I. Яви 1-2
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A billeted soldier plays the wizard (B2)
The Soldier Sorcerer Москаль-чарівник
Ivan Kotliarevsky, 1937
Ivan Kotliarevsky’s complete play in Ukrainian, not an adaptation: Москаль-чарівник, a one-act vaudeville with songs, written in 1819 for the theatre in Poltava, the little companion piece to his Natalka Poltavka. A carter’s wife, a dandified clerk who courts her, a soldier billeted in the hut and a husband who comes home early: four characters, one evening, one room. It is for B2 learners who like quick dialogue and want to hear how Ukrainian and Russian collided in a village of 1819. About 6,700 words in three chapters, 5 words per sentence on average.
- B2
- 6 693 words
- 1-2 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the play will be a struggle: two of the four characters speak Russian or a Russian chancery jargon, and the Ukrainians use older forms like од, хоть and єсть between songs in verse. 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 paragraph is a short line of dialogue, and the Russian speeches give way to word-by-word or sentence translation.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 it reads in one sitting; only the clerk’s mock-learned Russian and the words of the village household (бодня, припічок, спотикач) make you stop.
Start readingThe average sentence has 5 words, one of the shortest averages among the catalogue’s Ukrainian originals, next to Ivan Franko’s play Ukradene shchastia (5 words). 7.1% of words have 9 letters or more, about one in fourteen, close to Kotliarevsky’s own Natalka Poltavka (8 words, 7.4%, B2) and well below the one-in-ten line of C1 books. The short sentences are stage speech: 347 of the 410 paragraphs are lines of dialogue, and 28 sung passages add about 175 lines of verse. What makes it B2 rather than easier is the language mix that the comedy is built on. The soldier speaks Russian from start to finish, and the clerk Fintyk speaks a Russian chancery jargon sprinkled with Ukrainian words; together that is about 2,800 words, more than two fifths of the play. The Ukrainians speak the village Ukrainian of 1819 with older forms: од appears 10 times against 1 for від, хоть (for хоч) 16 times, єсть 8 times and the Russian-looking но (“but”) 20 times. Mykola Kulish’s Myna Mazailo is C1 for a similar language game, but with 9.8% long words; here they stay at 7.1%. A complete original is never below B2 here, and nothing pushes this one to C1. Hence B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 6 693
- words
- 5
- words in an average sentence
- 1-2
- hours of reading
- 1937
- Дитвидав ЦК ЛКСМУ
Дитвидав ЦК ЛКСМУ, 1937. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A Ukrainian village hut, one evening. Mykhailo Chuprun has been away for nine weeks, hauling salt from the Crimea, and his young wife Tetiana is alone. Fintyk, a police clerk home on leave who dresses like a townsman and is ashamed of his mother’s village clothes, sits at her table with a bottle of honey liquor, sings her a love song of his own made of office words and talks of love. Tetiana laughs at him and lectures him about his mother. Then a tipsy soldier bursts in, demands a billet, chicken and dumplings, and quarrels with the clerk about whose service is more glorious. Tetiana sends him to sleep hungry behind the stove, though the supper Fintyk paid for is hidden in the pantry. Just then oxen are heard outside: the husband is home, and the clerk has to hide under the stove ledge. Before long the soldier announces that he is a sorcerer. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Москаль-чарівник
II. Яви 3-7
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Choose an underlined word.
Old forms in Tetiana’s scolding
Tetiana speaks the village Ukrainian of 1819, and a few of its words look odd today: но is але (“but”), от вас is від вас (“than you”), оддала is віддала (“gave, sent”), перше is спочатку (“first”) and послі is потім (“later”). Пань-матка is a respectful village word for a mother; Fintyk prefers the Russian матушка, and the contrast is the point of her speech. The trailing dots (…) mark that she breaks off, not a missing word.
Two languages and a devil nobody names
The soldier’s lines are Russian: колдун is the Russian word for a sorcerer, and Tetiana has to ask what it means. The Ukrainians answer with euphemisms for the devil, whom it is unlucky to name indoors: не своїм духом (“not by your own spirit”) and той, що живе в болоті (“the one who lives in the swamp”). Later in the play the same fear gives не при хаті згадуючи (“not to mention him in the house”). Stage directions in brackets are in Ukrainian, so you can follow the action even when a Russian line is hard.
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
Tetiana’s homely wisdom reads easily as a whole sentence in Reader, as in Сердитим треба угождати, а злого ласкою більш улагодиш, як сваром (“An angry man must be humoured, and a nasty one you will win over with kindness sooner than with a quarrel”).
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: Ivan Kotliarevsky’s complete one-act vaudeville, with the list of characters, all eleven scenes and every song. He wrote it in 1819 for the theatre in Poltava, where it was staged that year; it was first printed in 1841 in Izmail Sreznevsky’s Український збірник. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces the 1937 edition (Одеса, Дитвидав ЦК ЛКСМУ), printed together with Natalka Poltavka, and keeps that edition’s spelling, Kotliarevsky’s old forms such as од and єсть, and the Russian of the soldier and the clerk as written. In the closing chorus the last two lines of each couplet are sung twice; the edition marks this with a sign, and the lines are printed here once. We corrected five obvious slips of the digital transcription (such as па for на) and rejoined one stanza split by a page break. The editor’s footnotes are not included. The title word москаль meant a soldier of the tsar’s army in 1819 and is also a colloquial, often unfriendly name for a Russian; the soldier in turn uses a period slur for Ukrainians a few times.
Is there an audiobook?
The Soldier Sorcerer 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 household words the plot turns on, such as бодня (a big wooden tub or chest for storing food, under which the supper is hidden) and спотикач (a sweet cherry liqueur, literally a “stumbler”).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most with the clerk’s pompous Russian, as in Надобно сообразоваться времени и по оному поступки и чувства свои располагать (“One must keep pace with the times and arrange one’s conduct and feelings accordingly”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 1-2 hours, at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The three chapters are close in size: I. Яви 1-2 has about 2,150 words, II. Яви 3-7 about 2,500 and III. Яви 8-11 about 2,050, so each fits a short sitting. Scene VII, where the soldier turns sorcerer, is the longest, about 1,800 words.
Where does the text get easier?
It is fairly even, with the middle the lightest. Chapter I, where Fintyk courts Tetiana and argues with the soldier, runs at 6.7 words per sentence with 7.4% long words. Chapter II, the quick-fire tricks around the bottle and the gun, drops to 4.6 words and 6.4%. Chapter III climbs back to 5.7 words and 7.6%, with Tetiana’s long account and the clerk’s solemn Russian speeches.
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. Every chapter also opens from the contents on this page, for example II. Яви 3-7, which begins just after the soldier lies down behind the stove and the clerk curses him under his breath.