III. Nuestro héroe
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A comic novel of 1848 Madrid for B2
Captain Poison El Capitán Veneno
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, 1920
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón’s complete short novel of 1881, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 21,200 words and 20 words per sentence on average. 27 chapters in four parts about a gruff captain wounded in the Madrid street fighting of 1848 and nursed by three women; Parts I and II are the hardest, Parts III and IV run on dialogue.
- B2
- 21 150 words
- 4-6 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the long narrated chapters of Parts I and II will be slow going, and old forms like hallábase and díjoles need unpacking.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2: from Part III the story runs on quick dialogue, and the first two parts can be read slowly, translating single words.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the novel reads freely; only the narrator’s long periods and some period vocabulary slow you down.
Start readingThe average sentence has 20 words, longer than in any other Spanish B2 book in the catalog (13 to 18). One word in eleven has 9 letters or more: within the range of those B2 books and below the C1 novels, where it is one in ten or more. The difficulty is uneven: in Parts I and II the narrator’s long, winding sentences average 27-28 words, while Parts III and IV, built on the quarrels between the captain and Angustias, average 16-18. Hence B2, with a slow start. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 21 150
- words
- 20
- words in an average sentence
- 4-6
- hours of reading
- 1920
- Benj. H. Sanborn & Co.
Benj. H. Sanborn & Co., 1920. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Madrid, 26 March 1848: shots ring out in the calle de Preciados. From her window young Angustias sees an officer fall wounded, and she, her widowed mother and their Galician maid carry him into their modest flat. He is Captain Jorge de Córdoba, known all over Madrid as Capitán Veneno: a rough, hot-tempered man who cannot stand women, children or kindness, and who must now stay in their best bed for forty or fifty days. His cousin, the Marqués de los Tomillares, offers to pay for everything, but the proud widow of a Carlist general will not take a penny. How the captain’s long stay among the three women ends is not revealed here.
Compare two places
El Capitán Veneno
II. Batalla campal
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Choose an underlined word.
One sentence, one street battle
The whole paragraph is a single sentence of 75 words. It opens with two mirrored clauses, los republicanos disparaban contra la tropa... y la tropa disparaba contra los republicanos, and de modo y forma que (“so that”) brings in the result. Si ya no era que means “unless, that is”: the bullets either flew past the windows or struck the iron rejas. Hiriendo de rechazo is “hitting on the rebound”, which is how the shutters and the glass get damaged.
The captain bluffs
Here Angustias calls the captain to account, and the lines are short. Vuestra señoría (“your lordship”) is mock formality: he only pretends to be offended. Meter la cosa a barato and armar camorra both mean stirring up a noisy row to change the subject. Cayó en cama is “took to her bed”, and enajenar una joya is to sell off a jewel.
Where the text gets harder
I-Xpart one: long narrated sentences
I-VIIpart two: long narrated sentences
I-VIIpart three: dialogue, shorter sentences
I-IIIpart four: dialogue, shorter sentences
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
In Parts I and II sentences average 27-28 words: translating the whole sentence in Reader keeps the narrator’s thread through all his asides.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Spanish books B1 Earlier The Three-Cornered Hat El sombrero de tres picos Another book by the same author B2
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Pedro Antonio de Alarcón’s complete short novel, first published in 1881, all four parts and 27 chapters with the author’s dedication to Manuel Tamayo y Baus. The reader follows Percy B. Burnet’s school edition (Benj. H. Sanborn & Co., 1920), which gives the text entire after the 10th Rivadeneyra edition of 1913, corrected against earlier ones. His English preface, notes, exercises and vocabulary are left out.
Is there an audiobook?
Captain Poison has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the novel is read. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for bookish or period words such as estridente or camorra.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. In this novel it helps most in Parts I and II, where sentences average 27-28 words; chapter III of Part I opens with a single sentence of 75 words. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole novel takes about 4-6 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. Most chapters are short, from about 120 to 1,700 words; only Batalla campal in Part IV runs to about 4,800, so it is worth an evening of its own.
Where does the text get easier?
From Part III. Parts I and II are the densest: 27-28 words per sentence on average and a long word about every tenth or eleventh word. Parts III and IV turn to the quarrels between the captain and Angustias and drop to 16-18 words per sentence, with a long word about every twelfth.
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 to the novel every evening where you left off. Any of the 27 chapters also opens from the contents on this page, for example Escaramuzas, the first chapter of Part III, where the dialogue takes over.