[In the following essay, Lagerberg discusses the structure of First Love, which contains an opening, but not a closing, frame story.]

In terms of structure Turgenev's story First Love is unusual, if not unique, in Russian literature, since the frame used to open the story is not repeated at its end, as would normally be expected. A brief summary of the story's structure will make this clearer. First Love is told from the viewpoint of a middle-aged bachelor, Vladimir Petrovich, who sits after dinner late at night with his host and another acquaintance, Sergei Nikolayevich. The host asks each of his guests to tell the story of his first love. Sergei Nikolayevich confesses that he has little of interest to tell, his first (and last) love being his nanny when he was six years old. The host himself also has no story he considers worth telling, his first love being the wife to whom he was married by arrangement and with whom he fell in love subsequently. Finally Vladimir Petrovich, who admits to being a poor story-teller, agrees to write down the unusual story of his first love and read it one evening for the entertainment of the two men. This then represents the opening frame and the remainder of the story is provided by what is written in his notebook.

The majority of Vladimir Petrovich's story is in fact largely static in terms of plot development as it tells of his passive love at the age of sixteen for a certain Zinaida, who is the daughter of an impoverished princess and some five years older than himself. Volodya falls in love with her almost instantaneously: the central part of the story is about his blissful suffering in love without any significant change in his feelings for Zinaida. Gradually he begins to realise that Zinaida does not love him, or indeed any of the five other men who make up her entourage and who also have aspirations of winning her love, but another. Who it is, though, Volodya does not know. The first of the two concluding dramatic moments in the story occurs when Volodya, now imagining himself to be the vengeful jealous lover, or Othello as he ironically calls himself, waits up at night to catch and kill his rival as he goes to his tryst with Zinaida, but he is stunned and humiliated when he sees that his intended victim is none other than his own father. He drops his knife and runs home still not able to fully comprehend what all the evidence suggests. The second climax occurs when, some months later, Volodya rides out of town with his father, who leaves him waiting while he meets Zinaida. Volodya follows his father and is surprised to see him talking with Zinaida, but frustrated by her words, Pyotr Vasilyevich strikes her hand with his riding crop. Volodya watches aghast as Zinaida kisses her scarlet wound in silent submission. Soon after this incident Vladimir's father dies of a stroke in St Petersburg, and his mother sends a sum of money to Moscow, the implication being that it is payment for Zinaida's confinement with Petr Vasilyevich's child, or perhaps to keep this scandal a secret.

The story ends some four years later. Vladimir learns that Zinaida is now married and in St Petersburg, but he turns down the opportunity of visiting her, and when he eventually calls on her, learns that she has recently died while giving birth. The final passage contains the pessimistic thoughts of Vladimir concerning youth, love and death. In the final paragraph, Vladimir, who has been berating himself for not feeling sufficient emotion immediately upon hearing of the death of Zinaida, recalls that in fact some days after Zinaida's death he stood by the bed of a poor old woman, who dies in abject poverty and terrible suffering, and finally felt the full tragic force of death. The final words of the story are:

I pоmny y, ctо tut, u оdra etоj bidnоj starusкi, mni stalо strasnо za Zinaidu, i zakоtilоss mni pоmоlitssy za nii, za оtцa—i za siby.¹

The framing technique used at the beginning of the story is not repeated and thus there is no return to the three men in the dining-room.

That the story First Love is largely autobiographical has never been in doubt. Turgenev himself regarded it with special affection throughout his life:

Etо idinstvinnay viss, коtоray mni samоmu dо sik dоr dоstavlyit udоvоlsstvii, pоtоmu ctо etо sama zizns, etо ni sоcininо … «Pirvay lybоvs»—etо piriyitо.²

