First Love

Notes on Turgenev, Complaints, Harrassment

As a way to find some order amongst the chaos that is my own life, I’ve started revisiting the classics. One of which I’ve read recently was First Love by Ivan Turgenev, a novella about a horny teenager, Vladimir, who falls for a princess in her early twenties, Zinaida. The age gap is only one of many things keeping them apart, although I suspect if the genders were reversed, an older man would find no issue in developing a relationship with a child, but I digress. Vladimir must simultaneously contend with the enigmatic nature of young love and the hordes of neighborhood boys and men also fawning over the princess and showering her with more gifts and attention than she desires. The odds are stacked against him and (spoiler alert) he fails. Not only does he fail, but he loses to none other than his own father. However, the author seems to clearly be on the side of Vladimir as he ensures both Zinaida and the father meet untimely deaths like the…