Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

First Love Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

The story is told by the 40-year old Vladimir Petrovich to a couple of friends, casting his mind back a quarter of a century. For some reason the three men have decided to swap accounts of their first loves, but Vladimir insists on writing his down in order to capture the subtle nuances. He now has the distance to be able to look back on his youth with the dispassion that comes from worldly wisdom, and the bulk of the narrative takes the form of his first-person account of that fateful summer. At their holiday home Vladimir and his wealthy parents find they have new neighbours, a rather slovenly princess who is always getting into financial scrapes and her lovely 21-year old daughter Zinaida Alexandrovna. Thanks to the deceased husband's feckless ways they live in straitened circumstances in a run-down cottage. However, Zinaida has collected a circle of devoted admirers each of whom wishes to be more. In the evenings they gather at her house to play games and discuss literature, but mainly to play games. The mother encourages it, and it transpires she is not above using her daughter's beauty and vivacity to her own ends.