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First Love (Penguin Classics) Paperback – December 14, 1978

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 369 ratings

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Isaiah Berlin's translation of the legendary Russian novella of growing up and heartbreak

When the down-at-heel Princess Zasyekin moves next door to the country estate of Vladimir Petrovich's parents, he instantly and overwhelmingly falls in love with his new neighbour's daughter, Zinaida. But the capricious young woman already has many admirers and as she plays her suitors against each other, Vladimir's unrequited youthful passion soon turns to torment and despair - although he remains unaware of his true rival for Zinaida's affections. Set in the world of nineteenth-century Russia's fading aristocracy, Turgenev's story depicts a boy's growth of knowledge and mastery over his own heart as he awakens to the complex nature of adult love.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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About the Author

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born in 1818 in the Province of Orel, and suffered during his childhood from a tyrannical mother. After the family had moved to Moscow in 1827 he entered Petersburg University where he studied philosophy. When he was nineteen he published his first poems and, convinced that Europe contained the source of real knowledge, went to the University of Berlin. After two years he returned to Russia and took his degree at the University of Moscow. In 1843 he fell in love with Pauline Garcia-Viardot, a young Spanish singer, who influenced the rest of his life; he followed her on her singing tours in Europe and spent long periods in the French house of herself and her husband, both of whom accepted him as a family friend. He sent his daughter by a sempstress to be brought up among the Viardot children. After 1856 he lived mostly abroad, and he became the first Russian writer to gain a wide reputation in Europe; he was a well-known figure in Parisian literary circles, where his friends included Flaubert and the Goncourt brothers, and an honorary degree was conferred on him at Oxford. His series of six novels reflect a period of Russian life from 1830s to the 1870s: they are Rudin (1855), A House of Gentlefolk (1858), On the Eve (1859; a Penguin Classic), Fathers and Sons (1861), Smoke (1867) and Virgin Soil (1876). He also wrote plays, which include the comedy A Month in the Country; short stories and Sketches from a Hunter’s Album (a Penguin Classic); and literary essays and memoirs. He died in Paris in 1883 after being ill for a year, and was buried in Russia.

Isaiah Berlin, O.M., C.B.E., first President of Wolfson College, Oxford, from 1966 to 1975, is a Fellow of All Souls. He was a Fellow of New College from 1938 to 1950 and Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford from 1957 to 1967. He served as President of the British Academy of Arts and Letters. He holds honorary degrees from the universities of Brandies, Cambridge, Columbia, East Anglia, Glasgow, Harvard, Hull, Jerusalem, Liverpool, London and Tel Aviv. Sir Isaiah's work covers a wide variety of subjects, but most of his work has appeared in periodicals and symposia. Russian Thinkers is the first of four volumes edited by Henry Hardy which bring together for the first time all of Isaiah Berlin's major essays (excluding those already published in Four Essays on Liberty and Vico and Herder). Isaiah Berlin's other contributions to Russian studies include his translation of Ivan Turgenev's First Love (available from Penguin) and his Introduction to Alexander Herzen's memoirs, My Past and Thoughts. Sir Isaiah was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 1979 for the expression in his writings of the idea of the freedom of the individual in society.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0140443355
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (December 14, 1978)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 112 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780140443356
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140443356
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.21 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.06 x 0.26 x 7.78 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 369 ratings

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4.2 out of 5 stars
369 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers enjoy the story's episodic structure and lyrical dialogue. They find the plot development clear and the author's writing style skillful.

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5 customers mention "Story quality"5 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the story's episodic structure. They find it a great novella of teenage love, perfectly told. The plot development has a distinct purpose, highlighting the boy's predicament. Readers describe the book as a fun young adult Christmas romance/fantasy.

"...The story has an episodic structure from which the poetry and drama effortessly unfold, showing the son's growing love and helpless flip-flopping..." Read more

"Fun young adult Christmas romance/ fantasy." Read more

"Read in just two settings. Very lyrical dialog. He is a good writer and story teller." Read more

"A memorable story from one of Russia's most brilliant 19th century writers." Read more

3 customers mention "Writing style"3 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the writing style. They find the author a good writer and storyteller with beautiful writings and lyrical dialogue.

"Read in just two settings. Very lyrical dialog. He is a good writer and story teller." Read more

"...So beautiful writings. Maybe I read more Ivan Turgenev, and you should read this." Read more

"A memorable story from one of Russia's most brilliant 19th century writers." Read more

The book comes a little bit damaged.
4 out of 5 stars
The book comes a little bit damaged.
i really like this russian literature. it’s extremely short but lovely. as I said , it comes slightly damaged but isn’t a big problem for me.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2001
    The Diary of a Superfluous Man is a diary of a fictional 30 year old man written during the last two weeks of his life. The dying man, Tchulkaturin, is exceptionally introspective and obssessed with his sense of failure and inferiority. His heated sensibilities stifle his will. He was a particular type in Russian literature, especially hated by the reformers of the day. In their eyes, he made no social contribution--hence, the term "superfluous".
    The Diary is not just a negative romp of a self-pitying aesthete. True, there's much complaints, hysteria, and sentimentality, but it's relieved by Tchulkaturin's amusing self-awareness. Likening himself to a useless fifth horse on a carriage, dragged along by life, he says, "But, thank goodness, the station is not far off." It was said that his birth was the "forfeit" his mother paid in the card game of life. Turgenev's ironic humor and relentless yet light-hearted social criticism add sharp levity.
    Tchulkaturin supports his self-assessment as superfluous with the "folly" of his life, a failed three week love affair which he claims was his only happiness. Through this vehicle Turgenev explores the themes of love, passion, illusion and will versus weakness, which is also the focus of the companion story, First Love.
    Tchulkaturin remembers bliss and humiliation, but he did take action. We see that no one wants to be rescued from passion, not even Tchulkaturin. Does it matter whether he reached his goal? The townspeople eventually esteemed him--perhaps he did make a social contribution and wasn't, afterall, a superfluous man. Irony upon irony and no answers.
    In his small room, confronting death, Tchulkaturin realizes that none of the pathetic facts of his life matter. Yet he laments he has "gained sense" too late. He sees what things have had meaning for him. No matter how small, he wants to hold onto them--he wants to live. The tragedy is that Tchulkaturin is universal, not superfluous. He, like most of us, come to realize that it is part of the human condition to feel that happiness and life seem to have hardly begun when nearly over.
    At the end of the diary, after Tchulkaturin has died, Turgenev adds another ironic touch that doubles as a social comment and as a device to force the infinitely unvarnished and necessary view that life goes on however it will, regardless of how we may think we have lived.
    First Love is the story of an adolescent who falls in love with the same woman as his father. It sensitively portrays the transformation of a child to a young man, precipated by his first passion. The unusual triangle intensifies the suspence as we wonder how the son will find out who his rival is--he knows there is one. His inevitable realization deepens his emotional life and his understanding of the complexities of human life.
    The story has an episodic structure from which the poetry and drama effortessly unfold, showing the son's growing love and helpless flip-flopping from child to man.The parlor games portentuously hint at the untold subplot. No character is wasted. Each has a distinct purpose for plot development and highlighting the boy's predicament.
    Turgenev's incomparable nature depictions have such a clarity of vision that vivid and penetrating images automatically arise in the mind's eye whether he uses them to symbolically presage events or to reflect a character's emotional state. Or, Turgenev can use his visions of the expansive beauty of nature in opposition to the character's emotional condition to distance us from it to show human insignifcance in the face of the vastness of existence.
    The pairing of The Diary with First Love is good. Each is a meditation on life, love and death. The juxtaposition of the two love stories, the neurotic dying man, the intelligent, passionate young son, and the powerful, archetypal father stimulate profound thought: How should life be lived--passionately or safely? Why to we cling to life so, no matter how we perceive it? Who decides whose life is superfluous and whose is meaningful? What are the criteria? Is any life meaningful? Does it matter how we have lived if we can discard our regrets and wonder at the paradoxical smallness and greatness of life? Is any significance we attach to life a mere crutch to face life or a crutch to face death? Each rereading of the stories reveals more perspectives and more layers of meaning.
    16 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2022
    i really like this russian literature. it’s extremely short but lovely. as I said , it comes slightly damaged but isn’t a big problem for me.
    Customer image
    4.0 out of 5 stars The book comes a little bit damaged.
    Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2022
    i really like this russian literature. it’s extremely short but lovely. as I said , it comes slightly damaged but isn’t a big problem for me.
    Images in this review
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2024
    Fun young adult Christmas romance/ fantasy.
  • Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2015
    I'm used to Turgenev's plays so I was excited to see this short story. Not my favorite of his works.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2024
    I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH!!!
  • Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2015
    Read in just two settings. Very lyrical dialog. He is a good writer and story teller.
    One person found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2020
    Very beautiful book. I love Turgenev style, how he describes senses when you are deeply loved someone. So beautiful writings. Maybe I read more Ivan Turgenev, and you should read this.
    5 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2012
    This short book is a life lesson. The description has been used before but this book is a gem, in size of the paperback, length, and of course as precious stone. For anyone who has risen into the arms of love and fallen from them as well, which would include most of humanity, this book is a wonderful look back. And why not, it is a look forward too.
    10 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Laxmi kant
    5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing. Worth every word
    Reviewed in India on December 29, 2021
    . ❤️. Really an amazing book. Flashes old memories. Reminds me of my first love. The smile, the throb, the gleam. Nostalgia.
  • Carolyn
    5.0 out of 5 stars Short and sweet
    Reviewed in Canada on April 30, 2020
    Very short read but lovely
  • メーテル
    5.0 out of 5 stars よかったです。
    Reviewed in Japan on February 19, 2016
    こういう本は洋書取扱い店の書棚で見付けても、多くの客の手に触れることで表装がかなり傷んでいることも多いです。今回送付頂いたのは本当に「新品」レベルのものでとても満足しています。
  • Jonas E
    4.0 out of 5 stars Several nice stories
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 5, 2013
    Personally i like the stories but i feel they fail to really drag me emotionally into them, the character’s behavior are to alien to me to connect.
  • David Bisset
    5.0 out of 5 stars Superb novella
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 19, 2020
    This is a little masterpiece impeccably translated from the Russian with a good introduction. There is not a superfluous word in Turgenev's depiction of adolescent passion in a narrative with a twist.