The Torrents of Spring is a collection of Ivan Turgenev's stories, including the title novella, First Love, and Mumu. The title piece follows a man's recollection of youthful love and the passing of time, while the other stories explore memory, longing, and loss. Turgenev's restrained, lyrical prose makes these works rewarding to listen to.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
The Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev Translated from the Russian BY CONSTANCE GARNETT 1897 Contents THE TORRENTS OF SPRING FIRST LOVE MUMU
THE TORRENTS OF SPRING
“Years of gladness,
Days of joy,
Like the torrents of spring
They hurried away.”
—From an Old Ballad.
… At two o’clock in the night he had gone back to his study. He had dismissed the servant after the candles were lighted, and throwing himself into a low chair by the hearth, he hid his face in both hands.
Never had he felt such weariness of body and of spirit. He had passed the whole evening in the company of charming ladies and cultivated men; some of the ladies were beautiful, almost all the men were distinguished by intellect or talent; he himself had talked with great success, even with brilliance … and, for all that, never yet had the taedium vitae of which the Romans talked of old, the “disgust for life,” taken hold of him with such irresistible, such suffocating force.
Had he been a little younger, he would have cried with misery, weariness, and exasperation: a biting, burning bitterness, like the bitter of wormwood, filled his whole soul. A sort of clinging repugnance, a weight of loathing closed in upon him on all sides like a dark night of autumn; and he did not know how to get free from this darkness, this bitterness. Sleep it was useless to reckon upon; he knew he should not sleep.
He fell to thinking … slowly, listlessly, wrathfully. He thought of the vanity, the uselessness, the vulgar falsity of all things human. All the stages of man’s life passed in order before his mental gaze (he had himself lately reached his fifty-second year), and not one found grace in his eyes. Everywhere the same ever-lasting pouring of water into a
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