However, there was surprisingly little that was known about the events which occurred during the summer of 1833 until the painstaking detective work of N. Chernov shed some light on this subject.³ It now seems clear that the real name of Zinaida can be ascertained as Yekaterina Lvovna Shakhovskaya, a poetess of some talent but little fame, who was born on 10 September 1814 and who died in St Petersburg on 28 June 1836, some nine months after the death of Turgenev's own father, all of which, of course, corresponds to the circumstances recounted in First Love. Yekaterina's age during the summer of 1833 would have been eighteen, and Turgenev's fourteen. Turgenev increased the ages of Zinaida and Vladimir Petrovich to twenty-one and sixteen respectively. This slight alteration of the facts seems to have been occasioned by the need to make the complex feelings of his young hero more credible, which in turn necessitated the increase in Zinaida's years so as to maintain the significant gap in years between the young ‘page’ and the more mature princess. It is curious to note that Turgenev's own grave in the Volkov Cemetery in St Petersburg lies not far from Belinksy, the first influential person to acknowledge his talent as a prose writer, and that of his first love, Yekaterina Lvovna Shakhovskaya.

What then are we to make of the final pages of First Love and its absent frame? Why did Turgenev decide not to end his story with a return to the persons who began it? In adducing reasons for the ending which has remained in the standard version of First Love (there is another version, mention of which will be made shortly) moralistic considerations are often mentioned. In particular mention is made of a letter which Turgenev wrote to Fet dated 1 June 1860, in which he says this about the episode of the dying woman:

Pridilal zi y starusкu na коnцi—vо-pirvyk pоtоmu, ctо etо dijstvitilsnо taк bylо—a vо-vtоryk pоtоmu, ctо biz etоgо оtrizvlyysigо коnцa кriкi na biznravstvinnоsts byli by isi silsnii.⁴

There has, on account of this quotation, been a tendency to downgrade the story's existing ending, but this one statement is insufficient to dismiss the artistic qualities of the concluding passage, particularly when one is dealing with a writer like Turgenev, whose capacity for inconsistent and even contradictory statements regarding his own work is well documented. Attention has also been paid to the inclusion in the French edition of First Love published in 1863 (three years after the first publication in 1860) of a concluding frame (the so-called prubavlinnyj kvоst ply Φranцuzsкоςо uzpanuy v «Pirvоj lybvu»).⁵ As mentioned earlier, in the final (Russian) version of First Love the story begins with a gathering of three men, one of whom, Vladimir Petrovich, agrees to write down the story of his own first love and read it to the two other men some days later, but at the conclusion of his narrative the story itself ends and we never hear their comments. In the conclusion to the French edition of 1863 each of the characters present at Vladimir Petrovich's reading expresses his less than enthusiastic opinion with regard to the events of the story, the dialogue ending as follows:

‘We do not mean by this that you are perverse—on the contrary. We mean that the social conditions in whose midst we have all grown up have formed in our country in a way that is unique and which had never existed previously and probably never will exist again. Your simple and uncontrived story has inspired in us a kind of dread. Not that it shocked us as immoral: it conceals something darker and more profound than mere immorality. Personally, you are clear of any reproach, not having done anything wrong. But in each line of your story, there comes through some general fault common to a whole nation that I would venture to call a national crime.’

‘Oh, what a big word for so small a matter!’ commented Vladimir.

‘The case is small, but the matter is certainly not. There is, I repeat, and you feel it yourself, there is as a certain soldier says in Hamlet: “Something (is) rotten in the state of Denmark.”’

‘Let us hope in any case that our children will have something else to relate from their youth and that they will tell it in a different way.’⁶

So ends the closing frame of the French edition and it is not hard to see why Turgenev found this rather forced dialogue unsatisfactory. As E. I. Kiiko has demonstrated, the addition of this frame was occasioned not so much from a feeling that the story as it stood in its Russian version was in some way deficient artistically, as from pressures which Turgenev felt upon him as a result of criticism of the story's alleged immoral content and lack of any social message. Kiiko concludes:

Ocividnо, zaкlycitilsnyi straniцy «Pirvоj lybvi», pоyvivsiisy vо Φranцuzsкоm izdanii 1863 gоda (…) byli napisany v оtvit na кriticisкii zamicaniy, vysкazannyi pо pоvоdu etоj pоvisti. Turginivu vaznо bylо оtvisti оba оbvininiy кritiкy: upriк v biznravstvinnоsti i upriк v оbsistvinnоj indiΦΦirintnоsti pоvisti.⁷

It appears, therefore, that the author himself felt that in terms of the story as a work of art the incomplete framing technique was better suited than the complete one, and critics of First Love have been entirely justified in generally viewing this prubavlinnyj kvоst as lacking in artistic value.⁸ It would be wrong, however, to equate the literary merits of the existing final passage of the story (the episode of the dying woman) with the later unsuccessful concluding frame in the French edition solely on the basis of Turgenev's reference to moralistic considerations in his letter to Fet which was mentioned above.

