Los ojos verdes
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Romantic legends of Spain for B2
Legends Leyendas
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, 1912
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’s legends in the original, from the 1912 Madrid edition, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 47,500 words and 32 words per sentence on average. Twelve legends set around Soria, the Moncayo and Seville, from Maese Pérez el organista to La venta de los gatos; Las hojas secas, Los ojos verdes and El monte de las ánimas are the gentlest, La corza blanca the densest.
- B2
- 47 538 words
- 8-13 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the long periods of 30 words and more will be slow going, and the 1912 spelling (á for a, fué, sólo) takes getting used to; Las hojas secas and Los ojos verdes are the gentlest start.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2: the plots are simple and told in order, so with translation of single words one legend makes an evening, and whole-sentence translation helps with the long descriptive periods.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the legends read freely; only the long descriptive periods of La corza blanca and the archaic turns of phrase slow you down.
Start readingThe average sentence has 32 words, longer than in any other B2 book in the catalog (La edad de oro, the closest, has 30; Niebla has 13). One word in eleven has 9 letters or more, close to the one in ten of the C1 books. The difficulty is uneven: Las hojas secas averages 19 words per sentence, Los ojos verdes 24, El monte de las ánimas 25, Tres fechas 38, and La corza blanca passes 50. The edition keeps the 1912 spelling (á for a, fué, sólo), which looks odd for a moment and then stops mattering. The periods are long but the plots are simple and told in order, so the catalog places the book at the top of B2, not at C1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 47 538
- words
- 32
- words in an average sentence
- 8-13
- hours of reading
- 1912
- Librería de Fernando Fé
Librería de Fernando Fé, 1912. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
In Maese Pérez el organista a blind organist plays the Christmas Mass in a church in Seville as nobody else can. In Los ojos verdes a young nobleman, Fernando de Argensola, chases a wounded stag through the Moncayo and sees a pair of green eyes in the waters of a spring. In El monte de las ánimas, on the night of All Saints, a young man tells his cousin why hunters leave a haunted hill before dark. In La corza blanca the hunter Garcés meets Constanza and her white doe. The other legends add more tales of love, faith and the supernatural. How these stories end is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Leyendas
El monte de las ánimas
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Choose an underlined word.
A hunt in one sentence
The long first sentence has three verbs: repitieron, resonaron and se dirigió. Read it as three clauses joined by y: the mountain echoes the horns, the voices of the pages ring out, the crowd rides to the spot. The tail about Iñigo uses señalara, the old -ra form, as a plain past: “had pointed out”.
Los primeros, los segundos
Bécquer sets the two sides apart with los primeros (the first ones, the knights) and los segundos (the second ones, the nobles of the city). Spanish uses them to avoid repeating the groups. Note also the inverted order of fermentó... y estalló al fin, un odio profundo: the subject, “a deep hatred”, comes last.
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
In Los ojos verdes one sentence runs 66 words (“Las cuencas del Moncayo repitieron de eco en eco el bramido de las trompas…”): translating the whole sentence in Reader shows who does what in the hunt.
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: twelve of Bécquer’s legends and tales (Maese Pérez el organista, Los ojos verdes, El rayo de luna, Tres fechas, La corza blanca, La rosa de pasión, La promesa, El monte de las ánimas, El gnomo, El miserere, Las hojas secas and La venta de los gatos), without the introduction, the Cartas and the Rimas. The reader follows the “Edición del Monumento” (Librería de Fernando Fé, Madrid, 1912) from Project Gutenberg. Other legends, such as El beso, La cruz del diablo and La ajorca de oro, are not in this edition.
Is there an audiobook?
Legends has no audiobook on MovaReader: the text is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for rare words such as jauría, trocha or acotado.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the long periods, for example the 66-word sentence in Los ojos verdes that begins “Las cuencas del Moncayo repitieron de eco en eco…”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole book takes about 8-13 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. Each chapter is one legend, from about 1,300 words (Las hojas secas) to about 6,500 (Tres fechas and La corza blanca), so one legend makes an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
It is uneven rather than a steady slope. Las hojas secas (19 words per sentence), Los ojos verdes (24) and El monte de las ánimas (25) are the gentlest; Tres fechas (38) and above all La corza blanca (over 50) are the densest. Starting with Los ojos verdes or El monte de las ánimas is the easiest way in.
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 book where you left off. Each of the 12 legends also opens from the contents on this page, for example El monte de las ánimas.