I. Розділ 1
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Kvitka’s 1833 witch-hunt satire for C1
The Witch of Konotop Конотопська відьма
Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, 1911
Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s complete comic novella in Ukrainian, not an adaptation, in the Zhelekhivka spelling of the 1911 Lviv edition. It is for C1 learners who enjoy a talkative narrator and are ready for very long sentences: about 26,500 words in 14 chapters and a short closing part, with 27 words per sentence on average. Kvitka wrote it in Kharkiv in 1833, when prose in Ukrainian was still a novelty, and Ukrainian schools still read it as a satire on Cossack officers and their superstitions.
- C1
- 26 474 words
- 4-7 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 you will often lose the thread: sentences of 27 words on average, speech quoted in mid-sentence, and spellings like нїчого or допхав ся that a dictionary lists as нічого and допхався. The B1 adaptation of the same story is the gentler way in.
B2C1
This text
At C1 the comedy carries you: each chapter is one episode, the quarrels are lively, and once your eye adjusts to ї and the detached ся, the old spelling stops slowing you down.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 it reads freely; only the scribe’s Church Slavonic and some household words of the 1830s, like дулївка (pear vodka) or кабака (snuff), still call for a tap.
Start readingThe average sentence has 27 words, almost twice the 15 of Franko’s Zakhar Berkut and well above the 16 of Dniprova Chaika’s stories, because Kvitka’s storyteller strings clause after clause with та, а and semicolons and quotes his characters inside his own sentences. Long words are only 8.1% (Kotsiubynsky’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, also C1, has 7.4%), so the difficulty lies elsewhere. First, the spelling of this edition: 1,548 words have ї after a consonant (сидїв, нїчого for today’s сидів, нічого), and ся stands apart or after a hyphen 373 times (допхав ся, поворочуєть-ся). Second, the Left-Bank vernacular of the 1830s: впять (again) 25 times, отсе 24, сеє 18, тогдї 17. Third, the scribe Pistriak’s mock Church Slavonic, with убо, понеже and соізволяю. The Cossack ranks run through every chapter: сотник about 160 times, писар about 100, the хорунжівна and her brother about 60. Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 26 474
- words
- 27
- words in an average sentence
- 4-7
- hours of reading
- 1911
- Товариство «Просьвіта»
Товариство «Просьвіта», 1911. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Konotop, a Cossack company town of the old Hetmanate. Its captain, Mykyta Zabrioha, a slow man who cannot count past thirty, gallops to the Bezverkhy farmstead to propose to Olena, the orphaned daughter of a standard-bearer who runs the whole farm for her bookish brother. In the morning a baked pumpkin is set before him, the traditional no. Next comes his scribe, Prokip Pistriak, who talks in garbled Church Slavonic, covets the captain’s post and carries the company roll notched on a long stick, along with an order to march to Chernihiv. Instead of marching, the two blame the drought on witches and put the town’s women to the old water test in the pond. They sink one after another, until old Yavdokha Zubykha floats and laughs at them all. Soon the scribe and then the captain come to her in secret, each with his own request, while Olena’s sweetheart, the judge’s son Demian Khaliavsky, is away with the troops. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Конотопська відьма
V. Розділ 5
, , , … ! , , , , , , : », !«
! » , , !« . , . , : » ! !« ́- ? , .
Choose an underlined word.
Speech inside the narration
Olena’s words open with » and close with «: the 1911 edition uses reversed guillemets and often drops a reply straight into the narrator’s sentence after говорить: or каже. Read сьвіт as світ: дасть Бог сьвіт, дасть і совіт is a rhyming proverb, “God sends the morning, and good counsel with it”.
Read ї as і, and join ся
In this edition ї after a consonant is today’s і: нїчого is нічого, усїма is усіма. The reflexive particle stands apart, so бовтаєть-ся is today’s бовтається. Once you read past these spellings, the scene at the pond is plain village Ukrainian.
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
The scribe’s mock Church Slavonic is where translating the whole sentence in Reader pays off, as in “Хворостина сия, хоча єсть і хворостина, но оная не суть уже хворостина” (“This stick, although it is a stick, is a stick no longer”), his solemn way of presenting the company roll notched on a stick.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s version: Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s complete novella, chapters I-XIV with the closing part Закінчаниє and his dedication to Mykhailo Bedraha. Written in 1833, it first appeared in 1837 in the second book of his Little Russian Tales (Малороссийские повести). The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces volume I of his Works (Prosvita, Lviv, 1911), and keeps that edition’s Zhelekhivka spelling: нїчого, сьвіт and допхав ся where today’s Ukrainian writes нічого, світ and допхався. The accent in що́ marks the pronoun (“what”), not the conjunction (“that”).
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audiobook of The Witch of Konotop on MovaReader: the novella is read on screen. Tap a word and its translation appears; you will need it for words like впять (an old Left-Bank form of “again”) or дулївка (vodka steeped with pears).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most where the captain and the scribe talk at cross purposes, as in Zabrioha’s “Я б, пожалуй, соблаговолив, так лїків більш тридцяти не знаю” (“I would gladly oblige, but I don’t know numbers past thirty”) in chapter II. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole novella takes about 4-7 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words. Its 14 chapters run from about 700 words (chapter XIV) to 3,800 (chapter V, the test at the pond), and the closing part has about 600, so most chapters fit into one sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
It stays fairly even, so there is no hard opening to get past. In every chapter but XII the average sentence runs between 24 and 34 words; chapter XII drops to about 18, and the closing part to about 22. The longest sentences come in chapters IV, VI, VII and X (32-34 words), where the narrator lingers over the town in uproar and over his characters’ thoughts.
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 return to the novella where you stopped. Any of the 14 chapters also opens from the contents on this page, for example chapter II (II. Розділ 2), where the scribe counts the company on his notched stick.