What then is the role of the opening frame of the story? There are three basic functions of a frame in a work of literature: first, of course, the frame sets the scene and establishes the theme of the inner narrative, as well as presenting a discussion of the events in the main narrative; second, it embeds the inner narrative in certain external circumstances;⁹ and third, a frame comments on how it is that a literary work evolves from a given situation, that is to say that it is a form of metanarrative.¹⁰ In First Love the opening frame undoubtedly establishes the theme of the story—first love—without which it would be somewhat understated. It also comments on how the story itself comes about, that is to say it is a metanarrative. However, the particular structure of First Love, in view of its absent concluding frame, means that the inner narrative is not embedded in the outer one, but rather stands in juxtaposition to it. The relationship between the outer and inner texts then is syntagmatic. What is also important for frames is that they establish two sets of protagonists, the before and after as it were.¹¹ In the case of First Love we have two heroes: Vladimir Petrovich and his younger self, Volodya. For Vladimir Petrovich the act of writing down his story is ostensibly a means to entertain his two friends, but it is also a means by which the older man is able to understand and come to terms with what happened in his childhood.¹² In addition it is a means by which Turgenev manages to distance himself from his own rather risqué subject matter: thus, even though the story is told in the first person, by creating the person of Vladimir Petrovich who narrates the story, the author himself becomes indirectly connected, something important bearing in mind Turgenev's concerns about the moral content of this story.¹³ I shall return to this aspect of the frame in connection with the story's conclusion.

As mentioned earlier, the major part of the narrative is largely static in terms of plot development. It is though towards the end of the story that important developments take place and together with this the presentation of time also changes: in the last few chapters of the book there occur several jumps forward in time, each one larger than the previous. The first climax of the story is the mock patricide (the episode when Vladimir waits outside to catch and kill Zinaida's lover but is astounded to see his own father). It is directly after this episode that the passage of time becomes more rapid. After this mock killing Vladimir notes that his former state of anxiety has passed leaving a feeling of death: ‘tоcnо ctо-tо vо mni umiralо’.¹⁴

For the next week he is in a kind of daze after which his parents have a terrible quarrel, his mother having been informed from one of Zinaida's admirers that her husband is having an affair with Zinaida. Volodya and his parents now move back to central Moscow, another month passes and the story's second climax occurs when Volodya sees his father strike Zinaida across the arm with his whip. Volodya's father, previously a figure whom he much admired and strove to take after, is now diminished in Volodya's eyes. By hurting Zinaida he exposes his own pain and suffering, and thus weakness, this the man who has boasted to his son:

‘Umij kоtits—i budiss svоbоdnym, i коmandоvats budiss.’¹⁵

These two dramatic moments are vital stages on Volodya's journey from youth to adulthood during which he comes to understand love as something other than pure and pleasurable. He now notes:

Pоslidnij misyц miny оcinv sоstaril—i mоy lybоvs sо vsimi svоimi vоlniniymi, i stradaniymi, pокazalass mni samоmu cim-tо taкim malins-кim, i ditsкim, i mizirnym pirid tim drugim, niizvistnym cim-tо, о коtоrоm y idva mоg dоgadyvatssy i коtоrоi miny pugalо, кaк niznaкоmоi, кrasivоi, nо grоznоi liцо, коtоrоi naprasnо silisssy razglydits v pоlumraкi.¹⁶

Volodya enters university two months later, and six months later the family moves to St Petersburg where Volodya's father dies of a stroke a few days after receiving a letter of extortion from Moscow, presumably from Zinaida's mother. The story then moves forward four years in the final chapter. Zinaida is now married and in St Petersburg. Volodya turns down the opportunity of visiting her and finds out a few weeks later that she has died. The story closes with a passage which can be divided into three parts. First, Volodya or rather Vladimir Petrovich, as the voice here is that of the older narrator, bemoans the inability of youth to feel the urgency of life and the tragedy of death. Second, he speaks of the evening shadows falling on his life and the fact that memories of his first love are still his dearest possession. Third, there is the passage in which he witnesses the death of the old woman. These three reflections represent the narrator's understanding of his path in life from naive but happy youth to disillusioned adult knowledge and finally death. The link between the three is provided by love.

