First Love Annotated Penguin Classics

First Love opens with a brief scene in which three apparently prosperous Russian gentlemen of the 1850's propose to amuse themselves by recounting the stories of their first loves. Although they are seen but briefly, these phlegmatic characters can be identified as "superfluous men," Turgenev's phrase for those who exist comfortably without awareness or purpose. Indeed, only Vladimir Petrovich, a middle-aged bachelor, has anything of interest to say on this romantic topic, reluctantly...
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First Love opens with a brief scene in which three apparently prosperous Russian gentlemen of the 1850's propose to amuse themselves by recounting the stories of their first loves. Although they are seen but briefly, these phlegmatic characters can be identified as "superfluous men," Turgenev's phrase for those who exist comfortably without awareness or purpose. Indeed, only Vladimir Petrovich, a middle-aged bachelor, has anything of interest to say on this romantic topic, reluctantly admitting that his first love "was not quite an ordinary one." He cautiously refuses to recount the tale to his companions immediately, insisting upon writing it out first and then reading it to them at a subsequent meeting. The first-person narrative that describes Vladimir Petrovich's experience during the summer of his sixteenth year is framed by Turgenev's introductory scene, thus presenting the story of Vladimir's love for Zinaida as a remembrance of a vanished past and underscoring the tension between the naive youth whom the reader sees in the narrative and the mature man who tells the tale.

In the narrative, Vladimir Petrovich is portrayed as a sensitive and somewhat confused sixteen-year-old filled with a "delicious sense of youth and effervescent life." He accompanies his parents to their summer home outside Moscow with the intention of studying for his university entrance examinations. Vladimir is distracted, however, by awakening romantic yearnings: "a half-conscious, shamefaced presentiment of something new, unutterably sweet, feminine...."

This presentiment becomes incarnate when Princess Zasyekin, a vulgar and impoverished widow, rents the dilapidated home next to his family's, and Vladimir has the opportunity to meet Zinaida, Princess Zasyekin's beautiful twenty-one-year-old daughter. Almost immediately, Zinaida becomes the focus of Vladimir's romantic obsession. His adolescent desire is encouraged when Zinaida allows him to join in her nightly entertainment of an entourage of older courtiers. Although this odd assortment of suitors, who represent a variety of military, intellectual, and artistic accomplishments, are considerably older than Vladimir, they repeatedly display a humiliatingly adolescent devotion to Zinaida, humoring her whims and playing parlor games in which she toys with their emotions.