Love and Youth

My first Turgenev and this came as a surprise to me: I expected the lyrical evocation of boyhood first love but I wasn't prepared for the rather whimsical humour that Turgenev inserts, or for the later developments that may well be foreseeable by the reader but which shock our poor narrator irredeemably.

I was very aware while reading of how this novella reaches out to other texts both preceding and following: the articulation of obsessive love that is also a kind of cover for portraying masculine subjectivity and a melancholy sense of the abject (the female object of desire has little subjectivity of her own) looks back to classical texts from the erotic elegies of Catullus, Propertius and Ovid, to their Renaissance imitations in Petrarch, Sidney, Ronsard and others. There's a touch of Goethe's Werther, as well as Proust (of course!) - and there's clearly another story that could be told from Zinaida's perspective that is almost completely muted here.

The trope, too, of the moment at which boyhood is left behind for a sober and saddened step into the complexities of adult life - a kind of Fall into knowledge - helps structure this story and, again, sets off memories of other books, not least The Go-Between: for Vladimir Petrovich, too, the past is 'another country'.

A lovely resonant little tale, then, that tracks a boy's coming of age. The other handful of stories in this collection are less decisive but offer up an interesting taster of Turgenev's scope.

It's absolutely amazing how well Turgenev captures the torment of youth, the melancholy, confusion and naïveté of young love through a writing style that is characterized mainly by simplicity

*ARC kindly provided by NetGalley in exchange of an honest review

Reading “Love and Youth” served as a reminder of how passionate love used to be display in the past. Russian literature has always been intriguing to me and getting to read some classic love stories was simply amazing. The writing style is beautiful as well as the stories. There were some that I didn't enjoyed much but overall, this stories feel like a warm embrace. The writing is really atmosferic and I felt like I was right next to the character of these loves stories, watching how they solved whatever conflict there was standing in their way to be together.

I had a pleasant reading!

Love and Youth is literary and enjoyable. A strong introduction or extension for experience with Turgenev’s work.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

This was a great collection of short stories that really are about love and youth, together and apart. They were funny, whimsical, and utterly charming even when they were sad. The first story was easily the best, but the collection as a whole is a strong one.

When I settled down to read Love and Youth, which opens with First Love, I felt fairly confident I knew what I was getting into. There were the polite Russian gentlemen telling stories to one another; there was the somewhat high-flown language, the slightly staid manner of speaking that marked this text out as having been written in a previous time. Before long, however, events had taken an unexpected turn – particularly when it came to the second half of the book, which contains stories such as ‘The Rattling!’ and ‘Bezhin Meadow’. These are, without exception, unusual tales, full of strange twists and overtones of comedy, and characterised by a heavy dose of the ‘whimsy and wilfulness’ originally encountered in First Love.

The immense, dizzying and often agonising feeling of falling in love for the very first time is captured with sensitivity and sharpness in this novella, in which our sixteen-year-old narrator falls head over heels for the beautiful, witty and often cruel princess who moves with her impoverished family into the house next door. [ . . . ] First Love is a moving and timeless story that will find some resonance with almost every reader.

[ . . . ]

All in all, Love and Youth is an enjoyable reading experience that brilliantly captures the fleeting sense described by the moony-eyed narrator of First Love: ‘the earth’s own relentless, headlong rush through space’. Life goes at a fair clip in these stories and is quite often totally absurd, yet that isn’t an altogether inaccurate reflection of the real experience of living. Not what I’d counted on, but all the more charming for it, Love and Youth is an irreverent dash through some of literature’s more serious themes, an insightful look at nineteenth-century Russian society, and a clear indication of Turgenev’s prowess as a writer. Heavily influenced by dreams, legends and fairy tales, the stories ultimately offer a wonderful sense of escapism.

[Full review available on my blog.]

Love & Youth brings together a newly translated collection of Ivan Turgenev's best short stories & novellas.
First love, the most famous, and probably one of the best examples of Russian & European 19th century Romanticism is a story about the destructive nature of unbridled emotional passion seen through the sentimental education of a 16yo adolescent, Vladimir and his unrequited love for Zenaida, a 27yo manipulative, proud & haughty hussy (une garce in French) who in turn will eventually fall prey to the seductive game of Vladimir's father, an unscrupulous & violent man. First love is the best study of what I would call the twin aspects of "Emotional despotism"
This is a great collection and it would be the best introduction for anyone interested or willing to discover one of the most important writers of the 19th century.
Turgenev was one of the greatest masters of character studies. Please enjoy without moderation!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the opportunity to read this wonderful collection prior its release date

Turgenev has been on my mind of late because I've been working my way through George Saunders's book of masterclasses on reading and teaching the great Russian short stories: "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain." (George includes Turgenev's "The Singers" in his book.) Before reading George's book, I'd had a little exposure to Turgenev, but not a lot: just a few other stories in anthologies in my college years.

So this volume from Pushkin Press was a pleasant surprise and came to me at the right time and in the right frame of mind. All of the material presented here was new to me. I particularly liked the novella "First Love." It featured the lyricism and humor that I've now come to value in Turgenev's work, and it was a treat to read a bit of his longer-form fiction. It's a fine and lovely novella.

The accompanying five short stories were something of a mixed bag. Of them, I was especially fond of "The District Doctor" and "Bezhin Meadow."

The translation from the Slaters was very approachable and pleasing. I had not read their Russian translations before.

All in all, a very nice volume from Pushkin Press, and a pleasure to read. And I'm sure the physical book will be a visual treat. (My only regret is that I have a e-galley!)

Another excellent volume from the wonderful Pushkin Press. Five of Turgenev’s short stories and his novella First Love are gathered here and are an excellent introduction to his writing. I’m not a great fan of his short stories in general, finding him too lyrical and romantic and too inclined to linger on landscape descriptions – I much prefer the novels – but these comprise a gentle and pleasant collection which aficionados and newcomers alike will enjoy.