Falling in love with a book is as much about the book itself as reading it at the right time. I picked up First Love and Other Stories by Ivan Turgenev (Oxford Press) at a used bookstore in South Bend several years ago, but it sat on the to-read shelf until a month ago, when I was going away for a couple weeks and took it along with me.
What I loved about First Love is the way Turgenev mixes antique story-telling with a distinctly modern aesthetic. Most of these stories rely on the convoluted set-ups of early fiction: a journal or a mysterious manuscript is discovered, gentlemen sit after dinner searching for conversation, and from this the story issues forth. I’m personally a fan of the provenantial preface. I enjoy being allowed to feel the dust on that mysterious manuscript or to sit with Russian noblemen and enjoy brandy and a cigar before the teller tells his tale. But what’s striking in Turgenev’s stories is that he leaps from this pre-modern device into impressionistic, taut stories absent of filigree. “Asya” and “First Love” lay out, scene by careful scene, youth disappointed by love, “King Lear of the Steppes” charts the downfall of a local nobleman, and “The Song of Triumphant Love” weaves a tale of mystery in Renaissance Ferrara. Common throughout these stories is patience. They’re allowed to progress without artifice and without hurry, steadily delivering us through vivid scenes—N. N. crossing and recrossing the Rhine in “Asya,” the scene with Vladimir’s father’s riding crop in “First Love,” Harlov tearing down his house board by board in “King Lear of the Steppes”—to the frustrations, difficulties, and mysteries of life.
But isn’t this what all good stories are supposed to do? This is where the timing comes in. It’s hard to put into words what’s so amazing here, or why the stories gripped me, without adding that at the time I was feeling rushed and impatient—with life, with my work. Turgenev’s stories, in showing the way back to the simple (and yet difficult) power of narrative, offered answers and possibilities.
These stories spoke to me, and that’s nice, but why should you read them, aside from their status as classics? Something amazing is happening here. Granted, we all, in our reading, build our own understanding of the history of literature, but I’m convinced that in those leaps from the antique to the fresh, we’re witnessing the birth of modern fiction. Yes, First Love and Other Stories gives you a chance to revel in the pure pleasures of story, but it also gives you a chance to be present for one of the ur-moments of writing.
