I. Дія перша
. , — : !
. , — : „“, „“! … .
. , ? .
. : , …
. : , .
. : , … , .
. .
A farmer’s costly fight to be a nobleman
Martyn Borulia Мартин Боруля
Ivan Karpenko-Karyi, 1921
Ivan Karpenko-Karyi’s complete comedy in Ukrainian, written in 1886 and first published in 1891, not an adaptation. It is for B2 learners who want a quick, funny stage text about a well-off farmer who would give anything to be recognised as a nobleman. Its author was an actor and playwright, one of the founders of the Ukrainian professional theatre, and he took the plot from his own father’s long attempt to prove the family’s nobility. About 13,600 words in five acts (дії), 6 words per sentence on average.
- B2
- 13 559 words
- 2-4 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the short spoken lines carry you a long way, but the 1921 spelling (щож, память), the Russian legal and clerical phrases and the gentry’s Polish words will slow you down. Read one act at a time and tap freely. A retelling of the play as prose in simple modern Ukrainian is in the catalog at A2.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can read it: almost every line is speech, the stage directions in brackets are short and keep coming back (на бік, пішов, входе), and the Russian passages are few and easy to spot.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the comedy reads freely; only the vocabulary of lawsuits and ranks and the clerk’s mixed speech make you stop.
Start readingThe average sentence has 6 words (5.6 before rounding), among the shortest of the complete originals in the catalogue, because this is a stage comedy: about 600 of its 700 paragraphs open with a speaker’s name. Short lines do not make it easy, though. 8.1% of words have 9 letters or more: more than in Ivan Kotliarevsky’s Natalka Poltavka (7.4%), the catalogue’s other 19th-century play, and less than in Stepan Vasylchenko’s play Karmeliuk (9.2%). The 1921 Lviv edition keeps the spelling of its day: no apostrophe (память, пять, бє), and the particles ж and б are written together with the word about 90 times (щож, яж, колиб). Two other languages cut into the Ukrainian. The play opens with a legal decision of about 90 words read aloud in Russian with the pre-1918 spelling (всѣхъ, обстоятельствъ), the attorney and the clerk from town mix Russian into their speech (рішеніє, іск, ето, нєт), and a Russian song of 15 lines is sung in the fourth act; the petty gentry drop Polish words and sayings (уродзо́ний, ніц, До зобачення). Mykola Kulish’s Myna Mazailo, which builds its whole comedy on Russian against Ukrainian, has 9.8% long words and stands at C1; here the Russian is a spice. Hence B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 13 559
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 2-4
- hours of reading
- 1921
- НТШ
НТШ, 1921. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A Ukrainian village of the 1880s, in what was then the Russian Empire. Martyn Borulia is a prosperous farmer from the чиншова шляхта, petty gentry who rent their land from a landlord, and he has spent years and a lot of money proving that his family is noble. The provincial assembly of nobles has already ruled in his favour; only the Senate in St Petersburg still has to confirm it. Meanwhile his neighbour, the landowner Krasovsky, has called him “cattle”, and Borulia pays the slippery attorney Trandalev to sue him. At home he forbids his wife Palazhka and his daughter Marysia to say мамо and тату like peasants: from now on it is to be папінька and мамінька. Marysia loves Mykola, the son of Borulia’s old friend Hervasii Hulianytsky, but when Hervasii comes to ask for her hand, Borulia turns down a mere farmer. He wants a son-in-law with a rank and sends his son Stepan, a clerk at the district court, to bring Natsiievsky, a registrar from the town hall. A paper arrives ordering Borulia off Krasovsky’s land, and at the same time the house is scrubbed, a borrowed table and an embroidery frame are carried in, and the guitar-playing groom from town arrives to make his match. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Мартин Боруля
IV. Дія четверта
. . , : , , …
. ?
. , … , , : , , , , !… , …
. ! — , , — : , … … . , …
. , , …
Choose an underlined word.
Words that mark class
Borulia wants his children to say папінька and мамінька, borrowed from the speech of Russian-speaking gentry, instead of the village тату and мамо. Notice also мати кличуть, with the verb in the plural: in old village speech children speak of a parent with the polite plural, as Marysia does again later with татко мене силують.
Two ways of speaking
Natsiievsky’s Ukrainian is full of Russian (баришня, ібо, сіє діло, болєє благородная), while Marysia lists plain village work: жать, громадить, мазать, доїть. Notice the infinitives without the final -и (жать for жати, годувать for годувати): the play’s spoken Ukrainian drops it almost everywhere.
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
When Borulia’s old friend loses patience with him, translating the whole sentence keeps its joke together: Я тебе, Мартине, не пізнаю: поки ти не ганявся за дворянством, був чоловік, як і всі люде; тепер же десь тебе вкусила шляхетська муха і так дворянство у тебе засвербіло, що ти рівняєш себе з Красовським!… (“I don’t know you any more, Martyn: as long as you weren’t chasing nobility, you were a man like everyone else; now some gentry fly has bitten you, and nobility itches in you so badly that you put yourself on a level with Krasovsky!”)
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this levelBefore you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: Ivan Karpenko-Karyi’s complete comedy in five acts (дії), printed under his real name, Іван Тобілевич. He wrote it in 1886 in Novocherkassk, where he lived in exile, and it was first published in 1891 in the Lviv magazine Зоря. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces the 1921 edition of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (НТШ) in Lviv, number 1 of its series Український театр, and it keeps that edition’s spelling: no apostrophe (память, пять), ж and б written together with the word (щож, колиб), лікарь and секретарь with a soft sign. Two transcription details were tidied: two minor gentry grouped by a brace in the cast list now share one line, and the title page and the printed list of acts were left out. A few times the characters use the contemptuous word of their time for Jews.
Is there an audiobook?
Martyn Borulia has no audiobook on MovaReader: the play is read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. You will need it for the vocabulary of ranks and lawsuits: чиншовик (“a tenant who pays a fixed rent for his land”), повіренний (“an attorney, a legal agent”), апеляція (“an appeal”) and ісходяща (“the register of outgoing papers”).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps where the attorney Trandalev mixes legal Russian into his Ukrainian, and in Borulia’s outbursts, such as Я грошей не пожалію, аби мені Красовського в острог посадить (“I won’t spare any money, as long as Krasovsky ends up in jail”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 2-4 hours, at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The five acts have about 3,100 words (with the cast list), 2,700, 2,200, 3,100 and 2,400, so one act makes an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
Sentence length is even: every act averages between 5.5 and 6.1 words per sentence. The vocabulary shifts more. The first act is the densest, with 9.8% long words, because it opens with the Russian decision of the assembly of nobles and the attorney’s legal talk; the third act is the lightest, at 5.5%, a family quarrel and a love scene; the fifth climbs back to 9.2%.
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 where you left off. Each of the five acts also opens from the contents on this page, for example IV. Дія четверта, the morning the groom from town wakes up in Borulia’s house.