We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.įirst Love begins with a late-night round of three men sharing stories of their first loves - but one, Vladimir Petrovitch, says he can't recount his story there, preferring to write it down and return with it, as he then does, two weeks later the rest of the novella is his first-love-account. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review 's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. That is why First Love or Spring Waters are such perfect stories of their kind.' - Erik de Mauny, Times Literary Supplement 'Passion in all its forms always excited Turgenev, but he was happiest portraying its earliest intimations fulfilment made him uneasy.

He is best when eschewing all fancy stuff and describing exactly what happened, as he does in First Love' - John Bayley, The New York Times Book Review It is a masterpiece that shows the curious literalism of Turgenev's talent. '(T)he tale that exploits most effectively Turgenev's gifts of pathos and humor, insight and self-awareness - the strengths of his own passivity, so to speak - is First Love.It is a gesture of artistic defiance to the urgencies of the age - which demanded of an artist as Russian as Turgenev to 'lift the nation' - yet it remains an authentic attendance to those urgencies: the old order versus the new' - Hisham Matar, The Guardian 'Ivan Turgenev's novella First Love is one of the most perfect things ever written.Also available in translations by Isaiah Berlin (1950) and Richard Freeborn (1999)Ī- : simple and very effective tale of young love.

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First love by ivan turgenev summary