A novel of rubber and the jungle for C1

The Vortex La vorágine

Name: The Vortex
Author: José Eustasio Rivera

José Eustasio Rivera

José Eustasio Rivera’s complete novel, first published in Bogotá in 1924, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is C1: about 80,100 words and 15 words per sentence on average. The poet Arturo Cova flees across the Colombian plains into the Amazon rubber jungle; the text is split into 102 chapters: the prologue, 100 sections in three parts, and the epilogue.

C1
80 082 words
13-22 hours

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Will this text hold?

B2

Earlier

At B2 the chains of adjectives and rare nature words such as múrice or dombo will slow you down, and the regional words of the plains and the rubber country come without any explanation in the text.

C1

This text

You can read it at C1: sentences average 15 words, and the plot of flight, pursuit and river journeys carries you through the heavy descriptions; Part Two is the slowest stretch.

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C2

With room to spare

At C2 the novel reads fluently; what remains is the regional vocabulary and the ornate, poetic rhythm of Rivera’s descriptions.

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One word in nine has 9 letters or more (11.2%), above the 9.9% from which the catalog’s books count as C1; for comparison, Los pazos de Ulloa has 10.8% and Tirano Banderas 12.0% with 13 words per sentence. The average sentence has 15 words, short for C1, but the vocabulary of the Colombian plains and the Amazon rubber country (caney, rebalse, bongo, caucheros) and Rivera’s lavish nature passages add work. The difficulty is uneven: Part Two, the jungle, averages 18 words per sentence, Parts One and Three about 14. Hence C1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.

80 082: words
15: words in an average sentence
13-22: hours of reading

Planeta Colombiana. Wikisource

What it is about, without the ending

Arturo Cova, a poet from Bogotá, runs away with Alicia, a young woman whose relatives plan to marry her off, and the two cross the plains of Casanare on horseback. On the way they meet Barrera, a smooth-talking rubber contractor, and follow him into the jungle, where gatherers bleed the trees for a boss who holds their debts and the forest wears them down. The novel is Cova’s own manuscript, framed by a prologue and an epilogue. How the journey ends for Cova and Alicia is not revealed here.

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La vorágine

Primera parte, capítulo 1

, . , , . . , , , .

, . — — . . .

Segunda parte, capítulo 1

¡, , , ! ¿ ? , , , , , . ¿ ? ¿ , ? ¡ , , , !

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Wikisource

Antes que and the subjunctive

Antes que takes the subjunctive: antes que me hubiera apasionado means “before I had fallen in love”, and the hubiera form tells you the narrator is looking back from a distance. Rivera writes la Violencia with a capital letter, as if it were a gambler who won his heart in a game of chance. The narrator is the poet Arturo Cova, and he speaks in the first person from here to the end.

Follow the “you”

The whole passage addresses the jungle as “you”: tu cárcel, tus ramajes, tus crepúsculos. The opening marks ¿ and ¡ show where each question or exclamation begins, which helps in sentences this long. Cova keeps stacking images, so find the main verb of each sentence first (dejó, están, suspiró) and read the rest as decoration around it.

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Chapters

Translation while you read

The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.

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In Part Two the narrator speaks to the jungle in long chains: in “Tú me robaste el ensueño del horizonte y sólo tienes para mis ojos la monotonía de tu cenit, por donde pasa el plácido albor, que jamás alumbra las hojarascas de tus senos húmedos” one clause hangs on another, and translating the whole sentence in Reader keeps the thought from getting lost.

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Before you read

Is this the original or a learner adaptation?

It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: José Eustasio Rivera’s complete novel with the prologue, the three parts and the epilogue, first published in Bogotá in 1924. The reader follows the transcription on Spanish Wikisource, which names a Planeta Colombiana edition as its source. The glossary of regional words that some editions print at the end is left out, because the transcription does not show it to be Rivera’s own.

Is there an audiobook?

La vorágine 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 regional and rare words such as múrice, dombo or picachos.

Can I translate a whole sentence?

Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the long, piled-up sentences of Part Two, such as “Tú me robaste el ensueño del horizonte y sólo tienes para mis ojos la monotonía de tu cenit...”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.

How many hours does it take?

The whole novel takes about 13-22 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. The 102 chapters are short, from about 40 to 2,550 words, so a few of them make an evening.

Where does the text get easier?

Not steadily: the difficulty comes in waves. Part Two, the jungle, is the heaviest at about 18 words per sentence, while Parts One and Three run at about 14. The gentlest stretch is chapters 12-23 of Part One, at about 11 words per sentence.

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 102 chapters also opens from the contents on this page, for example chapter 1 of Part Two.

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