I. Escena primera
, .
.
.
¡, ! ¿ , ?
.
. .
. ¡ , !
¿ ?
¡ !
, .
. .
, . . , .
An esperpento of a Madrid night, for B2
Bohemian Lights Luces de bohemia
Ramón del Valle-Inclán, 1924
Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s esperpento (a bitter, grotesque play) in the complete 1924 book edition, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 19,700 words and 8 words per sentence on average. Fifteen scenes follow the blind poet Max Estrella and Don Latino through one night in Madrid; the stage directions and the street slang are the hard part, the short spoken lines are easy.
- B2
- 19 676 words
- 3-5 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the stage directions and the bitter wordplay will slow you down, and slang such as perras, duros or esbirro needs a gloss.
B1B2
This text
At B2 the short spoken lines are manageable: read the long stage directions slowly, translate single slang words, and keep whole-sentence translation for the political speeches.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the play reads freely; only the topical Madrid references and the sharpest slang of scenes II and VII still need a note.
Start readingThe average sentence has only 8 words, because the play is almost all short spoken lines: close to the 7 words of The Trickster of Seville and well below the 12 of Autumn Sonata. What keeps it at B2 and not lower is the vocabulary: one word in twelve has 9 letters or more (8.5%), and Madrid slang, period words (duros, chalina, perras) and the long stage direction that opens each scene add work. The scenes are fairly even: the easiest are III (the tavern) and X (the park), with the fewest long words, the densest VII (the newspaper office) and II (Zaratustra’s den). The catalog’s C1 line starts at 9.9% long words, so the play stays at B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 19 676
- words
- 8
- words in an average sentence
- 3-5
- hours of reading
- 1924
- Renacimiento
Renacimiento, 1924. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Max Estrella, a blind poet from Andalusia who lives in Madrid on his old reputation, loses the few columns that paid for his room, and his wife, Madama Collet, and his daughter, Claudinita, are hungry. With his friend and hanger-on Don Latino de Hispalis he walks out into the night: through a bookshop, a tavern, a cafe and a newspaper office, to a ministry and a police cell. Everyone he meets, from poets and policemen to a minister and a drunk, speaks in the same bitter humour. How the night ends for Max is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Luces de bohemia
VI. Escena sexta
. , .
¡ !
¿ ?
.
¿ , ?
.
¿?
.
¡!... . , , . .
. , , .
¿ ?
.
Choose an underlined word.
Listen for repeated lines
The couple answer each other in short lines, and a phrase comes back with a twist: Madama Collet says “Otra puerta se abrirá” and Max replies “La de la muerte”. Noticing the repetition is the key to the dark joke, and translating single words is enough here.
Read the stage lines as narration
Lines without a speaker name, such as “Sale de la tiniebla el bulto del hombre morador del calabozo”, tell you what the audience sees. Read them as narration, then follow the dialogue; when a speech grows long, switch to whole-sentence translation.
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 the cell scene the prisoner argues in long sentences, such as “aun cuando se suprima la herencia, no podrá evitarse que los despojados conspiren para recobrarla”: translating the whole sentence in Reader keeps the argument from getting lost among the clauses.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s adaptation: the complete esperpento in fifteen scenes, from the first to the last, in the 1924 book edition (Renacimiento, Madrid; the play first appeared in a magazine in 1920). The text comes from Project Gutenberg, whose transcriber modernised the spelling to current Spanish norms. The cast list and the printer’s note are left out.
Is there an audiobook?
Bohemian Lights has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the play is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for slang and period words such as esbirro or chalina.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the long speeches, such as the prisoner’s in scene VI: “aun cuando se suprima la herencia, no podrá evitarse que los despojados conspiren para recobrarla”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole play takes about 3-5 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. The scenes are short, from about 630 to 1,900 words, so a few scenes make an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
The text is fairly even. The easiest scenes are III (the tavern) and X (the park), with the fewest long words; the densest are VII (the newspaper office) and II (Zaratustra’s den), where more than one word in ten is long. Every scene opens with a stage direction in more elaborate prose, then drops into short lines.
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 play where you left off. Any of the 15 scenes also opens from the contents on this page, for example scene VII, the newspaper office.