I. Дія перша
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A clerk ashamed of his own surname (C1)
Myna Mazailo Мина Мазайло
Mykola Kulish, 1929
Mykola Kulish’s complete comedy in Ukrainian, not an adaptation: Myna Mazailo, first printed in Kharkiv in 1929, the year Les Kurbas staged it at the Berezil theatre. Kulish (1892-1937) was the leading Ukrainian playwright of the 1920s and was shot in 1937, one of the generation now called the Executed Renaissance; he is not Panteleimon Kulish, the author of The Black Council. A Kharkiv clerk wants to trade his Ukrainian surname for a Russian-sounding one at the height of Soviet Ukrainization, and his whole family takes sides. It is for C1 learners who want to hear how Ukrainian and Russian collided in the 1920s, and it helps to know a little Russian. About 16,300 words in four acts, 6 words per sentence on average.
- C1
- 16 294 words
- 3-5 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the dialogue is within reach, but the jokes will slip past: they live in the gap between Ukrainian and Russian (г and ґ, Пахнєт сєном, проізношеній) and in 1920s words such as укрмова and лікнеп.
B2C1
This text
At C1 you can follow both the plot and the wordplay: the lines are short, and a tapped word explains most of the mixed speech and the Soviet abbreviations.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the comedy reads in an evening or two, and what is left is the pleasure of catching every pun on Мазайло, Мазенін and Квач.
Start readingThe average sentence has only 6 words, among the shortest of the complete originals in the catalogue, because this is a play: 931 of its 1,862 paragraphs open with a dialogue dash, and about three quarters of the words are spoken lines. Yet 9.8% of the words have 9 letters or more, close to Khvylovy’s Синій листопад (8 words, 10.2%, C1), written in the same Kharkiv years, and well above Kotliarevsky’s comedy Natalka Poltavka (8 words, 7.4%, B2). What makes it C1 is the language play. The jokes depend on hearing Ukrainian against Russian: a whole pronunciation lesson turns on г versus ґ (Пахнєт сєном над лугами), Russian is spelled in Ukrainian letters (проізношеній four times, іспортілі город), and the new surname comes up 58 times in two spellings, Мазенін and Мазєнін. The vocabulary of Ukrainization needs explaining too: укрмова, лікнеп, загс (11 times), українізація (13), комсомол (23). The 1929 spelling adds ґ in loanwords (ориґінальне, аґітував, дириґент) and forms such as лямпочка and клясних, and the older од outnumbers від 31 to 2. Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 16 294
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 3-5
- hours of reading
- 1929
- Літературний ярмарок
Літературний ярмарок, 1929. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Kharkiv in the late 1920s, when Soviet Ukraine was making its officials work in Ukrainian. Myna Mazailo, a clerk at the coal trust Донвугілля who lives on Kholodna Hora, is ashamed of his peasant-sounding surname. He has found out at the registry office that he may change it to Mazenin, and he hires Baronova-Kozino, a former teacher at a girls’ institute of the old regime, to cure him of his Ukrainian г. His son Mokii, who sits up at night over Ukrainian words and verses, dreams instead of reviving the old Cossack form Mazailo-Kvach. Mazailo’s wife sends for Aunt Motia from Kursk, who cannot forgive Kharkiv its new Ukrainian signs, and Uncle Taras speaks for the old Ukrainian patriots. The daughter, Ryna, sets her friend Ulia to charm Mokii out of his ideas, but Ulia starts to like both the young man and his language. In Act III the family meets to vote on the surname, three of Mokii’s Komsomol friends join the debate with a football, and Mazailo dreams that his Cossack, chumak and peasant ancestors come to reproach him. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Мина Мазайло
II. Дія друга
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Choose an underlined word.
Ryna’s nerves in 1920s town speech
Ryna talks fast, in the town Ukrainian of the time. Кватира is the colloquial form of квартира (“flat”), лямпочка the 1920s spelling of лампочка (“light bulb”), and укрмова the office abbreviation for українська мова. Од is the older form of від (“from, because of”), and з’явить собі is a clipped з’явити собі, colloquial for уявити собі (“to imagine”). Her refrain ти розумієш? (“you understand?”) comes back all through the play: read it as a nervous habit, not a real question.
Russian in Ukrainian letters
Kulish writes Russian with Ukrainian letters to show how it sounds. Пахнєт сєном над лугами is the first line of a Russian school poem, Сенокос (“Haymaking”), and the teacher wants Mazailo to say г as Russian does, a hard [g], which Ukrainian writes ґ, instead of the breathy Ukrainian [h]. Ангольською is Mazailo’s slip for ангельською (“angelic”). Возговорю is a solemn Church Slavonic form of заговорю (“I will speak”), and каїнове тавро is the mark of Cain.
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
Mazailo’s despair over his г is where whole-sentence translation in Reader pays off: Прокляття, якесь каїнове тавро, що по йому мене впізнаватимуть навіть тоді, коли я возговорю не то що чистою руською, а небесною, ангольською мовою (“A curse, some mark of Cain that will give me away even when I speak not just pure Russian but the heavenly tongue of the angels”).
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: Mykola Kulish’s complete comedy in four acts, as first printed in 1929 in Kharkiv in the almanac Літературний ярмарок, book 6; Les Kurbas staged it at the Berezil theatre the same year. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces that printing and keeps its spelling, the Ukrainian orthography of 1928 (ориґінальне, клясних, соціяльно). The printing is kept as it is, including its scene numbers, which skip or repeat in places (Act II has two scenes numbered 6 and none numbered 7). This first printing has no list of characters, and the almanac’s editorial note printed after the play is not included. Aunt Motia once uses an ethnic slur for Ukrainians; it is part of the satire on her.
Is there an audiobook?
Myna Mazailo 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 1920s abbreviations such as укрмова (short for українська мова, Ukrainian as an office subject) and лікнеп (a class that taught adults to read and write), and for the older preposition од, which the characters use for від.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in Mokii’s long tirades, as in засновуючи у нас на Холодній горі замість українського лікнепу якогось інститутика старих клясних дам (“setting up here on Kholodna Hora, instead of a Ukrainian literacy class, some little institute of old-style schoolmistresses”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 3-5 hours, at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The four acts are close in size: Act I has about 3,500 words, Act II about 4,400, Act III about 5,000 and Act IV about 3,500, so an act fits one sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
It stays even. Every act runs at 6 to 7 words per sentence. Acts I and II are the lightest, with 9.4% long words, the family quarrel and the pronunciation lesson. Act III is the densest (6.9 words per sentence, 10.4% long words), with the debate on the surname, Uncle Taras’s history lecture and Mazailo’s dream. Act IV comes back to 6.3 words and 9.9%.
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, even in the middle of an act. Each act also opens from the contents on this page, for example III. Дія третя, which begins with Ryna meeting Ulia at the door on the day of the family debate.