I. Частина перша
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A village dreams of land in 1905 (B2)
Fata Morgana Fata Morgana
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, 1955
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s complete novella in Ukrainian, not an adaptation: Part I appeared in 1904 and Part II in 1910. The title is the Italian name for a mirage, here a whole village’s dream of land. It is for B2 learners who want village life and the 1905 revolution seen from a peasant hut. About 29,900 words in two parts, 8 words per sentence on average.
- B2
- 29 927 words
- 5-8 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the village speech will be slow going: dropped words, exclamations and folksy forms like тепереньки, plus old spellings such as од for від and се for це.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can read it: two paragraphs in five are dialogue, the sentences are short, and the descriptions of fields and night fires give way to word-by-word translation.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the novella reads freely; only the farm vocabulary and the old forms of the 1955 edition make you stop.
Start readingThe average sentence has 8 words, and 6.4% of words have 9 letters or more, about one in sixteen. On paper that is lighter than Kotsiubynsky’s Intermezzo (9.8 words, 6.3%) and Dorohoiu tsinoiu (11.7 words, 8.8%), but the short sentences here are mostly speech: 648 of about 1,600 paragraphs are dialogue lines, in village talk full of exclamations and half-finished phrases. The 1955 edition keeps older forms: од appears 98 times against 14 for від, се (“this”) 52 times, and you will meet short forms like сердивсь and слуха (for слухає). Part II often tells events in the present tense and brings in the words of 1905: забастовка (“strike”, 9 times) and економія (“manor estate”, not “economy”, 10 times). There is no dense dialect like the Hutsul speech of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (C1), and long words stay well below the one-in-ten line of the C1 books. Hence B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 29 927
- words
- 8
- words in an average sentence
- 5-8
- hours of reading
- 1955
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1955. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A Ukrainian village in the years before and during the 1905 revolution. Andrii Volyk once earned good money at the sugar refinery that burned down years ago; landless now, he walks among its ruins and waits for someone to rebuild it. His wife Malanka, worn out by work and poverty, dreams of the opposite: that the masters’ land will be divided and a strip of it will be hers. Their daughter Hafiika grows up between the two dreams. In Part II a distillery opens in the old buildings and Andrii goes back to the machines; the villagers refuse to bring in the master’s harvest, haystacks burn at night, and young Marko Hushcha comes home with talk of unions and of land that belongs to those who work it. News of risings elsewhere reaches the village, and the people decide to act. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Fata Morgana
II. Частина друга
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Choose an underlined word.
Andrii’s village voice
This is Andrii thinking aloud in village speech, not the narrator. Пане добродзею (“my good sir”) is his catchphrase: it comes 17 times in the book, though he says it to nobody in particular. Тепереньки is a fond, folksy form of тепер (“now”), оден is an older form of один, and скибка here is a narrow strip of farmland, not a slice of bread. Хазяї!.. (“Farm owners!”) is said with scorn.
Past slips into present
The paragraph about Malanka opens in the past tense (пішла, припала) and then slips into the present: слуха, стає, розгортає. Kotsiubynsky uses this narrative present often in Part II to bring a scene close; read it as past. Слуха and капа are the short village forms of слухає and капає. Хлібець is a fond diminutive of хліб, “bread”, and текла here means the ripe wheat was spilling its grain.
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
In the long descriptions, translating the whole sentence in Reader keeps the picture together, as in Як тільки смеркне і чорне небо щільно укриє землю, далекий обрій враз розцвітає червоним сяйвом і до самого рання осінні хмари наче троянди (“As soon as dusk falls and the black sky covers the earth, the far horizon suddenly blooms with a red glow, and till morning the autumn clouds look like roses”).
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s complete novella in both its parts, subtitled З сільських настроїв (“From village moods”). Part I first appeared in 1904 in the Kyiv journal Kievskaya Starina; Part II followed in 1910 in the Lviv journal Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces volume II of Kotsiubynsky’s Works (Твори) published by Knyhospilka in New York in 1955, and it keeps that edition’s spelling: од for від, се for це, short forms like сердивсь.
Is there an audiobook?
Fata Morgana has no audiobook on MovaReader: the novella is read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. You will need it for village words like комірне (“rent for a room in someone else’s house”) and for the words of 1905: забастовка (“strike”) and економія (“manor estate”, not “economy”).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most where the whole village talks at once, as in Чутки і поголоски, невідомо звідки узяті, місилися вкупі, росли на очах, як тісто в діжі (“Rumours and hearsay, picked up who knows where, were kneaded together and rose before your eyes like dough in a trough”). 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 two parts differ a lot in size: Part I has about 8,200 words, an evening or two, and Part II about 21,700 words, so plan three or four sittings for it.
Where does the text get easier?
It gets a little easier. Part I is the denser one: 9.2 words per sentence and 6.6% long words, with long pages of Andrii’s and Malanka’s thoughts. Part II runs at 7.7 words per sentence and 6.3% long words, and two paragraphs in five there are dialogue (520 of about 1,330), though the crowd scenes bring new vocabulary.
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, even in the middle of a part. Both parts also open from the contents on this page, for example II. Частина друга, which begins with Andrii clearing snow from the path.