The first First Love story

Always in search of a great novella, that most rare of literary species, I turned yesterday to Ivan Turgenev's First Love, which clocks in at about 70 pp in the Everyman edition (and old translation by Isaiah Berlin - isn't there a Pevear-Volkansky version available, and part of a 3-story collection) - a 19th-century masterpiece that feels a little musty today but still a powerful examination of the awakening of emotions and desires in a young man (16 years old - if written today, the main character, Vladimir, would have to be about 12 or 13 for this to make any sense - in fact, the story has been written "today" - or at least many times since 1850 - most recently perhaps by Karl Ove Knausgaard, see story in current New Yorker and recent post): Turgenev begins with a 10th-century type "frame" - see Conrad, Wells, et al. - in which some men chatting after dinner agree to each tell this story of his "first love" - the one we are reading is Vladimir's now an old bachelor, which gives special poignancy to this story. He recalls being 16, living in the family country house (basically, a Moscow suburb), his mother distant and self-centered, his father imperious, in his specific word, and Vladimir and only child, supposedly studying for university entrance but basically doing nothing. The tenant next door is a Princess who's lost all her money and is living in near poverty (which among the aristocracy means only a few threadbare servants); Vladimir catches a glimpse of the beautiful daughter, Zinaida, and falls in love - but she has a ring of suitors who hover around her, a poet, a doctor, and so on - they gather every night and flirt and play games - the young V. is welcomed in with some resistance, and treated like her "page" (she's 21). He spends the summer dreaming of her, she flirts with him - with everyone - but withholds her passion. The climax of the story will not surprise any contemporary reader: she gives herself only to V's father. When V. discovers this he is shaken of course; the mother heads back to their city house when she learns, and V. is caught in swirling emotions, love for his father, confusion about his own inadequacy - it's an Oedipal story in a way, but his real desire is, it seems, not for the princess but for his father's love and admiration. In a great concluding scene, much later, V and father go for a horseback ride - father leads them to apartment in city where Z is staying, has V wait outside holding the reins. Father does not reappear, V goes to look for him - arrives in time to see father slash Z's forearm with a riding whip. This further confuses him - this link between love and violence, his father's sadism and cruelty. Is it any wonder, then, that he ends up an old "bachelor," just like the foolish men who flirt with the young princess all summer, to no avail?