I. Гість у хаті Чупруна
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A village farce retold for A2
The Soldier Sorcerer Москаль-чарівник
Ivan Kotliarevsky
This is MovaReader’s retelling of The Soldier Sorcerer (Москаль-чарівник) in simple standard Ukrainian prose, not the original play: Ivan Kotliarevsky’s one-act vaudeville from 1819 about a village wife, the town clerk who courts her while her husband is away, and a billeted soldier who pretends to work magic. It is for A2 readers who know the basics and want a short, funny story in the past tense: about 4,400 words in 10 titled chapters. The complete play is in the catalogue at B2 as The Soldier Sorcerer.
- A2
- 4 437 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
Earlier
At A1 it is a stretch: everything is told in the past tense, many sentences join two clauses with бо, щоб or якби, and the clerk’s city phrases need several taps.
A1A2
This text
At A2 it fits: short sentences, everyday words and quick dialogue; household words like бодня (a wooden tub with a lid) or припічок (the ledge in front of the stove) translate with a tap.
Check this passageB1
With room to spare
At B1 it reads almost without translation: a quick way into the story before Kotliarevsky’s complete play at B2, where the clerk and the soldier speak Russian and the songs are given in full.
Start readingSentences average 8 words, the narration is in the past tense, and about seven paragraphs in ten are lines of dialogue. One word in 20 has 9 letters or more (5.0%); most of them are past-tense verbs such as засміявся (he laughed) or приготувала (she prepared). The other A2 retelling of a stage comedy, Martyn Borulia, has the same figures (8 words, 5.0%), and Kotliarevsky’s Natalka Poltavka at A2 is very close (9 words, 5.1%), while the Eneida, retold for B1, has 11 words per sentence. The first two chapters, with the clerk’s talk about his mother, and the last two run to 9.3 to 9.6 words per sentence; the conjuring scenes in chapters V to VIII drop to 6.5 to 7.4. Hence A2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 4 437
- words
- 8
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Autumn in a village in the Poltava region, two hundred years ago. Mykhailo Chuprun has been away for weeks, carting salt from Crimea, and his young wife Tetiana keeps the house alone. Every evening the clerk Fyntyk drops in: a village boy who now writes papers in town, wears a medal, peppers his speech with “то єсть” and is ashamed of his mother’s old-fashioned clothes. He has paid for a supper and hopes for more than supper. Then a tipsy soldier billeted on the house bursts in, demanding chicken and “лавреники”, and is sent to bed hungry behind the stove, where he hears everything. When the husband’s oxen are heard outside, the clerk crawls under the stove ledge, and the soldier announces that he is a sorcerer who can make food and drink appear. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Москаль-чарівник
VI. Москаль-чарівник
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Choose an underlined word.
Comparisons with як
In Він співав, що кохана для нього як протокол, як папір з гербом..., як means “like”, and the joke is the list itself: a clerk can only compare his love to office things. Notice also співав (he sang) and витріщав (he stared wide-eyed), both imperfective past forms: they tell what he kept doing all through the song.
Saying it “по-своєму”
колдун is the soldier’s Russian word, and the text says so: Він сказав це слово по-своєму, “he said the word his own way”. The Ukrainian words чарівник and чародій follow right after. Що захочу, те зроблю (“Whatever I want, I’ll do”) is a common pattern: що ... те ... links a clause and its answer.
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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Reader translates whole sentences where Tetiana puts the soldier in his place, as in Якби я не була жінкою, може, з мене був би кращий солдат, ніж ти, “If I weren’t a woman, I might make a better soldier than you”.
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not the original text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling, in simple standard Ukrainian prose, of The Soldier Sorcerer (Москаль-чарівник), the one-act vaudeville Ivan Kotliarevsky wrote for the Poltava theatre, where it was first staged in 1819; it was first printed in 1841 in Izmail Sreznevsky’s miscellany in Kharkiv. We followed the text of the 1937 edition on Wikisource, the same one as the complete play at B2 in our catalogue. What changed: a play of about 6,700 words became about 4,400 words of past-tense prose in modern standard Ukrainian (2019 spelling), in 10 titled chapters; the characters and the order of the scenes are kept. In the original the clerk and the soldier speak Russian or a Russian-Ukrainian mix; here they speak simple Ukrainian, and the soldier keeps only two words of his own, колдун (sorcerer) and лавреники, his mangled вареники. Most songs are told in a sentence, with a few lines quoted, among them «Ой, не відтіль вітер віє» and the final chorus «Треба дружно з людьми жити». An exchange of sayings about Russians and Ukrainians in the words of the time was left out. Москаль here means a soldier of the tsar’s army, as villagers used the word in 1819.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version on MovaReader: the text is read on screen. Tap a word you don’t know and its translation appears; here that will often be household words like бодня (a wooden tub with a lid) or припічок (the ledge in front of a stove), and home-made drinks such as запіканка and спотикач.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. Sentences here average 8 words, so you will need it mostly where Tetiana lectures the clerk, as in Хто не шанує рідних, тому ні в чому не можна вірити (“You can’t trust anything to someone who doesn’t respect his own family”). Without the plan you can translate single words up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About an hour for the whole story at a learner’s pace, with new words translated as you go. There are 10 chapters of about 290 to 580 words each, so a chapter takes a few minutes and the story fits into one evening.
Where does the text get easier?
It gets easier in the middle. Chapters I and II, with the clerk’s song and the quarrel about his mother, average 9.6 and 9.3 words per sentence, and the last two chapters 9.3 and 9.6. Chapters V to VIII, the husband’s return and the soldier’s conjuring, are quick dialogue at 6.5 to 7.4 words; chapter V, “Чоловік вернувся” (The husband comes home), has the shortest sentences (6.5).
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers where you stopped and which words you opened. The contents on this page also open any of the 10 chapters directly, for example chapter VII, “Рушниця, що не стріляла” (The gun that would not fire), where the tipsy husband wants to show the soldier how well he shoots.