I. Бояриня: дія 1
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Moscow’s terem and Rome’s catacombs
The Noblewoman and In the Catacombs Бояриня. В катакомбах
Lesya Ukrainka, 1918
Lesya Ukrainka’s two complete verse dramas in Ukrainian, as printed together in a Katerynoslav booklet of 1918, not an adaptation. They are for B2 learners who follow spoken Ukrainian well and want to meet the poet in her own lines: a Cossack woman who marries into a boyar household in 17th-century Moscow, and a slave among the first Christians of Rome. About 12,000 words in six chapters: the five scenes of The Noblewoman, then In the Catacombs as one chapter.
- B2
- 12 027 words
- 2-3 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the verse and the old spelling will stop you on most lines. Start with the catalogue’s B1 retelling of The Noblewoman in plain prose, then come back to the original.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can read it: the speeches are short, and after the first scene се, та-ж and the words of the boyar household (терем, бояре, челядь) no longer need a tap.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 it reads quickly; only the inverted verse and a few church forms such as єсть and сотворімо make you pause.
Start readingThe average sentence has 6 words, because nearly every line is spoken: both texts are dialogue in blank verse, each speech opening with the speaker’s name. Long words are scarce: 6.3% of words have 9 letters or more, between two other plays at B2, Ivan Franko’s Stolen Happiness (5.3%) and Ivan Kotliarevsky’s Natalka Poltavka (7.4%), and far from the 10% or so of the C1 originals. What makes it B2 and not easier is the verse and the period. Sentences run across line breaks with the word order turned around (Такий полон миліший од визволу). The 1918 spelling keeps се and сей for це and цей (92 forms), hangs the particles -ж and -б on a word with a hyphen (та-ж, ти-б, 59 times) and prints тілько 23 times. The Noblewoman brings the words of a Muscovite household (forms of боярин 27 times, терем 13, рундук 12), In the Catacombs those of the early Church (раб and its forms 125 times, єпіскоп, діакон). It does not reach C1: the spelling is close to today’s, unlike the 1879 first edition of Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky’s Kaidash’s Family, and the period words return until you know them. Hence B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 12 027
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 2-3
- hours of reading
- 1918
- Українське видавництво в Катеринославі
Українське видавництво в Катеринославі, 1918. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
The Noblewoman (Бояриня) is set in the 1660s, the years of civil war that Ukrainians call the Ruin. Stepan, born in Ukraine but serving the tsar in Moscow like his late father, is a guest of the Cossack officer Oleksa Perebiinyi, whose son Ivan scorns such service and whose daughter Oksana takes Stepan’s side. They marry, and Oksana follows him to Moscow, where wives live behind the veils and locked doors of the terem and Stepan weighs every word that might reach the tsar’s governors. In the Catacombs takes place beneath Rome in the 2nd century: a Christian community honours a martyred brother, and a newly baptised slave asks the bishop the question that will not leave him: if all are equal before God, why must a slave still obey his master? What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Бояриня. В катакомбах
III. Бояриня: дія 3
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Choose an underlined word.
A sentence runs on past the line
Read to the full stop, not to the end of the line. In Stepan’s answer the sentence that starts at Поки ще батько only ends at до матері на поміч, four lines later. Note also the respectful plural for a dead parent: батько вмерли, батько живі були (“father died, while father was alive”), with a plural verb for one person.
Particles stuck on with a hyphen
The 1918 spelling attaches particles to the word before them with a hyphen: в Москві-ж is today в Москві ж, Не здивуйте-ж is Не здивуйте ж, and не буде-й is не буде й. Read them as separate small words: ж adds emphasis (“after all”, “then”), й means “and” or “even”.
Where the text gets harder
I-Vshort lines, court vocabulary
VIlonger sentences, church vocabulary
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
Whole-sentence translation helps where the verse turns the word order round, as in Stepan’s answer when his host jokes that he will keep him as a prisoner: Такий полон миліший од визволу (“such captivity is dearer than release”).
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: Lesya Ukrainka’s two complete dramatic poems in verse. The Noblewoman (Бояриня) was written in three days, 27-29 April 1910, in Helwan near Cairo, where she was being treated for tuberculosis, and first printed in 1914, after her death, in the Kyiv magazine Рідний край. In the Catacombs (В катакомбах) was written in 1905, dedicated to the scholar Ahatanhel Krymsky, and first printed in Рідний край in 1906. The text follows the booklet that put them together: Katerynoslav, Ukrainian Publishing House in Katerynoslav, 1918, as transcribed on Wikisource; its title pages are left out. The spelling is that of the booklet: се for це, particles joined with a hyphen (та-ж, ти-б), іх for їх, тілько for тільки, царь with a soft sign, and a few misprints kept as printed. A few period names for Russians and Poles (москаль, лядські) sound derogatory today.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audio on MovaReader: you read on screen and tap a word to see its translation. You will tap most in the first scenes, for the furniture and offices of a 17th-century household: рундук (“a covered porch”), дзиглики (“small stools”), джура (“a Cossack officer’s young attendant”) and підкоморій (“a district land judge”).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most where a long verse sentence crosses several lines, as when the slave turns on his own fate in In the Catacombs: Кого мені клясти? Чи свого батька, Що за довги продав мене в неволю? (“Whom am I to curse? My father, who sold me into slavery for his debts?”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 2-3 hours at a learner’s pace, reading with translation of new words. The five scenes of The Noblewoman have about 2,200, 2,000, 1,300, 1,100 and 1,500 words; In the Catacombs is one chapter of about 3,900 words, so each scene of the first play makes a short sitting and the second play a longer one.
Where does the text get easier?
The Noblewoman is the easier half for sentence length: its scenes run from 4.5 to 6.3 words per sentence, with the fourth, Oksana and Stepan in the terem, the most broken into short lines. In the Catacombs has longer sentences, 9.6 words on average, because the bishop and the slave argue in long speeches, though its share of long words is lower (5.6% against 5.8-7.6% in the five scenes). Once се, та-ж and the household words are familiar after the first scene, the rest reads faster.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader keeps your place and the words you opened, so you can stop after any scene. The contents on this page open every chapter, for example VI. В катакомбах, if you want to start with the second play.