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Toledo cathedral novel in full for C1
The Cathedral La catedral
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, 1978
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s complete novel of 1903, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is C1: about 97,500 words and 19 words per sentence on average. Nine chapters about Gabriel Luna, an anarchist who comes back, ill, to the cloister of Toledo cathedral where he grew up; chapters II and III are the densest.
- C1
- 97 491 words
- 16-27 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 chapters II and III, at 26-27 words per sentence, will be slow going, and rare church and building words such as aleros or encaperuzadas will need a tap every few lines.
B2C1
This text
You can manage it at C1: the plot chapters run at 16-21 words per sentence, and the dense descriptions of chapters II and III can be read slowly, translating single words and whole sentences.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the novel reads freely; only the rarest architectural terms and the long period sentences of the cathedral descriptions slow you down.
Start readingThe average sentence has 19 words, and one word in nine has 9 letters or more (10.9%), which puts the text on the C1 side of the line, at one long word in ten or more often. Blasco Ibáñez’s other novels in the catalog are C1 as well: La barraca averages 21 words per sentence, Cañas y barro 20 and Sangre y arena 17. The difficulty is uneven: chapters II and III average 27 and 26 words per sentence, and chapter III has a long word every seventh word, while chapters VIII and IX run at about 16-17 words. Rich church and architectural vocabulary adds to the work. Hence C1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 97 491
- words
- 19
- words in an average sentence
- 16-27
- hours of reading
- 1978
- Plaza & Janés
Plaza & Janés, 1978. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Before dawn Gabriel Luna arrives in front of Toledo cathedral. After years away, he comes back ill and tired to the cloister where he grew up and where his family lives among beggars, sacristans and canons who still remember him. He is an anarchist, and he tries to go unnoticed in his old home while he looks at the great church with the harsh eyes of a man who has lost his faith in it. The daily life of the building, with its bells, its music and its poor, closes round him. What becomes of him there is not revealed here.
Compare two places
One sentence, one slow dawn
The second sentence is long, but its skeleton is short: La azul claridad del alba ... se esparcía con mayor libertad en la plazuela. Everything between the commas (que apenas lograba deslizarse entre los aleros) only says why the light is weak in the narrow streets. Then the gerund sacando de la penumbra adds what the light uncovers: the dull archbishop’s palace and the towers “hooded” in black slate. Find the verb first, and the picture assembles itself.
Imperfect and gerund set the routine
Sonaba, encontraba, proporcionaba: the imperfect paints a daily routine, not one event. Dedicándose al trabajo con tenacidad taciturna is a gerund tacked on to describe how Gabriel works. Pay attention to the last purpose clause: como un medio de pasar inadvertida ... y que la gente la perdonase su pasado. The subjunctive perdonase follows que because it states what the work is meant to achieve: that people forgive her past.
Where the text gets harder
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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In the opening description sentences like “La azul claridad del alba, que apenas, lograba deslizarse entre los aleros de los tejados, se esparcía con mayor libertad en la plazuela” are long chains of clauses: translating the whole sentence in Reader shows the picture before you stop at each word.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s complete novel La catedral, all nine chapters, first published in 1903 (Sempere, Valencia). The reader follows the Plaza & Janés edition of 1978, from Project Gutenberg (ebook 16670).
Is there an audiobook?
The Cathedral has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the novel is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for the architectural and church vocabulary, words such as aleros or encaperuzadas.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. In this novel it helps most in chapters II and III, where sentences average 27 and 26 words, and in descriptions like “La azul claridad del alba, que apenas, lograba deslizarse entre los aleros de los tejados”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole novel takes about 16-27 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. The nine chapters are long, from about 7,500 to 17,900 words, so one chapter makes a long evening or two shorter ones.
Where does the text get easier?
Not at the very start: chapter I runs at about 20 words per sentence, and chapters II and III get denser, at about 27 and 26 words, with a long word every seventh to ninth word. From chapter IV the book eases to about 16-21 words per sentence, and chapters VIII and IX sit at about 16-17, so the second half reads more freely.
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 novel every evening where you left off. Any of the nine chapters also opens from the contents on this page.