I was filled with timid anticipation, marveling at everything and ready for anything; my imagination played and circled around the same ideas, like swifts circling around bell towers at dusk. Ivan Turgenev's breathtaking novella "First Love" captures the entire cosmos of youthful feelings: the half-conscious premonitions of something new, the thunderclap of the first encounter, the agonies of hope, and the bitterness of the deepest disappointment. In the summer in the countryside, sixteen-year-old Vladimir meets the five years older, capricious, and admirably pursued Sinaida, daughter of a prince and a petty bourgeois. She declares him her page, challenges him to prove his love, and allows herself to be swept away by an outburst of emotion - of which the boy must realize that it is actually directed towards his own father.