In text1, the double quotes are part of the actual text. When you print text1, the outer double quotes indicate that characters are being displayed and the back slashes indicate that the following double quotes are in the text. In text2, the double quotes indicate that characters are being displayed. I can mimic text1 and then remove the double quotes like this:
text3 <- c('"first"', '"second"')
> text3
[1] "\"first\"" "\"second\""
> text4 <- gsub(pattern = '"', replacement = '', text3)
> text4
[1] "first" "second"