Ivan Turgenev. First Love. Trans. Constance Garnett. 1860. Ebooks@Adelaide. University of Adelaide. 2006. Ebook.

I read First Love in response to a recent newspaper review. It is available in a variety of electronic formats on the Internet. Constance Garnett’s translations are still highly esteemed. She translated the version of The Possessed that was reviewed here some time ago.

One could say in jest that by Russian standards this is a short story. In modern fiction jargon, First Love is classed as a novella. It has, after all, twenty-two chapters, though some are short. It is fun to read. The first person narrator of the main story is the aristocratic Vladimir Petrovich V___. He tells some friends of the story of his first love.

Sixteen year old Vladimir goes to his new next door neighbors in the Russian countryside at their invitation and meets twenty-one year old Princess Zenaïda Alexandrovna Zasyekin. She is charming, sophisticated, pretty, and he easily becomes infatuated with her. She has any number of gentleman callers, but sometimes singles out “Voldemar” for special attention.

The story does a remarkable job of describing mostly by narrative a teen’s first serious infatuation quite effectively. There is a little self-deprecating humor as Vladimir tells the story many years later. Still, we understand that Vladimir is serious.

Though her family has fallen on hard times, Zenaïda is still a princess and five years older, so we know that she is unattainable. Like Helen in Poe’s poem, that unattainable quality makes her even more appealing. She is a charmer, yes, but we also have to confess that she is sweet to Vladimir, perhaps teasing him, but we still believe her when she says that he is special to her.

After months of social calls and thinking of her, Vladimir becomes aware that Zenaïda has changed. She still entertains gentlemen callers, she is still sociable, but he understands that she has fallen in love. He does not immediately know who her lover is, and, in fact, guesses wrong at first.

When he makes his discovery, it is truly a surprise, and it changes his perspective on many things. Without going into detail, he also happens to witness the moment much later when she breaks off this relationship, and that stuns him more—not the breakup itself, but the manner in which it happens.

The story is told in a kind of personal detail with a serious intent that reminded me of Melville’s shorter works like Billy Budd, The Encantadas, or “Bartleby the Scrivener.” (Not Moby Dick; even Melville never wrote anything else quite like Moby Dick.)

The narration is told as a frame story. The older Vladimir is socially drinking with some friends, including an unnamed narrator of the frame, and one of them suggests telling stories of their first loves. The few they share are perfunctory and far from interesting, so the evening goes on in a different direction. But a few weeks later, Vladimir mails a letter with his story, so most of First Love are the pages of this long letter.

This approach may well have inspired Joseph Conrad in his tales including Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim which are narrated to a group of drinking buddies by the sailor Charlie Marlow. Like those tales, First Love will stick with you, if not as a story, as an impression. There are some people who marry their middle school sweethearts, but don’t most of us carry at least a fragment of a broken heart along with some enlightenment over a first love? Vladimir Petrovich will never forget his—read First Love and see why.