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First love
.Nabokov’s “First Love” is considered by many to be somewhat of the precursor to “Lolita” where Nabokov first invents his ideas of young love. Much like Humbert and Annabelle’s young love affair when they were children, the boy in this story has a similar affair with a girl named Colette. This story is based on a memory Nabokov has of a summer trip taken in 1909 when he was 10, and is split up into a section about a train ride from St. Petersburg to Biarritz in France. The train ride is peaceful, a sharp contrast with how much turmoil Russia would face in 10 years time. The reader clearly feels the same nostalgia and comfort Nabokov feels while writing out this brief, happy memory.
- GenresShort Stories
Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1948
About the author
Vladimir Nabokov
866 books15.3k followersVladimir Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Набоков) was a writer defined by a life of forced movement and extraordinary linguistic transformation. Born into a wealthy, liberal aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia, he grew up trilingual, speaking Russian, English, and French in a household that nurtured his intellectual curiosities, including a lifelong passion for butterflies. This seemingly idyllic, privileged existence was abruptly shattered by the Bolshevik Revolution, which forced the family into permanent exile in 1919. This early, profound experience of displacement and the loss of a homeland became a central, enduring theme in his subsequent work, fueling his exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the irretrievable past.
The first phase of his literary life began in Europe, primarily in Berlin, where he established himself as a leading voice among the Russian émigré community under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin". During this prolific period, he penned nine novels in his native tongue, showcasing a precocious talent for intricate plotting and character study. Works like The Defense explored obsession through the extended metaphor of chess, while Invitation to a Beheading served as a potent, surreal critique of totalitarian absurdity. In 1925, he married Véra Slonim, an intellectual force in her own right, who would become his indispensable partner, editor, translator, and lifelong anchor.
The escalating shadow of Nazism necessitated another, urgent relocation in 1940, this time to the United States. It was here that Nabokov undertook an extraordinary linguistic metamorphosis, making the challenging yet resolute shift from Russian to English as his primary language of expression. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, solidifying his new life in North America. To support his family, he took on academic positions, first founding the Russian department at Wellesley College, and later serving as a highly regarded professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
During this academic tenure, he also dedicated significant time to his other great passion: lepidoptery. He worked as an unpaid curator of butterflies at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His scientific work was far from amateurish; he developed novel taxonomic methods and a groundbreaking, highly debated theory on the migration patterns and phylogeny of the Polyommatus blue butterflies, a hypothesis that modern DNA analysis confirmed decades later.
Nabokov achieved widespread international fame and financial independence with the publication of Lolita in 1955, a novel that was initially met with controversy and censorship battles due to its provocative subject matter concerning a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. The novel's critical and commercial success finally allowed him to leave teaching and academia behind. In 1959, he and Véra moved permanently to the quiet luxury of the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he focused solely on writing, translating his earlier Russian works into meticulous English, and studying local butterflies.
His later English novels, such as Pale Fire (1962), a complex, postmodern narrative structured around a 999-line poem and its delusional commentator, cemented his reputation as a master stylist and a technical genius. His literary style is characterized by intricate wordplay, a profound use of allusion, structural complexity, and an insistence on the artist's total, almost tyrannical, control over their created world. Nabokov often expressed disdain for what he termed "topical trash" and the simplistic interpretations of Freudian psychoanalysis, preferring instead to focus on the power of individual consciousness, the mechanics of memory, and the intricate, often deceptive, interplay between art and perceived "reality". His unique body of work, straddling multiple cultures and languages, continues to
The first phase of his literary life began in Europe, primarily in Berlin, where he established himself as a leading voice among the Russian émigré community under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin". During this prolific period, he penned nine novels in his native tongue, showcasing a precocious talent for intricate plotting and character study. Works like The Defense explored obsession through the extended metaphor of chess, while Invitation to a Beheading served as a potent, surreal critique of totalitarian absurdity. In 1925, he married Véra Slonim, an intellectual force in her own right, who would become his indispensable partner, editor, translator, and lifelong anchor.
The escalating shadow of Nazism necessitated another, urgent relocation in 1940, this time to the United States. It was here that Nabokov undertook an extraordinary linguistic metamorphosis, making the challenging yet resolute shift from Russian to English as his primary language of expression. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, solidifying his new life in North America. To support his family, he took on academic positions, first founding the Russian department at Wellesley College, and later serving as a highly regarded professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
During this academic tenure, he also dedicated significant time to his other great passion: lepidoptery. He worked as an unpaid curator of butterflies at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His scientific work was far from amateurish; he developed novel taxonomic methods and a groundbreaking, highly debated theory on the migration patterns and phylogeny of the Polyommatus blue butterflies, a hypothesis that modern DNA analysis confirmed decades later.
Nabokov achieved widespread international fame and financial independence with the publication of Lolita in 1955, a novel that was initially met with controversy and censorship battles due to its provocative subject matter concerning a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. The novel's critical and commercial success finally allowed him to leave teaching and academia behind. In 1959, he and Véra moved permanently to the quiet luxury of the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he focused solely on writing, translating his earlier Russian works into meticulous English, and studying local butterflies.
