| Title | : | First Love (Unabridged) |
|---|---|---|
| Author | : | Ivan Turgenev |
| Release | : | 2022-08-06 |
| Kind | : | audiobook |
| Genre | : | Romance |
| Preview Intro | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | First Love (Unabridged) | Ivan Turgenev |
| The title of the novella is almost an adequate summary in itself. The "boy-meets-girl-then-loses-her" story is universal but not, I think, banal - despite a surprise ending which notoriously turns out to be very little of a surprise. First Love is given its originality and poignancy by Turgenev's mastery of the piercing turning-point that transforms the character's whole being, making a tragic outcome inevitable. Even the nature symbolism is rescued from triteness by lovely poetic similes - e.g. "but at that point my attention was arrested by the appearance of a speckled woodpecker who busily climbed up the slender stem of a birch-tree and peeped out uneasily from behind it, first to the right, then to the left, like a musician behind the bass-viol." |
