I. Дівчина чайка
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Sea legends and prose poems from 1919 (B2)
The Seagull Girl and Other Stories Дівчина-чайка та інші оповідання
Dniprova Chaika, 1919
The complete Ukrainian text of volume I of Dniprova Chaika’s Works (1919), not an adaptation: 28 prose poems, sea legends and short stories. Dniprova Chaika (“Dnipro Seagull”) is the pen name of Liudmyla Vasylevska, one of the first Ukrainian women writers of prose poems and of stories for children. It is for B2 learners who like short pieces and rhythmic, songlike prose about the Black Sea, the steppe and Crimea. About 27,000 words in 28 chapters, one per piece, from about 200 to 3,200 words long.
- B2
- 27 033 words
- 5-8 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the sentences of 16 words on average, longest in sea legends such as I. Дівчина чайка and XXVII. Хвиля, will be slow going, and the folk endings (червоная for червона) and hyphenated particles (доки-ж) take getting used to.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can read it: the vocabulary is concrete (the sea, birds, rocks, weather), the pieces are short, and the long sentences come apart into clauses that word-by-word translation handles.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the book reads freely and can be enjoyed for its sound; only the poetic and old words (бурун, кигичуть, галєра) and the 1919 spellings make you stop.
Start readingThe average sentence has 16 words, the longest in the Ukrainian catalogue, longer than in Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky’s Mykola Dzheria and Ivan Franko’s Boa constrictor (15 each). But only 8.5% of words have 9 letters or more, about one in twelve, against 10.0% in Boa constrictor and 10.4% in Zakhar Berkut, both C1; Mykola Dzheria, a B2 book, has 8.0%. The sentences are long because the lyrical prose strings image after image with commas, colons and та, і, а, often to a regular beat like verse, not because of abstract words. What takes getting used to is the folk-song style and the 1919 spelling: full adjective endings such as червоная, лихая and тихая (over 60 forms in -ая alone, beside суворую or білії), particles joined with a hyphen as in доки-ж or Сини-ж (118 times), and од for від (87 times against 9). There is no regional dialect. Dialogue is a smaller share than in most stories: 140 of 851 paragraphs open with a dash. Hence B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 27 033
- words
- 16
- words in an average sentence
- 5-8
- hours of reading
- 1919
- Видавниче товариство «Дзвін»
Видавниче товариство «Дзвін», 1919. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
The title piece opens the book with a legend of a red rock island in the Black Sea. An exile from unknown lands settles there with his small daughter; at night he keeps a great fire burning to warn ships, and he rows out to save the shipwrecked. The girl grows up fearless, as much at home in the sea as its fish, and one day she overhears a bird, a porpoise and a little golden fish: the angry sea has doomed the Cossack galleys that are on their way. Against the sea’s warning, she readies her boat for the storm. The other 27 pieces move between the sea and the land: a storm petrel dozing on a wet stone dreams of old Crimea and of Ukrainian captives at the oars of a galley; among the ruins of Chersonesus a ghostly old man turns out to be the sculptor Menander; a Crimean queen cannot cheer up her sons, who long for the open sea; a beaten dog is thrown out into a city street; starlings come home too early and find snow. Some pieces are tributes to writers and a composer of the time: Hanna Barvinok, Borys Hrinchenko, Mykola Lysenko and Mykola Voronyi. What happens next in the title story is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Дівчина-чайка та інші оповідання
XIX. Скеля
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Choose an underlined word.
Folk-song adjective endings
червоная скеля, білії хати, червоную глину, суворую скелю: these are the full, uncontracted adjective endings of Ukrainian folk song. Today’s forms are червона, білі, червону, сувору, with the same meaning. The book has over 60 forms in -ая alone, so recognising the pattern saves many taps.
Particles with a hyphen
Сини-ж мої (“my sons”) is today written Сини ж мої: the 1919 edition joins the emphatic particle ж or же to the word before with a hyphen, 118 times in the book (доки-ж, устань-же). Note also кажіте, an older form of the imperative кажіть (“tell me”).
Chapters
- IДівчина чайка
- IIБуревістник
- IIIБілий чорт
- IVВінки
- VГармонія
- VIДві крапельки
- VIIДві птиці
- VIIIДивний ткач
- IXДісонанси
- XЗа душу
- XIКобза
- XIIМара
- XIIIМиша
- XIVМорське серце
- XVОбраз великого
- XVIПевний притулок
- XVIIПлавні горять
- XVIIIСамоцвіти
- XIXСкеля
- XXСнище
- XXIСобака
- XXIIСтрумок
- XXIIIСуперечка
- XXIVТаємниця
- XXVТополі
- XXVIУсякому своє
- XXVIIХвиля
- XXVIIIШпаки
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 in Reader helps with the old particle and the folk word order of a line like Не доки-ж терпіти нам кляту неволю (“We must not bear this cursed captivity any longer”).
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this levelBefore you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: the complete volume I of Dniprova Chaika’s Works, all 28 prose poems and stories printed in it, each piece a chapter here; only the edition’s footnotes are left out. The volume came out in 1919 in Kyiv from the publishing house Dzvin (Видавниче товариство «Дзвін»); it gives no dates for the single pieces, so 1919 is the year given here. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces that edition, and it keeps the edition’s spelling: particles with a hyphen as in доки-ж, folk-song endings like червоная, and forms such as галєра and ювилей.
Is there an audiobook?
The Seagull Girl and Other Stories has no audiobook on MovaReader: the book is read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. You will need it for the words of the sea and its birds, such as бурун (“breaker, surf”) and кигичуть (“cry”, said of seagulls), both in the first paragraph of the title story.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most where the folk word order hides the meaning, as in Корись, не змагайся ти з морем, тяжко бо море карає! (“Give in, do not fight the sea, for the sea punishes hard!”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 5-8 hours, at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The 28 pieces differ a lot in size: the shortest, XIV. Морське серце and XVIII. Самоцвіти, have about 200-250 words each, the longest, XII. Мара, about 3,200, so most pieces fit into one sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty does not rise or fall through the book; it changes from piece to piece. Sentence averages run from about 10 words (X. За душу) to about 21-22 (I. Дівчина чайка, XXVII. Хвиля). The legends XIX. Скеля (5.9% long words), III. Білий чорт (6.5%) and I. Дівчина чайка (6.8%) have the plainest vocabulary; the short tributes and allegories, such as XVIII. Самоцвіти (13.1%) and XXII. Струмок (11.9%), the most abstract.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can come back where you left off. Any of the 28 pieces also opens from the contents on this page, for example XII. Мара, the longest, set among the ruins of Chersonesus in Crimea.