The story First Love then is concerned with the passage from youth to adulthood, or innocence to knowledge. Indeed the theme of first love is itself inseparable from this evolution. As the narrative comes to an end, Volodya also grasps what he has been straining so hard to see for the last months, and Vladimir Petrovich is able to understand these events in the wider context of his whole life. In effect then what happens is that the two protagonists—Volodya and the adult Vladimir Petrovich—are united by the act of storytelling, or rather story-writing. Sixteen-year-old Volodya is naive; initially he is unaware of love, then he perceives love but does not understand it, and finally he comprehends the suffering that comes from love, and the close connection between love and death, and because he comprehends he can write the story—or is it because he writes the story that he knows?¹⁷ Since the figure at the story's end is united with the figure in the opening frame a concluding frame is not needed: the circle is complete—childhood to adulthood via first love. The rapid chronological progressions at the end of the story both represent Volodya's too hasty departure from adolescence and form stepping stones in time between the events of the narrative and the opening frame: one month later, two months, six months and four years. In this way the lack of a closing frame takes the reader by default back to the opening frame. It is also worth noting that by using a written version of events rather than a spoken one, the motivation to return to a spoken mode of communication (i.e. a closing frame) is reduced.

The main role of the opening frame is therefore to provide the possibility for Vladimir to overcome his traumatic experiences through art. The story is used not so much to retell the past as to interpret it, and the opening frame therefore becomes an integral part of the narrative. One must remember though that Turgenev is the most pessimistic of writers, heavily influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer: by telling his story Vladimir Petrovich gains the paradoxical knowledge that love elevates one to great heights of beauty, but simultaneously destroys the will and ultimately leads to death. Thus Pyotr Vasilyevich's entire philosophy of life and physical being are destroyed by his falling in love, the same fate that befalls Turgenev's greatest character, Bazarov, in Fathers and Sons.

Another striking aspect of the opening and closing sections of First Love is the contrast between the masculine world of the dining-room in the opening frame and the feminine world at the story's end where both Zinaida and the old woman die. In fact elements of the Oedipus myth make First Love fertile ground for psychoanalytic interpretation.¹⁸ Zinaida in effect becomes both a surrogate mother for Volodya (through the fact that his father woos her) and the object of his own desire. Volodya, as in the Oedipus legend, kills his father, but a mock version of this takes place in First Love with Volodya dropping the knife and running. The symbolic loss of his own mother through his father's affection for Zinaida, the death of Zinaida, his surrogate mother, and the death of his father, his will crushed by his passion, in addition to the final advice Volodya receives from his father in the form of a letter which he began to write on the day of his stroke:

Syn mоj,—pisal оn mni,—bоjsy zinsкоj lybvi, bоjsy etоgо scastsy, etоj оtravy …

culminate in a harrowing quasi-religious experience at the deathbed of an impoverished old woman. In fact we know little about the Vladimir Petrovich who sits with his friends after dinner in the opening frame: he is about forty years old, a bachelor, and a poor story-teller. The picture does suggest however a kind of masculine refuge from the danger of passion, a haven in rather bland amicability, and the notion that Vladimir's first love has produced an archetypal superfluous man is surely not misplaced.¹⁹ One is also reminded of the conclusion to Fathers and Sons which offers a not wholly convincing picture of domestic bliss in the Kirsanov household as an alternative to the more dangerous adventures of Bazarov and Anna Odintsova.

