A gaucho epic in verse for B2

Martín Fierro Martín Fierro

Name: Martín Fierro
Author: José Hernández

José Hernández, 1879

José Hernández’s complete gaucho poem in both parts, El gaucho Martín Fierro (1872) and La vuelta de Martín Fierro (1879), not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 34,800 words and 25 words per sentence on average, a figure that verse makes unusual. 46 cantos in six-line stanzas, in the speech of the pampa: the dialect, not the length, sets the level.

B2
34 818 words
6-10 hours

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Will this text hold?

B1

Earlier

At B1 the verse and the dialect will both get in the way: naides, ansí, dende, mesmo and verb forms like trujo need a gloss every few lines, and stanzas stretch one idea over several sentences.

B2

This text

You can manage it at B2: the lines are short, the rhyme shows how each spoken-style word sounds, and a canto can be read in one sitting with single words translated.

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C1

With room to spare

At C1 the poem reads without breaks; what is left is the vocabulary of the pampa and the turns of phrase of the 1870s.

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The average sentence has 25 words, but verse makes that number unusual: the poem runs in six-line stanzas, and a full stop comes only where Hernández puts one, often after two or three stanzas. The lines themselves are short, and long words are rare: 4.9%, about one in twenty, near the bottom of the catalog’s range for complete B2 texts. By sentence length it sits between El capitán Veneno (20 words) and La edad de oro (30), well above Niebla (13); nearly every canto runs from 18 to 31 words per sentence, the first part at 27 and the second at 24. The real work is the language of the gauchos: vos, pa, naides, ansí, dende, mesmo, juerza, trujo, words of the pampa such as pingo and vigüela, and verse that bends grammar to fit the rhyme. Hence B2, and a demanding one. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.

34 818: words
25: words in an average sentence
6-10: hours of reading
1879: Imprenta de La Pampa; Librería del Plata

Imprenta de La Pampa; Librería del Plata, 1879. Project Gutenberg

What it is about, without the ending

Martín Fierro is a gaucho who sings of a good life: a rancho, cattle, a wife and sons. Then the army drafts him for the frontier, where he serves for years, unpaid and beaten. When he gets home, the rancho is gone and his family scattered. A fugitive after a knife fight, he joins sergeant Cruz and crosses the desert to live beyond the frontier among the Indians. In the second part he comes back, looks for his sons, and each of them tells what happened to him in the years apart. How the family’s story, and the long song, close is not revealed here.

Compare two places

Martín Fierro

I. Cantor y gaucho

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Canto X

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Choose an underlined word.

Project Gutenberg

Let the rhyme guide the sound

Read the first stanza aloud: vigüela, desvela and consuela rhyme, so the rhyme shows how each word is meant to sound. Hernández writes the gaucho’s speech as it is spoken, and sung verse gives you the pronunciation for free.

Endings in -ao and spoken forms

The ending -ao stands for -ado: tapao is tapado, boliao is boleado. In the same way juerza is fuerza and dende is desde. Say the word aloud and the standard form usually appears; that one habit unlocks most of the dialect.

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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 canto I, “Mas ande otro criollo pasa Martín Fierro ha de pasar” is simple once you know that ande means donde: translating the whole sentence in Reader gives you the meaning at once, and the words can wait.

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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 Hernández’s complete poem in both parts, the 13 cantos of El gaucho Martín Fierro (1872) and the 33 of La vuelta de Martín Fierro (1879). The text comes from Project Gutenberg (ebooks 14765 and 15066, Biblioteca Digital Argentina), from the editions of Imprenta de La Pampa and Librería del Plata, with the gaucho forms as Hernández wrote them. The stanza numbers and the author’s prefaces are left out, so the reader starts at the first canto.

Is there an audiobook?

Martín Fierro has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the poem is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for gaucho forms such as juerza, naides or ande.

Can I translate a whole sentence?

Yes, with the Reader plan. In this poem it helps most where one thought runs over several stanzas, or where a dialect line hides a simple meaning, as in “Mas ande otro criollo pasa Martín Fierro ha de pasar”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.

How many hours does it take?

The whole poem takes about 6-10 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. Cantos are short, from about 140 to 3,050 words and most between 350 and 1,000, so one or two make a sitting.

Where does the text get easier?

It stays even from first to last. Nearly every canto runs from 18 to 31 words per sentence, the first part (27) a little longer than the second (24), and long words stay near 5%. What changes is the voice: the first part is Fierro’s own account, and the second brings in more speakers, with canto XXX a long singing contest in alternating verses.

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 poem where you left off. Any of the 46 cantos also opens from the contents on this page, for example the first canto of the second part, right after the thirteenth of the first.

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