“To sacrifice oneself for some people is sweet”
First Love“To sacrifice oneself for some people is sweet” is Doctor Lushin’s compressed, unsettling account of devotion. First spoken as a sudden conclusion during a walk with Vladimir Petrovitch, the thought returns when Vladimir sees Zinaïda Alexandrovna Zasyekin and struggles to comprehend the cost of her attachment to his father.
The Remark and Its First Context
During the days when Zinaïda was said to be ill, Doctor Lushin visited regularly. On a walk with Vladimir in the Neskutchny Gardens, he was at first good-natured, naming various plants and flowers. Then, striking his forehead, he exclaimed that he had once thought her a flirt, but now understood that self-sacrifice could be sweet for some people. The abrupt shift from botanical instruction to passionate judgment gives the phrase its force: Lushin does not explain what he knows, but lets his conclusion break into an ordinary conversation.
Vladimir asked what he meant. Doctor Lushin abruptly refused to tell him anything. The refusal leaves the remark suspended between insight and secrecy; its significance is suggested rather than disclosed. Vladimir was both afraid of Lushin after their earlier unreserved conversation and genuinely attracted to him, a mixture that sharpens the impression of the phrase as knowledge withheld from the young narrator.
Recollection and Application
The saying returns as Vladimir prepares to leave the country house. He wonders how Zinaïda, a young princess, could have chosen a relationship with his father, who was already married, when she might have married Byelovzorov instead. He cannot understand what she hoped for or how she could risk ruining her future. In that uncertainty, he recalls Lushin’s words and names what he sees as love, passion, and devotion.
The phrase does not establish Zinaïda’s own explanation for her choice; it supplies Vladimir with a way to interpret it. Its recurrence marks a change in his understanding: what had sounded like Lushin’s cryptic observation now seems to illuminate a sacrifice whose motives and consequences Vladimir still cannot fully grasp.
The Farewell Scene
Vladimir’s reflection leads directly to his effort to see Zinaïda before the departure. Catching sight of a white shape at a window of the lodge, he realizes it is her face and cannot leave without saying goodbye. In the drawing-room, Princess Zasyekin greets him as usual and asks why his family is leaving in such a hurry. Vladimir is relieved that she appears unaware of the matter that had been troubling him, but Zinaïda enters from the next room pale and dressed in black, her hair hanging loose. Without speaking, she takes him by the hand and draws him away.
Placed beside this silent farewell, Lushin’s phrase acquires a particular tension: sacrifice may be sweet to the person who makes it, yet Vladimir sees the danger and bewilderment surrounding Zinaïda’s choice. The words recur not as a complete explanation, but as the most concise language he has for devotion whose cost he can witness more clearly than he can understand.
