II. Маланка
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A village dreams of land, retold for B1
Fata Morgana Fata Morgana
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky
This is MovaReader’s own retelling of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s Fata Morgana in simple modern Ukrainian, not the original text. It is for readers who are comfortable with the past tense and want a serious story about a Ukrainian village in the years of the 1905 revolution. In the catalogue it is B1: about 5,700 words in 12 chapters, with 11 words per sentence on average. Kotsiubynsky’s complete text, about 29,900 words, is in the catalogue too, one step up at B2.
- B1
- 5 664 words
- 1-2 hours
Will this text hold?
A2
Earlier
At A2 you will stop often: the story is told in the past tense, sentences join two clauses with бо, коли or що, and village words such as гуральня, економія or челядь need a tap.
A2B1
This text
You can read it at B1 if the past tense is comfortable: sentences are short, a quarter of the text is dialogue, and the village words (пан, громада, староста, гуральня) come back so often that you soon stop translating them.
Check this passageB2
With room to spare
At B2 it reads almost without translation, and you are ready for the next step: Kotsiubynsky’s complete Fata Morgana in the catalogue, the same story in the author’s own words.
Start readingThe average sentence has 11 words, like the other B1 adaptations in the catalogue (the Хіба ревуть воли, як ясла повні? adaptation also has 11). Only 4.5% of the words have 9 letters or more, fewer than in the Чорна рада adaptation (5.6%) and well below the 6.4% of Kotsiubynsky’s complete Fata Morgana, which is B2 above all for its size (about 29,900 words) and its rich village vocabulary. Typical long words here are ordinary ones such as заробітчани (seasonal workers), покалічив (crippled) or страйкувати (to go on strike). About a quarter of the words are dialogue, mostly short and lively. What makes you stop is the world of the story rather than the grammar: гуральня (a distillery), економія (a landlord’s estate), челядь (servants), староста (the village head) and урядник (a police officer) return many times. The difficulty is even: every chapter averages between 10.0 and 11.5 words per sentence. Hence B1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 5 664
- words
- 11
- words in an average sentence
- 1-2
- hours of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Six years after the sugar factory in their village burned down, Andrii Volyk, a landless labourer, still waits for it to reopen, while his wife Malanka dreams that the landlord’s fields will be shared out and that their daughter Hafiika will marry Prokip Kandziuba, a farmer’s son. Hafiika loves Marko Hushcha, who has come back from Odesa with books and stories of workers’ protests, and who is soon arrested. Khoma Hudz, the landlord’s bitter old herdsman, curses the masters and dreams of fire. When the ruins become a distillery, Andrii finds work there, until an accident at a machine costs him four fingers. The village goes on strike, rumours about land spread again, and in the autumn of 1905 a red flag with the words «Земля і воля» goes up over the crowd. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Fata Morgana
VII. Прокіп і листочки
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Choose an underlined word.
Servants and age
Челядь is one collective noun for all the servants of a manor, so «варила їсти для челяді» is “cooked for the servants” with a singular genitive after для. Notice also how age is said: «коли їй було вісім років», literally “when to her it was eight years”, with the person in the dative. The verb мусила (had to) is the past of мусити, a common word for necessity in older Ukrainian prose.
Paid in sheaves
«Жати за шостий сніп» means reaping for every sixth sheaf: the reaper keeps one sheaf in six as pay, so the strikers want the sixth instead of the tenth. Note also нехай with a verb for a wish or a challenge: «нехай пан сам взує постоли», “let the landlord put on peasant shoes himself”. Вирок today means a court verdict; here it is the village assembly’s written decision.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
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With the Reader plan, MovaReader translates the whole sentence where a proverb hides the meaning, as in Khoma’s warning ще прийде коза до воза, literally “the goat will yet come to the cart”, meaning that one day the tables will turn.
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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 of Fata Morgana by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky: Part I was first published in 1904 and Part II in 1910, in the journal Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk. The plot follows the text on Wikisource from the 1955 Knyhospilka edition of his works, which is in the catalogue in full at B2. The novella’s roughly 29,900 words become 12 short chapters of about 5,700 words, around a fifth of the original. The long lyrical landscapes and crowd scenes are shortened, some minor characters are dropped, the most violent scenes are told more briefly, and the period words for Jewish people used in the original are left out (the innkeeper Mendel keeps his name). The spelling is modern standard Ukrainian. The order of events, the characters and many of their words stay close to Kotsiubynsky.
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. Two words you will probably tap: гуральня (a distillery, where spirit for vodka is made, the centre of the second half) and постоли (simple peasant shoes of rawhide tied with straps; «узути пана в постоли», to put the landlord into peasant shoes, is the strikers’ favourite joke).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. Most sentences can be read word by word, so you will need it mainly for idioms, as in Malanka’s answer when Andrii asks at night whether the factory hooter has sounded: Тобі в голові гуде, literally “it is humming in your head”, meaning he is imagining things. Without the plan you can translate single words until the daily limit runs out.
How many hours does it take?
One to two hours for the whole book, at a learner’s pace with translation of new words, not a native speaker’s. The 12 chapters run from about 380 words (chapter XI, “Вогонь”) to about 600 (chapter IV, “Риба і земля”), 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 between 10.0 and 11.5 words per sentence. Chapters I and II, which set the scene and tell Malanka’s life, have the longest sentences (11.5); chapters IX, “Страйк”, and X, “Земля і воля”, with more short replies, the shortest (10.0 and 10.1). Chapter X also has the most long words (6.7%), with words like страйкують and господарювати.
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 12 chapters directly, for example chapter VI, “Гуральня” (The distillery).