II. Петро Гулак-Артемовський
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Ukrainian verse before Shevchenko
The Master and the Dog and Other Poems Пан та Собака та інші вірші
Hulak-Artemovsky, Borovykovsky, Metlynsky, Kostomarov and others, 1922
Complete original poems and fables in Ukrainian, not an adaptation: 39 pieces written between 1818 and 1856 by five poets, most of them from the Kharkiv circle, as printed in the 1922 Kyiv anthology «20-40-ві роки в українській літературі», edited by Oleksandr Doroshkevych. It is for C2 learners who want to see how literary Ukrainian sounded before Shevchenko: the burlesque fable, the first romantic ballads, Horace retold as village talk. About 8,900 words in five chapters, one per poet, of 570 to 2,740 words each.
- C2
- 8 871 words
- 1-2 hours
Will this text hold?
C1
Earlier
At C1 you can follow the stories, but the old forms will stop you on almost every line; read Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s The Witch of Konotop or Kaidash’s Family in its 1879 spelling first, then come back to these poems.
C1C2
This text
At C2 the book is yours: the pieces are short, most fables take a few minutes, and once you read що-ж as що ж and сватать as сватати, the language of the 1820s-1840s opens up.
Check this passageThe plain numbers would put this book lower: 13 words per sentence and only 6.3% of words with 9 letters or more, far below Valerian Pidmohylny’s The City (13.8%) and close to many B2 books. In verse those numbers say little: a sentence runs over many short lines, and the share of long words swings from 4.3% in Hulak-Artemovsky’s fables to 10.8% in Kostomarov’s lyrics. What makes it C2 is the language itself, a stage of literary Ukrainian before the modern standard. Particles are joined with a hyphen 85 times (що-ж, коли-б, ще-б); од stands for від 20 times; more than 30 infinitives end in a short Russian-style -ть (столковать, сватать, кувать, ждать); Russian case endings appear (улицей, лозиной, спасенной, дней); Russianisms and Church Slavonic words fill the fables (власть, пользу, ізволили, вельми, глупця, звізда), a dying bard quotes a Psalm line in Church Slavonic (Утрудихся зовый), and a Polish lord answers in Polish-flavoured speech. Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s The Witch of Konotop is C1 with 27 words per sentence and Kaidash’s Family is C1 for its 1879 spelling; here every page mixes forms that no longer exist. C2 here means reading a historical stage of the language, as Shakespeare or Cervantes are for learners of English or Spanish: a modern dictionary will often fail, and tap translation may miss old spellings. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 8 871
- words
- 13
- words in an average sentence
- 1-2
- hours of reading
- 1922
- Державне видавництво України
Державне видавництво України, 1922. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
The book opens with two fables by Pavlo Biletsky-Nosenko, one about geese who boast of the ancestors that saved Rome. Then comes Petro Hulak-Artemovsky’s The Master and the Dog (1818), the fable that started modern Ukrainian satire: the watchdog Rybko guards his master’s yard all night, barking at every shadow, and learns what a serf’s zeal is worth. Hulak-Artemovsky also sends a proud Polish lord to judgment in hell, retells Goethe’s ballad of the fisherman and two odes of Horace as a talk with a villager named Parkhom. Levko Borovykovsky’s ballad Marusia follows a girl telling her fortune on New Year’s Eve while she waits for her betrothed, and his short fables mock village headmen, misers and a squire who hires a French tutor for his son who turns out to be a blacksmith. Amvrosii Metlynsky writes of graveyards, a Cossack in a storm, an orphan girl, the death of a bandura player on the Dnieper and the native tongue. Mykola Kostomarov closes the book with poems about his song, about Greece, a Hebrew melody after Byron and a girl her friends have stopped remembering. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Пан та Собака та інші вірші
IV. Амвросій Метлинський
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Choose an underlined word.
A night described like a village
Hulak-Artemovsky turns the sky into a peasant household: the moon goes to bed (уклався спать), a star peeps out like a mouse from a grain bin (засік), the night hides everything under a black apron (запаска). Read the images literally first; the burlesque comes from mixing high subjects with farmyard words.
A tipsy monologue
Petro Hlek talks to himself on his way home, so the lines are full of spoken fillers: еге, бачу, отсе, онде (over there), детсе (where on earth). Отсе and се are the old forms of оце and це; read them as such and the jumps of a slightly drunk mind become easy to follow.
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
With the Reader plan, the whole sentence is translated where Hulak-Artemovsky describes the night in his fable: Уклався місяць спать, нема ані зорі, І ледве крадькома яка маленька зірка З-за хмари вигляне, неначе миш з засіка (“The moon has lain down to sleep, there is not a single star, and only now and then some tiny star peeps furtively out from behind a cloud, like a mouse out of a grain bin”).
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
Yes, these are complete original texts in Ukrainian, not an adaptation: 39 poems and fables written between 1818 and 1856 by Pavlo Biletsky-Nosenko, Petro Hulak-Artemovsky, Levko Borovykovsky, Amvrosii Metlynsky and Mykola Kostomarov. The oldest, The Master and the Dog, dates from 1818 (printed in 1819); Hulak-Artemovsky’s To Liubka is dated 1856. The text follows the school anthology «20-40-ві роки в українській літературі» (Kyiv, State Publishing House of Ukraine, 1922, edited by Oleksandr Doroshkevych), which kept the spelling of the first printings: hyphenated particles (що-ж), од for від, short infinitives in -ть. The selection is the catalogue’s: we left out the editor’s essays and notes, Yevhen Hrebinka’s fables (a separate book in the catalogue), the Horace odes in later translations by other hands, and Kostomarov’s drama Pereiaslav Night, which the anthology gives only in excerpts. The anthology’s editor notes that the fable The Lord (Пан) is not known with Hulak-Artemovsky’s signature, so its authorship is uncertain.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audio. Tap any word to see its translation into English. Expect some taps to fail on old forms: шиширхне (rustles) and столковать (to explain, a Russian-style infinitive) are not in modern dictionaries in this shape.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. It helps most where a sentence runs over several lines of verse, as in Hulak-Artemovsky’s night scene: Уклався місяць спать, нема ані зорі, І ледве крадькома яка маленька зірка З-за хмари вигляне, неначе миш з засіка (“The moon has lain down to sleep, there is not a single star, and only now and then some tiny star peeps out from behind a cloud, like a mouse out of a grain bin”).
How many hours does it take?
About 1-2 hours for the whole book, about 8,900 words. The five chapters are uneven: Biletsky-Nosenko 570 words, Hulak-Artemovsky 2,490, Borovykovsky 1,620, Metlynsky 2,740 and Kostomarov 1,450. Most fables take a few minutes; the longest pieces are The Master and the Dog and Borovykovsky’s ballad Marusia.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is not even. Hulak-Artemovsky’s chapter has the fewest long words (4.3%) but the densest burlesque slang and Russianisms; Borovykovsky’s short fables, at about 11 words per sentence, are the easiest place to start. Kostomarov’s chapter is the hardest by vocabulary, with 10.8% long words and bookish lyric language.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers where you stopped. The contents open any chapter directly, for example III. Левко Боровиковський to start with the ballad Marusia and the short fables.