II. El hombre de las pieles
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Calderón’s verse play as B1 prose
Life Is a Dream La vida es sueño
Pedro Calderón de la Barca
This is a prose retelling of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s verse play in Spanish, not the original text: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who already have the past tenses and are now working on the subjunctive and the conditional. In the catalog it is B1: about 15,400 words, 12 words per sentence on average. 14 chapters follow all three acts of the play, first printed in 1636: from a prince chained in a tower in the mountains of Poland to the morning he wakes up in his father’s palace and has to decide whether he is dreaming. Three of Calderón’s most famous passages are quoted word for word, among them ¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
- B1
- 15 374 words
- 3-4 hours
Will this text hold?
A2
Earlier
At A2 you will follow the story, but the grammar will hold you up: the past subjunctive after si and para que, the conditional (se desesperaría), the pluperfect, long reported speeches and the formal vos and vosotros of the court, at 12 words per sentence on average.
A2B1
This text
Right for B1: the tenses you are learning in sentences of 12 words, a court, a prison and a war whose words the story explains as it goes, and 14 chapters of about 1,100 words, each one a single sitting.
Check this passageB2
With room to spare
At B2 this retelling is a quick read with little translation: 3-4 hours for all three acts. The B2 shelf holds complete Spanish texts instead, starting with Unamuno’s Mist, at 13 words per sentence and 6.9% long words.
Start readingThe average sentence has 12 words, and a word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 24 words (4.1%). That puts the retelling between the catalog’s Spanish A2 adaptations, such as Don Quixote (10 words per sentence, 2.8% long words) or Alice in Wonderland (9 words, 3.1%), and the complete texts on the B2 shelf, where Unamuno’s Mist has 13 words per sentence and 6.9% long words. Sentence length alone barely moves from A2; the step up is the grammar. Here, for the first time on the catalog’s ladder, a MovaReader retelling uses the whole range of tenses at close to the pace of a complete text: the pluperfect (el secreto que había guardado durante más de veinte años), the past subjunctive after si (si supiera hoy que es mi hijo), the conditional and conditional perfect (se desesperaría, habría pensado que estaba muerto) and long passages of reported speech, as when Clotaldo tells the king how the prince fell asleep. King Basilio addresses his court with vosotros (ya sabéis), and the two royal cousins speak to each other with the formal vos (vos decís que tenéis más derecho): the Spanish of the Golden Age stage, not Latin American voseo. A good share of the long words is one name: Segismundo appears 72 times. The difficulty is even: each of the 14 chapters has 11-14 words per sentence. Hence B1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 15 374
- words
- 12
- words in an average sentence
- 3-4
- hours of reading
MovaReader. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Poland, in an age of kings and astrologers. Rosaura, a young noblewoman from Muscovy traveling in men’s clothes, is thrown by her horse in the mountains and, with her servant Clarín, comes upon a lonely tower where a young man dressed in animal skins lies in chains. He is Segismundo, the son of King Basilio. At his birth the stars foretold that he would be a cruel tyrant who would one day trample his own father, so the king, the most learned astronomer in the world, announced that the child had been born dead and had him raised in secret by the old Clotaldo. Now that his nephew Astolfo and his niece Estrella both claim the crown, Basilio decides on a test: Segismundo will be put to sleep with a potion and will wake up in the palace as a prince, and if he behaves like a beast he can always be told it was a dream. Rosaura, meanwhile, has come to Poland with a golden sword and a wrong to avenge, and Clotaldo turns pale when he sees that sword. Whether Segismundo learns to rule himself before he rules Poland is not revealed here.
Compare two places
La vida es sueño
VI. La bebida del sueño
«¿ ?».
«, , . , ¿ ? : . . , , . , , , , . , , ».
Choose an underlined word.
A prisoner talks to the sky
Segismundo speaks to los cielos as vosotros, so the verbs take the vosotros forms: contra vosotros, vuestra justicia, para que me castiguéis. After para que Spanish needs the subjunctive: castiguéis, “so that you punish”. Haber nacido is the perfect infinitive, “to have been born”. The line about the greatest crime is Calderón’s own, quoted word for word; pues here means “since”, not “well”.
If he knew, he would despair
King Basilio explains his plan with a conditional sentence about something unreal: si supiera... y se viera, “if he knew... and saw himself” (past subjunctive), se desesperaría, “he would despair” (conditional). Then he switches to the future for what will really happen: podrá pensar, hará bien. Sabiendo quién es: the gerund means “knowing who he is”. Dejo una puerta abierta is literal and figurative at once: “I leave a door open”.
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
Reader translates whole sentences, and here that helps most where the king and the prince reason aloud in one long sentence, as in Basilio’s plan: Si el joven se mostraba prudente y bueno, tendrían a su príncipe natural, y el destino habría mentido.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
A learner adaptation, not the original: MovaReader retold Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s verse play La vida es sueño, written around 1635 and first printed in 1636, as modern Spanish prose. All three acts (jornadas) remain, in Calderón’s order, in 14 chapters and about 15,400 words: Rosaura and Clarín in the mountains, Segismundo in the tower, Basilio’s horoscope, the experiment in the palace, the return to the tower, the rebellion and Rosaura’s fight for her honor. The verse is gone, the long speeches are shortened and the courtly metaphors simplified, while three famous passages are quoted word for word, among them Segismundo’s monologue that ends que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son. This is not a translation of the complete play, and the complete text is not in the catalog in any language.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audio version of this adaptation: MovaReader gives you the text, not a recording. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears next to it; here that will often be the language of the court and the prison, such as cadenas, vasallo or heredero.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
The Reader plan translates whole sentences. They average 12 words here, so you will need it mostly in two kinds of place: the characters’ long arguments, like Si cuando despierte me ha de pesar haberlo conseguido para perderlo, cuanto menos sea, menos dolerá si se pierde, and the lines quoted from Calderón’s verse, like el delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido. The free plan also translates single words, up to a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole adaptation takes 3-4 hours at the pace of someone who still looks up new words. A chapter averages about 1,100 words, or 11-18 minutes of reading, so one act of the play, four or five chapters, fits into an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even: each of the 14 chapters averages 11-14 words per sentence, so there is no easier stretch. Only the vocabulary shifts a little: chapter I, in the mountains, has about one long word in 38, while chapter XI, where soldiers break into the tower, has one in 20.
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 next time you carry on from there. The contents on this page also take you straight to any chapter, say X, “¿Qué es la vida?”, the chapter of Segismundo’s most famous monologue.