I. Юнона замовляє бурю
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Virgil’s Aeneas as a Cossack, for B1
Eneida Енеїда
Ivan Kotliarevsky
This is a retelling of Ivan Kotliarevsky’s burlesque poem in simple modern Ukrainian prose, not the original verse: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who already handle everyday Ukrainian and want a funny classic. In the catalogue it is B1: about 4,500 words in 9 chapters, with 11 words per sentence on average and about a quarter of the text in dialogue. Virgil’s Aeneas becomes a lively Cossack lad, the gods drink сивуха and snack on herring, and every stop on the voyage turns into a feast of галушки, borscht and горілка.
- B1
- 4 530 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A2
Earlier
At A2 you will be stopped often: the story is told in the past tense, sentences join two or three clauses, and the feasts are lists of dishes like лемішка, куліш or шулик that need a tap.
A2B1
This text
You can read it at B1 if you know the past tense and everyday words for food and family: most sentences carry one clear action, and the jokes rest on comparisons with як (як квочка, як карась) that are easy to follow.
Check this passageB2
With room to spare
At B2 it reads almost without translation, a light warm-up before the complete Ukrainian classics in the catalogue, such as Kotsiubynsky’s Intermezzo.
Start readingThe average sentence has 11 words, the same as Kaidash’s Family, the catalogue’s other B1 adaptation, and a little longer than the A2 Lys Mykyta (10). A word of 9 letters or more appears about once in 20 words (5.1%), slightly less often than in Kaidash’s Family (5.8%) and well below the complete originals, such as Kotsiubynsky’s Intermezzo (6.3%) or Khvylovy’s Я (Романтика) (11.1%); most of them are ordinary verbs such as перехрестився or порозбігалися. The poem’s verse, its old spelling and its dialect words are replaced by standard modern Ukrainian prose, but the food and drink stay: лемішка, куліш, варенуха, сивуха. A few famous lines are quoted in their old form (хоть, общеє, к отчизні) and marked as quotes. About 23% of the words are the characters’ lines. The difficulty is even: each of the 9 chapters has 11-12 words per sentence. Hence B1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 4 530
- words
- 11
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Troy has burned, and Aeneas, “a nimble lad and a Cossack through and through”, sails off with a boatload of singed and hungry Trojans. Juno, who cannot stand him, brings bread and salt to Aeolus and buys a storm; Neptune, bribed with half a kopa of coins, rides out on a crayfish and sweeps the sea clean with a broom. In Carthage the widowed queen Dido feeds the guests for two years, until Zeus sends Mercury to drag Aeneas away. In Sicily he holds a funeral feast for his father with cauldrons of borscht and a fistfight between a braggart and a sleepy old Cossack. Then the Sibyl, a toothless crone from a hut on a chicken leg, leads him down to hell, where lords, bribe-taking judges and lazy parents boil in tar. In Latium old King Latin offers his daughter, Prince Turnus wants her too, and a little white dog eaten by the Trojans’ hounds starts a war. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Енеїда
VI. Пекло і рай
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Choose an underlined word.
Juno talks like a village matchmaker
Juno greets the god of the winds as пане свату, “my dear in-law”, and brings хліб із сіллю, the bread and salt of Ukrainian hospitality, before asking for a favour. Note the vocative case: Еол becomes Еоле when she addresses him, just as Нептун becomes Нептуне when Aeneas calls for help.
A catalogue built with які
Kotliarevsky’s hell is a list of human types, and each one is defined by a clause with які: пани, які мучили своїх людей, “the lords who tormented their people”. The verb after які is in the plural past tense (мучили, судили, продавали), so once you spot які the rest of the sentence is easy to predict.
Chapters
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
With the Reader plan, MovaReader translates the whole sentence where a simple comparison carries the joke, as in Еней залип у Карфагені, як муха в патоці!, “Aeneas is stuck in Carthage like a fly in treacle!”.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not the original text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling in simple modern Ukrainian prose of Ivan Kotliarevsky’s burlesque poem Енеїда: its first three parts appeared in 1798, and the complete six-part poem was published in 1842, after the author’s death. The plot follows the poem as printed in Kotliarevsky’s collected works edited by Bohdan Lepky (1922), on Wikisource. The story itself comes from Virgil’s Aeneid, which Kotliarevsky turned into a comedy of Ukrainian Cossack life. What changed: the verse became prose, the old spelling and the dialect words are gone, and some 33,000 words of poetry shrink to about 4,500 words in 9 chapters, roughly one or two chapters for each of the six parts. The main episodes stay in order: Juno and Aeolus’s storm, Dido, the funeral games in Sicily, the descent to hell with its catalogue of sinners, Latium and the war with Turnus. A few famous lines are quoted as Kotliarevsky wrote them. The complete poem is not in the catalogue.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version of this book on MovaReader; the text is read on screen. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears: here that will mostly be words of old Ukrainian life such as очіпок (a married woman’s cap) or варенуха (hot vodka cooked with dried fruit and honey).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. Sentences here are short enough to read word by word, so you will need it mostly for idioms and the quoted lines, such as швидко накивав п’ятами, “quickly took to his heels”, or Де общеє добро в упадку, забудь отця, забудь і матку, “where the common good is in danger, forget your father and forget your mother”. Without the plan you can translate single words until the daily limit runs out.
How many hours does it take?
About an hour for the whole book, at a learner’s pace with translation of new words, not a native speaker’s. The 9 chapters run from about 400 words (chapter IV) to about 560 (chapters II and VII), so each one fits into a short sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even from start to finish: every chapter averages 11-12 words per sentence. Chapter V, where the Sibyl leads Aeneas down to hell, runs slightly longer at about 12; chapters VIII and I, with more short replies, are the lightest at about 11.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers where you stopped and which words you opened. The contents on this page also open any of the 9 chapters directly, for example chapter VI, “Пекло і рай” (Hell and Paradise).