Unlike my experiences with other Russian 19th century writers in my teens, my first acquaintance with Ivan Turgenev’s writing wasn’t exactly a coup de foudre. Even taking into account a slight tinge of sadness is an intrinsic part of nostalgia, the tale of the narrator can hardly be seen as the wish to turn back time reminiscing on feelings of pleasure in the past. If nostalgia is rather ‘a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time’ – I would think of this story as of a profound melancholy, rather than a nostalgic one. Is the nostalgic feeling negative or positive? Is First love, the 1860 novella of which Turgenev by the end of his life thought of fondly as ‘the only thing that still gives me pleasure, because it is life itself, it was not made up….First Love is part of my experience’ - a tale of nostalgia? If nostalgia means ‘the pain from an old wound’, a feeling in which bitter-sweetness is preponderant, the novella certainly is a nostalgic one.
Reading First love made me wonder on the nature of nostalgia. O sweet feelings, soft sounds, goodness and peace of a moved spirit, the melting joy of the first tender emotions of love - where are you, where are you?
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