His later English novels, such as Pale Fire (1962), a complex, postmodern narrative structured around a 999-line poem and its delusional commentator, cemented his reputation as a master stylist and a technical genius. His literary style is characterized by intricate wordplay, a profound use of allusion, structural complexity, and an insistence on the artist's total, almost tyrannical, control over their created world. Nabokov often expressed disdain for what he termed "topical trash" and the simplistic interpretations of Freudian psychoanalysis, preferring instead to focus on the power of individual consciousness, the mechanics of memory, and the intricate, often deceptive, interplay between art and perceived "reality". His unique body of work, straddling multiple cultures and languages, continues to
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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February 13, 2023I have a volume of Nabokov stories that I dip into from time to time. There must be seventy stories inside its covers so there was never a question of reading it through from start to finish (it would be like drinking nothing but tea for a month (I like tea, but still)).
So, because I don't want to read the Nabokov collection from start to finish, it gets neglected and sinks down the reading pile until a good reason comes along to fish it out.
The last time I fished it out was because of a goodreads friend's review of Nabokov's story The Vane Sisters, which, when I read the story myself, caused me to reread Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray with the result that the two stories will be forever entwined in my mind.
The circumstances of my reading First Love are not dissimilar, and now it in turn is destined to be twinned forever with a story of the same name by the Australian writer, Gerald Murnane, whose collection of short fiction I've been reading lately. Nabokov's First Love was referenced so often in Murnane's First Love that I interrupted my reading of the Murnane story to read Nabokov's version.
Nabokov's and Murnane's stories are both about a young girl whom the respective narrators felt they were in love with at the age of ten or eleven, and since I know both authors were Proust readers, I couldn't help but connect their stories to his narrator's obsession with a young girl at a similar age. The three authors are further linked in my mind by their preoccupation with landscape seen from train windows, and by their early fascination with books. I wonder if the three might not have admitted that their first love was in fact books—and that thought makes me feel that I belong in their company. I even have a 'First Love' story of my own in which books played a part. However, Nabokov, Murnane, and Proust would be horrified to know exactly what part books played in my 'first love' adventure.
The summer I was nine, I became friendly with a boy my age who was visiting the neighborhood. We used to play in my parents' garden shed, making believe we were a couple just like our parents, and that the shed was our home. It had some rickety chairs and an old kettle and some cups and saucers, and we'd 'take tea' sitting on either side of the old paraffin stove just as we'd seen the adults do. Both of our fathers smoked and liked to have a cigarette with a cup of tea so we adopted that practice as well. We'd roll pieces of paper around wisps of grass and pretend we were smoking. The paper came from the most convenient source: the pile of old paperback books that had been consigned to the garden shed. Their pages were the perfect size for rolling cigarettes!
So, because I don't want to read the Nabokov collection from start to finish, it gets neglected and sinks down the reading pile until a good reason comes along to fish it out.
The last time I fished it out was because of a goodreads friend's review of Nabokov's story The Vane Sisters, which, when I read the story myself, caused me to reread Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray with the result that the two stories will be forever entwined in my mind.
The circumstances of my reading First Love are not dissimilar, and now it in turn is destined to be twinned forever with a story of the same name by the Australian writer, Gerald Murnane, whose collection of short fiction I've been reading lately. Nabokov's First Love was referenced so often in Murnane's First Love that I interrupted my reading of the Murnane story to read Nabokov's version.
Nabokov's and Murnane's stories are both about a young girl whom the respective narrators felt they were in love with at the age of ten or eleven, and since I know both authors were Proust readers, I couldn't help but connect their stories to his narrator's obsession with a young girl at a similar age. The three authors are further linked in my mind by their preoccupation with landscape seen from train windows, and by their early fascination with books. I wonder if the three might not have admitted that their first love was in fact books—and that thought makes me feel that I belong in their company. I even have a 'First Love' story of my own in which books played a part. However, Nabokov, Murnane, and Proust would be horrified to know exactly what part books played in my 'first love' adventure.
The summer I was nine, I became friendly with a boy my age who was visiting the neighborhood. We used to play in my parents' garden shed, making believe we were a couple just like our parents, and that the shed was our home. It had some rickety chairs and an old kettle and some cups and saucers, and we'd 'take tea' sitting on either side of the old paraffin stove just as we'd seen the adults do. Both of our fathers smoked and liked to have a cigarette with a cup of tea so we adopted that practice as well. We'd roll pieces of paper around wisps of grass and pretend we were smoking. The paper came from the most convenient source: the pile of old paperback books that had been consigned to the garden shed. Their pages were the perfect size for rolling cigarettes!
March 18, 2023
A sweet little short about young love, the descriptions within this bite-sized story are gorgeous; the way in which it’s written gives it a flow that many shorts struggle to carry. I have not read much of Nabokov’s work- this is the first work of his I’ve ever read- and I shall admit, this does convey a truly great writing style. I enjoyed this greatly.
October 4, 2024
Such a sweet story. I loved this.
"I still seem to be holding that wisp of iridescence, not knowing exactly where to fit it, while she runs with her hoop ever faster around me and finally dissolves among the slender shadows cast on the graveled path by the interlaced arches of its low looped fence."
"I still seem to be holding that wisp of iridescence, not knowing exactly where to fit it, while she runs with her hoop ever faster around me and finally dissolves among the slender shadows cast on the graveled path by the interlaced arches of its low looped fence."
August 28, 2022
This is so sweet. 🤍🤍🤍🤍
July 10, 2024
my favourite short story of all time!!! a must-read for any lover of great prose and imagery.
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January 16, 2026This is another story about the sadness of young love, and how fleeting it is. A cute story, though
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews