The Torrents of Spring

Ivan Turgenev drew on his own memories for this bittersweet novella, framed as an aging man’s reckoning with the love he let slip away. Dmitry Sanin, a young Russian traveling home through Frankfurt, wanders into a confectionery and helps revive a fainting boy. He falls for the boy’s sister, Gemma, a spirited Italian girl, and their tender courtship seems to promise a whole future together. Then a wealthy, married woman with a taste for conquest sets out to have him, and Sanin’s weakness quietly undoes everything. Turgenev writes the ache of first love and the shame of squandering it with a precision that lingers long after the final page. This free PDF and EPUB edition brings the complete novella to readers today.