Parte A
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A generation of ’98 essay on Spain, for C2
Idearium español Idearium español
Ángel Ganivet, 1897
Ángel Ganivet’s essay from the 1897 Granada edition, complete and not an adaptation. In the catalog it is C2: about 41,500 words and 44 words per sentence on average. A Granada diplomat writing from Finland asks what the Spanish character is and where Spain went wrong; the three parts, printed A, B and C, run from stoicism and justice through foreign policy to the cure for national apathy.
- C2
- 41 500 words
- 7-12 hours
Will this text hold?
C1
Earlier
At C1 the long chained sentences and abstract terms will stop you often, and part A, with its history of stoicism and philosophy, will take the most word-by-word translation.
C1C2
This text
You can manage it at C2: the sentences are long but their logic is clear; translate single words, and translate the whole sentence in the longest passages of part A.
Check this passageThe average sentence has 44 words, and the three parts are even: about 45 in part A, 44 in B and 44 in C. About one word in seven has 9 letters or more. For comparison, Rodó’s Ariel, also C2, averages 46 words per sentence, while Facundo (30) and Unamuno’s Del sentimiento trágico de la vida (25) sit at C1. Ganivet chains clauses with semicolons and long conditions, and his vocabulary is abstract (espíritu territorial, aboulía, estoicismo), so there is no easy stretch to ease into. Hence C2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 41 500
- words
- 44
- words in an average sentence
- 7-12
- hours of reading
- 1897
- Viuda e Hijos de Sabatel
Viuda e Hijos de Sabatel, 1897. Internet Archive
What it is about, without the ending
Ganivet starts from a puzzle: why the dogma of the Immaculate Conception stirs Spaniards so deeply, and what that says about the national soul. Part A looks for the roots of the Spanish character in Seneca’s stoicism, in Catholicism, in the Spanish sense of justice, in the attachment to territory and in art. Part B turns to foreign policy and goes round the compass: Gibraltar and Portugal, America, Africa and the Mediterranean. Part C asks what should be done at home and gives the national ailment a name. What cure he proposes is not revealed here.
Compare two places
A conditional hidden in “que á nacer”
Ganivet builds the paragraph on the pattern no..., ni..., ni...; sino..., so follow the three negations to the sino that answers them. Near the end, que á nacer más tarde ... quizás no naciera means “if he had been born later ... he might not have been born”: á plus an infinitive stands in for si, and naciera is the imperfect subjunctive. The á is the old accented spelling of the preposition a, used everywhere in this book.
Compass points as politics
The “Rosa de los vientos” is a compass rose, and each kingdom gets its own direction: Castile the south, Aragon the east, the Americas the west, the Low Countries the north. Watch the old spellings: ú oriental (ú is the conjunction o, “or”, written u before a word that starts with o), mútuos for mutuos and Santa Fé for Santa Fe. The long sentence is held together by y and by the commas between the directions, so find the verbs first: unieron, ayudó, nacía, vino.
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
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The book opens with a single sentence of 147 words (Muchas veces, reflexionando sobre el apasionamiento con que en España ha sido defendido y proclamado el dogma de la Concepción Inmaculada, se me ha ocurrido pensar que...): translating the whole sentence in Reader shows how its clauses fit together.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Ángel Ganivet’s complete essay, all three parts, as printed in the first edition (Granada, Viuda e Hijos de Sabatel, 1897), without the dedication and the list of errata. The text comes from a scan on the Internet Archive and was cleaned from its OCR, so a few misread words may remain; the author’s old spellings (á, ó, fué) are kept. The book has no part titles, only the letters A, B and C, so the contents list them as Parte A, Parte B and Parte C.
Is there an audiobook?
Idearium español has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the essay is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for abstract and old words such as aboulía, mútuos or cimiento.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the longest sentences, such as the book’s opening one of 147 words, which begins Muchas veces, reflexionando sobre el apasionamiento con que en España ha sido defendido... Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole essay takes about 7-12 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. It has three parts of about 19,700, 14,500 and 7,300 words, and the paragraphs are long, so a few pages at a time is a comfortable portion.
Where does the text get easier?
It stays even from start to finish: about 45 words per sentence in part A, 44 in B and 44 in C. If you want a gentler start, part C is the shortest, at about 7,300 words, though its sentences are just as long.
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 essay where you left off. Each of the three parts also opens from the contents on this page.