I. Дія перша
. , . .... : « ; »....
. ?
. ? , , .
. , ! , , .
. , … , , .
. , , . (). , , , : « , …!» .
A pious moneylender who preys on a village
The Usurer, or the Spider Глитай, або ж Павук
Marko Kropyvnytskyi, 1923
Marko Kropyvnytskyi’s complete drama in Ukrainian, written and first published in 1882, not an adaptation. It is for B2 learners who want a short, tense stage text about a village moneylender who poses as everyone’s benefactor while he takes their oxen, their houses and, he hopes, a young wife whose husband has gone away to work. Its author was an actor, playwright and composer who in 1882 founded the first professional Ukrainian theatre company; at the premiere in January 1883 Maria Zankovetska played Olena. About 13,500 words in four acts (дії), 6 words per sentence on average.
- B2
- 13 461 words
- 2-4 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the short spoken lines carry you a long way, but Bychok’s Russian forms of address, the townsman’s mixed speech and the older spellings of 1923 (люде, инший, сьогодня) will slow you down. Read one act at a time and tap freely. A retelling of the play as prose in simple modern Ukrainian is in the catalog at A2.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can read it: almost every line is speech, the stage directions in brackets are short and keep coming back (у бік, пішов, зітхає), and the Russian belongs to two characters only.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the drama reads freely; only the village words and the usurer’s church and clerical phrases make you stop.
Start readingThe average sentence has 6 words (6.3 before rounding), because this is a stage play: the great majority of its roughly 550 paragraphs are lines spoken by a character, and the stage directions in brackets are short. 6.7% of words have 9 letters or more: more than in Ivan Franko’s play Stolen Happiness (5.3%), less than in Ivan Karpenko-Karyi’s Martyn Borulia (8.1%) and Stepan Vasylchenko’s Karmeliuk (9.2%). What slows you down is the speech of its time and place. The village in the Kherson region talks a lively colloquial Ukrainian (либонь, мерщій, осьдечки, навпісля), and the 1923 Kharkiv edition keeps older forms: люде for люди (19 times), инший for інший, сьогодня for сьогодні (16 times), чести and волости ending in -и. The usurer Bychok, whose lines make up about 3,400 of the play’s words, salts them with close to 50 Russian, clerical and church words: “милостивий государю мій” and “государине моя” alone come 12 times, along with оказія (“a scrape”), позвольте, викушайте, благополучно and Church Slavonic quotations. The townsman Ivan Pavlovych speaks about 300 words of a broken Russian-Ukrainian mix (вот єтого самого, маладцов). Mykola Kulish’s Myna Mazailo, which builds its whole comedy on that clash, stands at C1 with 9.8% long words; here the Russian marks two characters and is easy to spot. Hence B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 13 461
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 2-4
- hours of reading
- 1923
- Рух
Рух, 1923. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A village in the Kherson region, in the south of what was then the Russian Empire, in the 1880s. Osyp Stepanovych Bychok, a rich man of about forty, lends money to half the village and calls it Christian charity; behind his back the villagers call him a глитай, a usurer who swallows people up. He keeps the farmer Martyn Khandolia drinking in the tavern on credit and buys his oxen for a pittance, lends money to the widow Stekha when the tax collectors come to value her house, and all the while he wants Stekha’s daughter Olena, the young wife of the poor and proud Andrii Kuhut. Andrii owes Bychok money too, so when Ivan Pavlovych, a townsman, offers him a year’s work as an overseer far from home, Bychok praises him warmly to the employer, and Andrii agrees to go. A year and nine days later there is still no word from Andrii, the collectors are back at Stekha’s door, and Bychok, full of pious talk about sin, asks the mother to persuade her daughter to come and keep house for him. Then he produces a letter from Kherson. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Глитай, або ж Павук
II. Дія друга
. , , ! .... ?
. , !
. , ! , , , , ; , , , !… , : , , , … , !.. , , ! ! , , , !.. : … : « »!…
. , !..
Choose an underlined word.
How a usurer talks
Bychok calls the drunk Martyn государю мій милостивий (“my gracious sir”), the formula of a Russian official letter, not of a village street: it is his mask of politeness. Notice also люде for люди and инший for інший: the 1923 edition keeps these older forms, so if a word is not found, try its modern spelling.
Scripture in his mouth
Bychok ends his sermon with a verse of Psalm 51 in Church Slavonic: «і во грісех роди мя мати моя» (“and in sin did my mother conceive me”). Во (“in”), грісех (“sins”) and мя (“me”) are not modern Ukrainian; the playwright gives them to a hypocrite who quotes scripture. Notice too мир, the church word for “the world”, where the village says світ.
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
When Bychok pays Olena compliments, translating her whole reply keeps both animals of the insult together: Ні, погляд у вас лисячий та вовча думка. (“No, you have a fox’s look and a wolf’s thoughts.”)
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Ukrainian books B1 Earlier The Usurer, or the Spider Глитай, або ж Павук Another book by the same author A2
All books at this levelBefore you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: Marko Kropyvnytskyi’s complete drama in four acts (дії) and five settings (одміни: the fourth act changes its scene once). He wrote it in 1882; it was first printed that year in Kyiv, in the first volume of his collected works, and first staged on 11 January 1883 in Chernihiv. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces the 1923 Kharkiv edition of the cooperative publisher Рух, number 2 of its series Театральна бібліотека, and keeps that edition’s spelling: люде for люди, инший for інший, сьогодня for сьогодні, genitives like чести and волости. Two transcription details were tidied: the minor characters grouped by braces in the cast list now share one line per group, and the title pages, the printer’s imprint and the printed list of acts were left out.
Is there an audiobook?
The Usurer, or the Spider has no audiobook on MovaReader: the play is read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. You will need it for village words and for Bychok’s old-fashioned speech: либонь (“probably, it seems”), мерщій (“quickly, at once”), оказія (Bychok’s word for a scrape, a spot of trouble) and пащекувати (“to badmouth, to wag one’s tongue”).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps with Bychok’s long pious speeches and with proverbs such as Andrii’s Засунув шию в ярмо, то треба везти! (“Once you’ve put your neck in the yoke, you have to pull!”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 2-4 hours, at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The four acts have about 5,000 words (with the cast list), 2,300, 2,600 and 3,600, so the first act is the longest and each of the others makes an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
Sentence length is even: every act averages between 5.9 and 6.7 words per sentence. The vocabulary changes a little more. The first two acts have 6.1% long words; the third climbs to 8.0% and the fourth has 7.2%, so the play gets slightly denser towards its end.
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. Each of the four acts also opens from the contents on this page, for example IV. Дія четверта, which begins at a log-framed well at a crossroads in the fields.