Azul... Azul...

It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Rubén Darío’s Azul... with all its tales and poems (39 pieces). The text follows the enlarged edition, which added sonnets and medallions to the first Valparaíso edition of 1888; the copy is the Mundo Latino edition (Madrid, 1917) from Project Gutenberg. Juan Valera’s prologue letters are left out, because they are not Darío’s text.

Azul... has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the book is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for modernist words such as ditirambos or destartalado.

Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the long periods of “La canción del oro” and “El palacio del Sol”, and in verse that runs across lines, for example “Era un rey sol, en su Babilonia llena de músicas, de carcajadas y de ruido de festín”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.

The whole book takes about 4-7 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. The 39 pieces are short, from about 100 to 2,300 words, so several fit in one evening.

It does not get steadily easier; it depends on the piece. The lightest are “El pájaro azul” (about 15 words per sentence) and “La muerte de la emperatriz de la China” (about 15), the densest “La canción del oro” (about 32) and “El palacio del Sol” (about 31). Each piece stands alone, so you can start with “El pájaro azul” (piece 9) and return to the harder ones later.

Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can return to the book where you left off. Any of the 39 pieces also opens from the contents on this page, for example “El pájaro azul” without reading the ones before it.