Resumo de First Love - Tourgueniev, Ivan

Translation by: femme/600/21 October 2005
One always remembers their first love. Ivan Tourgueniev illustrates it for us here.
Vladimir Petrovitch, a forty year old man, remembers his first love which "wasn't a commonplace affair." It's the summer of 1833, near Moscow. We are in the villa that his parents have rented. A poor commoner princess moves in across from the villa. She has a twenty-one year old daughter, Zinaida Zasskine, who is surrounded by a court of bachelor suitors. She makes light of their feelings like a capricious, fickle, young woman. Vladimir's father, whose marriage was based on good sense and who is still a handsome fellow, is indifferent to family life and is stingy with the signs of affection that he shows to his son. "Take whatever you can from life, but don't let yourself be taken over by anyone else. Don't ever belong to anyone but yourself-be your own master. There you have the secret to life."
That's what he professes to his son.
There is a time when Vladimir Petrovitch can believe that he is the favorite of the princess. He goes through all of the pangs of love as is the case when one's love is not affirmed by its object. But the young woman confines him to the cutsie role of her page. Nevertheless, he is sure of one thing-that the princess has changed. "She's in love." And the result of this fact will do nothing more than confirm that which the narrator has given one to understand. His first love is carrying on an affair with his father.
The epilogue informs us that the father (who must have been experiencing with this his last love affair) will die a few years later, as will Zinaida, and therefore, the lovers will be reunited in death. The narrator precisely states that he did not feel any resentment towards his father ("On the contrary, my esteem for him grew even more") as if his filial love had been even stronger than his love for the princess and as if, after all, the young man had been happy to finally share something with his father,the most beautiful and intense thing that one has a right to look forward to in our short and wretched existence.
"Now the shadows of evening are beginning to envelop my life. What is more sweet and cherished than the memory of this fleeting, spring-like morning storm of life?

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