first love

quotes by ivan turgenev from first love

"my father had a curious influence on me, and our relations were curious too. he took scarcely any interest in my education, but never hurt my feelings; he respected my freedom; he displayed - if one can put it that way - a certain courtesy towards me; only he never let me come at all close to him. i loved him, i was full of admiration for him; he seemed to me the ideal man - and god knows how passionately attached to him i should have been if i had not felt constantly the presence of his restraining hand. yet he could, whenever he wished, with a single word, a single gesture, instantly make me feel complete trust in him. my soul would open; i chattered to him as to a wise friend, an indulgent mentor. . . and then, just as suddenly, he would abandon me, his hand would again push me aside - kindly and gently - but, nevertheless, aside.

sometimes a mood of gaiety would come over him, and at such moments he was ready to play and romp with me, full of high spirits like a boy. he loved all violent physical exercise.

once, and only once, he caressed me with such tenderness that i nearly cried. . . then his gaiety and tenderness vanished without a trace. but when this happened it never gave me any hope for the future - i seemed to have seen it all in a dream. at times i would watch his clear, handsome, clever face. . . my heart would tremble, my entire being would yearn towards him. . . then, as if he sensed what was going on within me he would casually pat my cheek - and would either leave me, or start doing something, or else would suddenly freeze as only he knew how. instantly i would shrink into myself, and grow cold. his rare fits of affability towards me were never in answer to my own unspoken but obvious entreaties. they always came unexpectedly. when, later, i used to think about my father's character, i came to the conclusion that he cared nothing for me nor for family life; it was something very different he loved, which wholly satisfied his desire for pleasure. 'take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life,' he said to me once. on another occasion, being at that time a youthful democrat, i embarked on a discussion of liberty in his presence (on that day he was what i used to call 'kind'; then one could talk about anything to him).

'liberty,' he repeated. 'do you know what really makes a man free?'

'what?'

'will, your own will, and it gives power which is better than liberty. know how to want, and you'll be free, and you'll be master too.'"

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"zinaida guessed at once that i had fallen in love with her, but then i wouldn't have thought of concealing it. my passion amused her. she made fun of me, played with me, and tormented me. it is sweet to be the sole source, the arbitrary and irresponsible source of the greatest joys and profoundest miseries to someone else. i was like soft wax in the hands of zinaida; not that i alone had fallen in love with her. all the men who visited the house were hopelessly infatuated, and she kept them all on leading-strings at her feet. she found it amusing to excite alternate hopes and fears in them; to twist them according to her whim. she called this, 'knocking people against each other'; they did not even think of resistance, but gladly submitted to her. in her whole being, vital and beautiful, there was a peculiarly fascinating mixture of cunning and insouciance, artifice and simplicity, gentleness and gaiety. over everything she did and said, over every moment, there hovered a subtle, exquisite enchantment. everything expressed the unique, peculiar force of the life which played within her. her face, too, was constantly changing. it, too, was always in play. it seemed at almost the same instant mocking, pensive and passionate. an infinite variety of feelings, light and swift, succeeded each other like shadows of clouds on a windy summer day, in her eyes and on her lips. every one of her admirers was necessary to her. byelovzorov, whom she sometimes called 'my wild beast', or sometimes simply 'mine', would gladly have leapt into the fire for her. with no confidence in his own brains or other qualities, he was constantly proposing marriage to her, implying that the others only talked. maidanov was responsive to the poetic strain in her soul; somewhat cold by nature, like nearly all writers, he assured her fervently, and perhaps himself too, that he adored her. he composed endless verses in her honour, and recited them with an ardour at once affected and sincere. she sympathized with him and, at the same time, faintly mocked him. she did not really trust him, and after listening to his effusions for a while, used to make him read pushkin, in order, as she used to say, to clear the air.

looshin, the sarcastic doctor, so cynical in his talk, knew her best of all, and loved her more than the others, although he attacked her, both to her face and behind her back. she respected him, but did not spare him, and sometimes, with a peculiar malicious pleasure, used to make him feel her complete power over him. 'i am a flirt: i have not heart: i have an actor's nature,' she once said to him in my presence. 'all right then. give me your hand and i will stick a pin into it, and you will feel ashamed in front of this young man. and it will hurt you, and still you will be kind enough to laugh, mr truthful.' looshin flushed, turned away, bit his lip, but in the end stretched out his hand. she pricked it, and he did begin to laugh, and she laughed too, and drove the pin quite deep, and kept glancing into his eyes, which ran helplessly in every direction.

least of all did i understand the relations which existed between zinaida and count malevsky. he was good-looking, clever and shrewd, but something false in him, something equivocal, was apparent even to me, a boy of sixteen, and i wondered that zinaida did not notice it. but perhaps she did notice this falseness and was not repelled by it. an irregular education, odd habits and company, the perpetual presence of her mother, poverty and disorder in the house - everything, beginning with the freedom which the young girl enjoyed, with her consciousness of superiority over her surroundings, had developed in her a curious, half-contemptuous kind of carelessness and unfastidiousness. i remember how, no matter what happened - whether vonifaty announced there was no sugar left, or perhaps some squalid piece of gossip suddenly became public, or some quarrel broke out between the guests - she would only shake her curls and say, 'fiddlesticks!' and leave it at that.

but my blood, i remember, used to rise when malevsky would sidle up to her like a sly fox, lean gracefully over the back of her chair, and begin to whisper into her ear with a self-satisfied and wheedling little smile - while she would fold her arms and glance at him attentively, then smile herself and shake her head.

'what induces you to receive monsieur malevsky?' i once asked her.

'ah, but he has such beautiful little moustaches,' she replied. 'and anyway that is not your province.'

'perhaps you think that i love him?' she said to me on another occasion. 'no! i cannot love people whom i find that i look down on. i need someone who would himself master me, but then, goodness me, i shall never come across anyone like that. i will never fall into anybody's clutches, never, never.'

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"the most violently conflicting feelings, thoughts, suspicions, hopes, joys, pains, tossed and whirled within me in a kind of mad chaos: i was afraid of looking into myself, if a boy of sixteen can be said to do such a thing; i was afraid to face anything -  whatever it might be - consciously. i simply tried to get through the day as fast as i could, from morning till night: but then, at night, i slept. . . the lightheartedness of childhood came to my aid.

i didn't want to know whether i was loved, and i didn't want to admit to myself that i was not. i avoided my father - but avoid zinaida i could not. her presence seared me like a flame. . . but what did i care what kind of fire this was in which i burned and melted, when it was bliss to burn and to melt? i gave myself freely to my sensations as they came, telling myself lies and hiding from my own memories, and closed my eyes to what i sensed was coming. this sick, sweet longing would probably anyhow not have lasted long; but suddenly a thunderbolt blasted it, and flung me on to a new and altogether different path."

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"she tore herself from my embrace, and was gone. i went too. i cannot even begin to convey the feelings with which i left her. i never wish to experience them again, but i should count it a misfortune never to have had them at all."

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"'she is dead,' i repeated, stating dully at the porter, and making my way noiselessly into the street, wandered off without knowing where i was going. the past suddenly rose and stood before me. so that was to be the final answer to it all. so that was the final goal towards which this young life, all glitter and ardour and excitement, went hurrying along."

"perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to do whatever you may will, but in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do: it is this that you scatter to the winds - gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose."