Moses Мойсей

It is the original, not an adaptation: Ivan Franko’s complete poem, a prologue and 20 cantos. Franko wrote it from January to July 1905 (the text closes with his note Львів, сїчень до липня 1905) and published it the same year in Lviv at his own expense, printed by the press of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces that 1905 edition, and keeps its Zhelekhivka spelling: ї for і after consonants (лїт), ся written apart (наблизив ся), сьв for св (сьвіт), no apostrophe (мясо) and no doubled consonants (житє for життя). The prologue, dated 20 July 1905, is addressed to the Ukrainian people; the cantos draw on the last days of Moses in the Books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, which Franko turns into a poem about a people and those who lead it.

Moses has no audiobook on MovaReader: the poem is read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. You will need it for words such as бодячє (“thistles”, modern бодяччя) and призирство (“contempt”, modern презирство). Words in the 1905 spelling are easier to look up once you read them in modern form, нїхто as ніхто and сьміх as сміх.

Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most where one sentence runs over several lines in inverted order, as in the portrait of the old prophet: Хоч лїта його гнуть у каблук із турботами в парі, то в очах його все щось горить, мов дві блискавцї в хмарі (“Though the years, together with his cares, bend him like a bow, something still burns in his eyes, like two lightning flashes in a cloud”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.

About 1-2 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The prologue has about 290 words; the cantos run from about 240 words (XII, the shortest) to about 590 (XIX, the longest), most between 270 and 460, so a canto takes five to ten minutes and the whole poem fits into one or two evenings.

The difficulty depends on the kind of canto, not on its place. The narrative cantos read most easily: in I, III and XX sentences average 12-15 words (III: 12.6, XX: 12.1). The hardest are Moses’s speeches to the people in IV-X and the night dialogue in XIII, where one sentence runs over several stanzas and the counter finds as few as two sentences in a canto of 332 words (IV). The 1905 spelling is the same throughout, so it gets easier as your eye learns to read нї as ні and ся as part of the verb.

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. Any canto also opens from the contents on this page, for example XI. Пісня 11, where the children of the camp stop Moses on his way into the desert.