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Informationen zum Autor Nicolas Pasternak Slater, a nephew of Boris Pasternak, is a retired haematologist. Published translations include Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment , Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago , Tolstoy's short stories, and, for Pushkin Press, stories by Ivan Turgenev and Anton Chekhov. MAYA SLATER has published translations of Molière and other French writers, and co-translations with her husband Nicolas Pasternak Slater. She is a Senior Research Fellow of Queen Mary University of London. Klappentext This collection, in a lyrical new translation by Nicolas Slater, places Turgenev's great novella First Love alongside a selection of his classic stories. From the evocative rural scenes of 'Bezhin Meadow' and 'Rattling Wheels', to the pathos and humanity of 'The District Doctor' and 'Biryuk', these are stories to be lingered over. Leseprobe FIRST LOVE The other guests had left long ago. The clock struck half past midnight. The host, and Sergei Nikolaevich, and Vladimir Petrovich, were the only people left in the room. The host rang for the remains of their dinner to be cleared away. ‘So that’s agreed,’ he said, settling himself deeper in his armchair and lighting a cigar. ‘Each of us has to tell the story of his first love. Sergei Nikolaevich, you start.’ Sergei Nikolaevich, a plump little man with a chubby, fair-skinned face, first looked at his host and then stared up at the ceiling. ‘I never had a first love,’ he said finally. ‘I started with my second.’ ‘How did that happen?’ ‘Very simply. I was eighteen when I had my first flirtation, with a most attractive young lady. But I courted her as if I’d done it all before, just the way that later on I courted other girls. In point of fact, I fell in love for the first and last time when I was six, and it was with my nurse. But that was a very long time ago. I can’t remember anything about our relationship— and even if I could, who’d be interested?’ ‘So what are we to do?’ began the host. ‘There was nothing particularly interesting about my first love either. I never fell in love with anyone till I met Anna Ivanovna, who’s now my wife; and everything went perfectly smoothly for us, our parents arranged the match, we soon found we were in love, and got married as quickly as we could. My story can be told in a couple of words. I must admit, gentlemen, that when I raised the question of our first loves, I was relying on you—I won’t say old bachelors, but bachelors who aren’t as young as you were. Have you anything entertaining to tell us, Vladimir Petrovich?’ Vladimir Petrovich, a man of about forty with black hair just turning grey, hesitated a little and then said ‘My first love, it’s true, was rather out of the ordinary.’ ‘Aha!’ said the host and Sergei Nikolaevich in unison. ‘All the better . . . Tell us about it.’ ‘Very well . . . Or no, I shan’t tell it, I’m not good at storytelling. It either comes out too short and sketchy, or too wordy and affected. If you don’t mind, I’ll write down all I can remember in a notebook, and then read it to you.’ At first his friends wouldn’t have this, but Vladimir Petrovich insisted. Two weeks later they met again, and he kept his promise. Here is the story in his notebook: I It happened in the summer of 1833, when I was sixteen. Zusammenfassung This collection, in a lyrical new translation by Nicolas Slater, places Turgenev's great novella First Love alongside a selection of his classic stories. From the evocative rural scenes of 'Bezhin Meadow' and 'Rattling Wheels', to the pathos and humanity of 'The District Doctor' and 'Biryuk', these are stories to be lingered over....
