II. Розділ 2
. , . . , ?! , , ! , , , , ! — . , , . . , , , ! , . , ! ! , — — , !
A village couple lives together unwed (B2)
Without a Wedding На віру
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, 1955
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s complete novella in Ukrainian, written in 1891 and first published in 1892, not an adaptation. The Ukrainian title, на віру, literally “on trust”, is what villagers called a man and a woman living together without a church wedding, and that is the step Hnat and Nastia take. It is for B2 learners who want a village drama of love, gossip and jealousy with plenty of dialogue. About 20,100 words in six chapters, 11 words per sentence on average.
- B2
- 20 105 words
- 3-6 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the long descriptions of nights, fields and orchards will be slow going, and village words like бараболя or най need a tap at first.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can read it: two paragraphs in five are dialogue, and the descriptive passages give way to word-by-word translation.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the novella reads freely; only the village vocabulary and the 1955 spellings make you stop.
Start readingThe average sentence has 11 words (10.6 before rounding), and 9.1% of words have 9 letters or more, close to one in eleven. That is very near Kotsiubynsky’s Dorohoiu tsinoiu (12 words, 8.8%) and below the C1 books of this catalogue such as Ivan Franko’s Boa constrictor (15 words, 10.0%). The sentences are short partly because 167 of the 409 paragraphs are dialogue lines. The vocabulary is the village speech of Podillia rather than a dense dialect: бараболя (“potatoes”, 4 times), най for нехай (“let”, 8 times), іно for тільки (“only”, 5 times), ліса for a wattle fence. The 1955 edition keeps older spellings, such as зза for з-за (13 times) and смерти, волости, and the village officials speak with Russian words (бомага, безпремінно). Chapter V reaches 11.7% long words, but mostly because the name Олександра and its forms occur 97 times there; without it the share is 9.2%. Hence B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 20 105
- words
- 11
- words in an average sentence
- 3-6
- hours of reading
- 1955
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1955. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A village in Podillia, late 19th century. Hnat, an orphan who grew up herding cattle and serving at the manor, loves quiet Nastia, but on the day he sends matchmakers he finds her already promised to the richer, merrier Petro. Out of spite he marries her friend Oleksandra, the one who talked Nastia out of him, and the marriage becomes a daily war. When Petro dies in the army and Nastia is left a widow, Hnat throws his wife out; the district head makes the couple dig ditches by day and locks them up together by night to force a reconciliation. Meanwhile old Semen, who may not marry a fourth time, takes Motria into his house на віру, and Hnat resolves to ask Nastia for the same. Her pious mother, the priest and Oleksandra all have their say. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
На віру
IV. Розділ 4
. . . . . , . , . . . «!» — , . ; . , . . .
Choose an underlined word.
Her thoughts, without quotation marks
From Господи, що це за життя?! on, the narrator speaks in Oleksandra’s voice: exclamations, questions and her own insults (гадина люта, “fierce viper”) with no quotation marks and still in the third person (вона кине, “she will throw”). The novella does this often, so read such lines as what the character thinks. The idiom сивим волосом світила, literally “shone with grey hair”, means to stay unmarried into old age.
Ліса is not ліс
In переліз через лісу Hnat climbs over a ліса, a wattle fence in the village speech of Podillia, not a forest: the accusative of ліс would be ліс. The verb переліз (“climbed over”) tells you so too. Notice how the scene moves in short sentences (Насті не було. «Нема!»), and the simile затремтів, як осика на вітрі, “trembled like an aspen in the wind”, a stock image of Ukrainian folk speech.
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
Oleksandra’s anger is packed into idioms that make sense only as a whole, so whole-sentence translation in Reader helps with Краще б вона сивим волосом світила, ніж мала втопити свою долю, віддаючись за Гната! (“She would have done better to stay unmarried till her hair went grey than to drown her fate by marrying Hnat!”).
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s complete novella in six chapters. He wrote it in 1891 while working as a private tutor in the Podillia village of Lopatyntsi, and it first appeared in 1892 in the Lviv journal Pravda (Правда). The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces volume I of Kotsiubynsky’s Works (Твори) published by Knyhospilka in New York in 1955, and it keeps that edition’s spelling: зза for з-за, тількищо for тільки-що, смерти and волости for смерті and волості. The text also uses the offensive word of its time for Jews, about the tavern keeper’s family and the leaseholder; it is left as printed.
Is there an audiobook?
Na viru has no audiobook on MovaReader: the novella is read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. You will need it for village words like бараболя (“potatoes”) and сапальниці (“women hoeing the beet fields”), and for гзиться (“flirts shamelessly”), which Hnat says of his wife.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most with proverbs and idioms, such as Правда, не варт усього переймати, що по воді пливе (“True, there is no point catching everything that floats down the river”, that is, not all gossip deserves attention). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 3-6 hours, at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The six chapters run from about 2,700 to 4,400 words; chapter II is the longest, so one chapter makes an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is fairly even: every chapter averages between 9.4 and 11.4 words per sentence. Chapter II, with the quarrel and the scene before the district head, is the easiest, at 9.4 words. Chapters V and VI have the most long words (11.7% and 10.1%), but much of that is the name Олександра; without it they drop to 9.2% and 8.8%.
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. Any of the six chapters also opens from the contents on this page, for example III. Розділ 3, where old Semen asks Motria to live with him на віру.