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First Love (novella)

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For other uses, see First Love (disambiguation).
First Love
AuthorIvan Turgenev
Original titleПервая любовь (Pervaya ljubov)
LanguageRussian
Publication date
December, 1860
Publication placeRussia

First Love (Template:Lang-ru, Pervaya ljubov) is a novella by Ivan Turgenev, first published in 1860. It is one of his most popular pieces of short fiction.

Three of Turgenev's stories, Torrents of Spring, 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.

Plot summary

First Love is an example of a frame story. The beginning starts with the protagonist, Vladimir Petrovich, in a party. The party guests are taking turns recounting the stories of their first loves. When Vladimir's turn comes to tell his story, he suggests that he write down the story in a notebook because it is a rather long, unusual tale. The story within the story then continues from his notebook, which recounts the memory of his first love.

Vladimir Petrovich, a 16-year-old, is staying in the country with his family and meets Zinaida Alexandrovna Zasyekina, a beautiful 21-year-old woman, staying with her mother, Princess Zasyekina, next door. 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 Zasyekins, in the case of this story, are a very poor family. The young Vladimir falls in love with Zinaida, who has a set of several other (socially more eligible) suitors whom he joins in their difficult and often fruitless efforts for the young lady's favour. Zinaida, as is revealed throughout the story, is a thoroughly capricious and somewhat playful mistress to these rather love-struck suitors. She fails to reciprocate Vladimir's love, often misleading him, mocking his comparative youth in contrast to her early adulthood. But eventually the true object of her affections and a rather tragic conclusion to the story is revealed.

Conclusion and outcome

Vladimir discovers that the true object of Zinaida's affection is his own father, Pyotr Vasilyevich. In the tragic and devastatingly succinct closing two chapters, Vladimir secretly observes a final meeting between Pyotr and Zinaida at the window of her house in which his father strikes her arm with a riding crop. Zinaida kisses the welt on her arm and Pyotr bounds into the house. Eight months later, Vladimir's father receives a distressing letter from Moscow and tearfully begs his wife for a favor. Pyotr dies of a stroke several days later, after which his wife sends a considerable sum of money to Moscow. Three or four years later, Vladimir learns of Zinaida's marriage to a Monsieur Dolsky and subsequent death during childbirth.

Central characters

Vladimir Petrovich

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

Zinaida Alexandrovna Zasyekina

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.

Pyotr Vasilyevich

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

The importance of First Love

The story First Love is a true Russian 'classic' (for want of a better phrase). 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.

English translations

  • Turgenev, Ivan. Turgenev's Novels, v. 11 ("The Torrents of Spring." "First Love." "Mumu."). Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Heinemann, 1897. Out of print.
  • Turgenev, Ivan. First Love. Trans. Isaiah Berlin. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1950. Out of print. Now available in Penguin Classics, 1978. ISBN 0-14-044335-5.
Penguin edition includes an introduction by V.S. Pritchett.
  • Turgenev, Ivan. First Love and Other Stories, Oxford World's Classics. Trans. Richard Freeborn. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-19-283689-7.
The translation is based on the text from I.S. Turgenev, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy i pisem. Moskva-Leningrad, Vol. IX, 1965, pp. 7-76. This edition also contains The Diary of a Superfluous Man, Mumu, Asya, King Lear of the Steppes, and The Song of Triumpant Love.
  • Turgenev, Ivan. First Love. New York: Penguin Books, 2007.

Film adaptation

A German film adapting the Turgenev's novella was released on 1970.

The film "Lover's Prayer" combining Turgenev's novella and Chekhov's "The Peasant Woman" was released in 1999.

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