"...my blood was in a ferment and my heart ached- so sweetly and absurdly; I as all hope and anticipation, was alike frightened of something, and full of wonder at everything, and was on tiptoe of expectation; my imagination played continually, fluttering rapidly about the same fancies, like martins about a bell-tower at dawn; I dreamed, was sad, even wept; but through the tears and through the sadness, inspired by a musical verse, or the beauty of evening, shot up like grass in spring the delicious sense of youth and effervescent life."
Love brings youth and life! It resurrects all of its surroundings...
"...the vision of love, scarcely ever arose in definite shape in my brain, but in all thought, in all i felt, lay hidden a half-conscious shamefaced presentiment of something new, unutterably sweet, feminine.."
As if it left a trail...
"Various emotions, delicate and quick-changing as the shadows of clouds on a sunny day of wind, chased one another continually over her lips and eyes."
Marvelous, marvelous example of personification. This is one of the examples of the skill and genius of the Russians. The way nature is clearly depicted in humanity, as if we all have traces of it in our beings... this is the unification of the universe with humanity...
"...no one knows him, but he awaits me, and is certain I shall come- and I shall come- and there is no power that could stop me when I want to go out to him, and to stay with him, and to be lost with him out there in the darkness of the garden, under the whispering of the trees, and the splash of the fountain..."
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Beautiful story of a first love, and it is so naively and chastely described... Only a genius could put himself fully into such innocent emotions as of a young boy falling in love. Turgenev handled these concepts so delicately, as if they would break at any moment... so fragile are they. Just the fact that he compared love with nature shows how purely the boy thought of this experience, for, what is purer than nature, it being perfect?
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