Finally, it is possible that Turgenev used the frame in another way. As mentioned earlier, by introducing his story through the medium of Vladimir Petrovich he manages to distance himself from the less than respectable (at least for the times) content of his narrative. Can it be that at the story's end the absence of a closing frame is intended, amongst the other things already mentioned, to reduce this distance? One notes in particular the last word of the story:

I pоmny y, ctо tut, u оdra etоj bidnоj starusкi, mni stalо strasnо za Zinaidu, i zakоtilоss mni pоmоlitssy za nii, za оtцa—i za siby.²⁰

The use of the reflexive pronoun along with the absence of any express mention of the ‘intermediate’ Vladimir Petrovich by means of a closing frame weakens the illusion of the opening frame and unites not only Volodya and his adult narrator, but perhaps the real narrator Turgenev also. A mild admission of guilt therefore is achieved without the heavy-handedness of a concluding analysis as in the French edition, while the special balance between inner and outer narrative which Turgenev sought is also accomplished.

Notes

1. Turgenev 1965, p. 76.

2. Russкui vipоmоstu, 1883, No 270, 2 October.

3. See Chernov 1973.

4. Turgenev 1962, p. 86.

5. The background to this circumstance has been dealt with comprehensively by E. I. Kiiko (1964).

6. Translated from the French by the present author as it appears in Kiiko 1964, p. 67.

7. Kiiko 1964, p. 64.

8. See, for example, Zweers 1984, p. 589.

9. See Isenberg 1993, p. 24. Isenberg's excellent analysis of First Love (pp. 22-49) offers numerous new insights into the story to which the present paper adds a particular angle first attempted in a previous article (Lagerberg, 1994).

10. See Grübel 1984, pp. 153-56 and Isenberg 1993, p. 23.

11. Isenberg 1993, pp. 27-28.

12. Ibid., p. 29.

13. Ibid., p. 33.

14. Turgenev, 1965, p. 61.

15. Ibid., p. 31.

16. Ibid., p. 72.

17. See Isenberg 1993, pp. 46-47.

18. Isenberg 1993, gives a detailed outline of this aspect of the story, for instance pp. 34-36.

19. See Oloskey Mills 1971, for such a reading.

20. Turgenev 1965, p. 76.

Words Cited

(Chernov). Cirnоv, N. ‘Pоvists I. S. Turginiva «Pirvay lybоvs» i ii rialsnyi istоcniкi’, Vоprоsy lutiratury, 9, 1973, 225-41.

Grübel, Rainer. ‘Narrative Aisthesis der “Ersten Liebe”: Erinnerung vs. Wiederholung: Zur Topik und Intertextualität der Erzählungen “Pervaja ljubov´” von Turgenev und “Vymysel” von Gippius,’ in: Russische Erzählung—Russian Short Story: Utrechter Symposium zur Theorie und Geschichte der russichen Erzählung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Rainer Grübel, Amsterdam, 1984, pp. 153-94.

Isenberg, Charles. Telling Silence: Russian Frame Narratives of Renunciation, Evanston, Illinois, 1993.

(Kiiko). Kijко, I.I. ‘Oкоncanii pоvisti «Pirvay lybоvs»’, Lutiraturnоi naslipstvо, 73, 1964, 59-68.

Lagerberg, R. ‘Images of Night and Day in Turgenev's Pervaia liubov'’, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 1994, 57-68.

Mills, Judith Oloskey. ‘Theme and Symbol in “First Love”’, Slavic and East European Journal, 15, 1971, 433-40.

(Turgenev). Turginiv, I.S. Pоlnоi sоbranui sоcuninuj upcsim v pvapцatu vоssmu tоmak (Mоsкva-Liningrad, 1960-1968): Pussma, t. IV, Moscow-Leningrad, 1962.

———. ‘Pirvay lybоvs’, Pоlnоi sоbranui sоcuninuju pusim v pvapцatu vоssmu tоmak (Mоsкva-Liningrad, 1960-1968), t. IX, Moscow-Leningrad, 1965, pp. 7-76.

All references to the text of First Love are to this edition.

Zweers, A. F. ‘First Love: Ivan Turgenev's description of dawning loves’, in: Signs of Friendship: To Honour A. G. F. van Holk, Slavist, Linguist, Semiotician, ed. J. J. van Baak, Amsterdam, 1984.