III. Катерина
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The first edition, Saint Petersburg 1840
Kobzar (1840) Кобзар (1840)
Taras Shevchenko, 1840
The complete first edition of Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar in Ukrainian, not an adaptation: the eight poems printed in Saint Petersburg in 1840, in the Russian-based spelling of that edition. It is for C2 learners who want to read the book that made Shevchenko the national poet of Ukraine as its first readers saw it, and who are ready for verse in a spelling no modern dictionary uses. About 5,600 words in eight chapters, one per poem, from about 130 words (Dumka) to about 2,700 (Kateryna, nearly half the book).
- C2
- 5 574 words
- 1-2 hours
Will this text hold?
C1
Earlier
Below C2 the 1840 spelling turns every line into a puzzle. Start with Kateryna, our A2 retelling of the longest poem in this book in simple modern Ukrainian, and come back to this edition when modern verse reads easily.
C1C2
This text
At C2 you can read it as its first readers did: once your eye turns ы into и and и into і and skips the final ъ, the poems open up, and each one is short enough for one sitting.
Check this passageC2 here means reading a historical stage of written Ukrainian, as Shakespeare is for learners of English or Cervantes for learners of Spanish. The raw measures point lower: 10 words per sentence and 6.8% of words with 9 letters or more are below Kaidash’s Family in its 1879 spelling (12 words and 7.8%, C1), and in verse sentence length says little, because a sentence ends wherever the poet’s punctuation puts it, after two lines or after ten. The difficulty is the 1840 spelling, built on the Russian alphabet before any Ukrainian standard existed: about four words in ten (2,235 of the 5,190 words made of letters) are written in a way modern Ukrainian does not use. ы stands for modern и in 1,362 words (лыхо, Катерына), и stands for modern і (мени, свити), a hard sign closes 788 words (якъ, въ, зъ), іо stands for ьо and йо 67 times (сліозы for сльози, іого for його), -тця is written for -ться 53 times (сміютця), and 17 adjectives keep old long endings (каріи очи, чорніи бровы). Folk-song inversions and the vocabulary of the 1830s come on top. The hardest C1 books are hard in other ways (The Witch of Konotop with 27 words per sentence, The City with 13.8% long words); here almost every line has to be decoded before it can be read, and a modern dictionary, like tap translation, will often miss these spellings: read лыхо мени as лихо мені before you look a word up. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 5 574
- words
- 10
- words in an average sentence
- 1-2
- hours of reading
- 1840
- Друкарня Є. Фішера
Друкарня Є. Фішера, 1840. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
The book opens with the poet speaking to his poems as to his own children, born far from home and sent back to Ukraine. Perebendia is an old blind kobzar, a wandering minstrel who sings merry songs for the young and sad ones at the market, and then talks alone with God on a burial mound in the steppe. Kateryna, the longest poem, follows a village girl who falls in love with a Russian officer; he leaves with his regiment for the war in Turkey, she is left with his child and the scorn of the village, and in the depth of winter she sets out on the road to find him. The Poplar tells of a girl who waits in vain for her Cossack and goes to a fortune-teller for help. In Dumka an orphan girl mourns a youth spent without love; To Osnovianenko asks the older writer Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko to sing of Cossack glory; Ivan Pidkova recalls a Cossack leader taking his boats out to the Black Sea; and in Taras’s Night a kobzar at a crossroads sings of the Cossack uprising of 1630 led by Taras Triasylo. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Кобзар (1840)
IV. Тополя
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Choose an underlined word.
A covered head
Read the 1840 letters aloud first: Не слухала Катерына ни батька, ни ненькы is modern Не слухала Катерина ні батька, ні неньки, “Kateryna listened neither to her father nor to her mother”. Москалыка is a fond diminutive of москаль, here a Russian soldier. The last line, Катрусю накрылы, carries a custom: an unmarried girl went bareheaded with a braid, and a girl who had a child without a husband had her head covered with a kerchief, a public mark of shame. That one line tells you what has happened to her.
Reading -тця and the final ъ
Two habits of this edition fill the passage. The verb ending -тця is modern -ться: подывытця is подивиться, “(he) looks”. The hard sign at the end of a word is silent and simply drops: витеръ is вітер, Чумакъ is Чумак, Пишовъ is Пішов. Once you also read ы as и and и as і, По диброви витеръ вые becomes По діброві вітер виє, “The wind howls through the oak grove”. Пострывайте is постривайте, “wait”, as the poet turns to the girls listening to him.
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, the whole sentence is translated where the poet questions his poems in the opening lines: Чомъ васъ витеръ не розвіявъ въ степу, якъ пылыну? (“Why did the wind not scatter you over the steppe like dust?”), in modern spelling Чом вас вітер не розвіяв в степу, як пилину?
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: the complete first edition of Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar, eight poems printed in Saint Petersburg in 1840 by the press of E. Fischer, with the censor’s permission dated 12 February 1840. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces that edition, and keeps its order (Думы мои, Перебендя, Катерына, Тополя, Думка, До Основьяненка, Иванъ Пидкова, Тарасова ничъ), its dedications to friends and patrons such as Yevhen Hrebinka, Vasily Zhukovsky and the artist Vasyl Shternberg (Kateryna is dedicated to Zhukovsky in memory of 22 April 1838, the day Shevchenko was bought out of serfdom) and its Russian-based spelling: ы for modern и, и for modern і, a final ъ. Compare Думы мои, думы мои, лыхо мени зъ вамы with modern Думи мої, думи мої, лихо мені з вами, or По диброви витеръ вые with По діброві вітер виє. The rows of dots mark lines cut by the 1840 censor: 25 such rows in Kateryna, To Osnovianenko and Taras’s Night, each printed row shown here as one row of dots. Chapter titles are in modern spelling; the poems keep the 1840 one. The poems use period names for Russians, Poles and other neighbours that read today as pejorative; they are kept as printed.
Is there an audiobook?
Kobzar has no audiobook on MovaReader: the poems are read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. You will need it for words such as сліозы (“tears”, modern сльози) and висты (“news”, modern вісті), though tap translation may miss the old spellings; when it does, rewrite the word in modern letters (ы as и, и as і, no final ъ) and the meaning usually appears.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most where a sentence runs over several short lines in inverted order, as in The Poplar: Хто жь выкохавъ тонку, гнучку въ степу погыбаты? (“Who raised her, slender and supple, only to perish in the steppe?”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 1-2 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker, and slower still while your eye gets used to the spelling. Kateryna alone has about 2,700 words, nearly half the book; The Poplar has about 870, the opening poem about 470, Perebendia and Taras’s Night about 420 each, To Osnovianenko about 330, Ivan Pidkova about 250 and Dumka about 130, so every poem except Kateryna fits into a short sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The spelling is the same in every poem, so the book gets easier as you read rather than in any one place. The measures differ from poem to poem: the opening poem has the fewest long words (3.5%) and Taras’s Night the most (13.1%); Kateryna, with its dialogue, averages 9 words per sentence, while Perebendia runs to 17. A good way in is the short Dumka and Ivan Pidkova, then Kateryna, whose story carries you along.
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. Any poem also opens from the contents on this page, for example VII. Іван Підкова, where the Cossacks put out to sea in their boats.