescued from triteness by lovely poetic similes - e.g. It is not only a simple but very effective tale on fluttering adolescent hearts, but also a gesture of artistic defiance of an age which demanded a writer to lift the nation. First Love is given its originality and poignancy by Turgenev's mastery of the piercing turning-point (akin to Joyce's "epiphanies") that transforms the character's whole being, making a tragic outcome inevitable. There was left in the room only the master of the house and Sergei. Turgenev's novella First Love is one of the most resonant books on young love I have had the pleasure of reading. The "boy-meets-girl-then-loses-her" story is universal but not, I think, banal - despite a surprise ending which notoriously turns out to be very little of a surprise. The title of the novella is almost an adequate summary in itself. Translated by Constance Garnett (1861 - 1946) Download cover art Download CD case insert First Love
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |