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I. Розділ 1
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A lawyer’s war in small-town Galicia, C1
Crossed Paths Перехресні стежки
Ivan Franko, 1960
The complete original in Ukrainian of Ivan Franko’s novel of 1900, not an adaptation. It is for C1 readers who want a long, absorbing story of courts, local politics and a lost love in a provincial town of Austrian Galicia. About 98,000 words in 60 short chapters, 12 words per sentence on average.
- C1
- 98 014 words
- 16-27 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the dialogues read well, but the narrative chapters are a wall: court and office words like трибунал and староство, Galician forms like се and тілько, and chapters such as XIV and XXXIX at 26-27 words per sentence.
B2C1
This text
At C1 you can read it with single-word taps: dialogue chapters such as XXVIII and LVI move fast, and the long reflective chapters are worth taking slowly. With 60 short chapters, a chapter a day works well.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the novel reads freely; only the legal and administrative jargon of Austrian Galicia and the odd Latin or French phrase (aequam servare mentem, allons, enfants de la patrie) slow you down.
Start readingSentences are not long, 12 words on average, because much of the novel is dialogue; but one word in ten (10.5%) has 9 letters or more, the same density as Franko’s Zakhar Berkut (10.4%) and Boa constrictor (10.0%). Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s “Дорогою ціною” has almost the same sentence length (11.7 words) but only 8.8% long words, and it is B2 in this catalogue. The vocabulary is that of courts and district offices: меценас (the Galician way to address a lawyer) appears 140 times, староста (district governor) and маршалок (district marshal) over 200 times each, alongside трибунал, протокол and канцелярія. The 1960 edition keeps Galician forms: се for це (708 times), тілько for тільки (228), кождий for кожний. Some chapters are small essays: chapter XIV averages about 27 words per sentence, and in chapter XXXVIII almost one word in five is long. Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 98 014
- words
- 12
- words in an average sentence
- 16-27
- hours of reading
- 1960
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1960. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Dr. Yevhen Rafalovych, a young Ukrainian lawyer, has just moved to a provincial town in Galicia and wins his first case there, defending peasants accused of an agrarian riot. Outside the court a shabby official, Stalsky, greets him loudly: he was once Yevhen’s tutor, and he talks about his own wife in a way that unsettles everyone. Soon Yevhen learns who she is: Regina, the girl he loved as a student, whom an aunt married off against her will. He throws himself into work instead. He runs his office in Ukrainian, takes on the powerful district marshal Brykalsky, travels to village court sessions and sees peasants cheated by usurers, officials and a swindler who promises to keep their sons out of the army. The district governor and the town’s small-time schemers begin to watch him, and in the yard of his house lives the silent caretaker Baran, a man with a dark past. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Перехресні стежки
XXIX. Розділ 29
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Choose an underlined word.
Polite address in the third person plural
“Що, не пізнають мене пан меценас?” is literally “What, don’t the counsellor recognise me?”: in Galicia a respected person was addressed in the third person, with the verb in the plural (пізнають, not пізнаєте). Read it as a polite “you”: “Don’t you recognise me, counsellor?” Note also сього for цього, one of the Galician forms that run through the whole book.
Autumn as the subject of every verb
Franko writes this passage in the present tense and makes autumn the subject of a long chain of verbs: ходить, снує, обснувала, заповнила, потяглася. Follow the chain and the long sentence falls into place. Two words to keep: мряка, the Galician word for drizzly fog (standard туман or мжичка), and немногих for небагатьох.
Chapters
- IРозділ 1
- IIРозділ 2
- IIIРозділ 3
- IVРозділ 4
- VРозділ 5
- VIРозділ 6
- VIIРозділ 7
- VIIIРозділ 8
- IXРозділ 9
- XРозділ 10
- XIРозділ 11
- XIIРозділ 12
- XIIIРозділ 13
- XIVРозділ 14
- XVРозділ 15
- XVIРозділ 16
- XVIIРозділ 17
- XVIIIРозділ 18
- XIXРозділ 19
- XXРозділ 20
- XXIРозділ 21
- XXIIРозділ 22
- XXIIIРозділ 23
- XXIVРозділ 24
- XXVРозділ 25
- XXVIРозділ 26
- XXVIIРозділ 27
- XXVIIIРозділ 28
- XXIXРозділ 29
- XXXРозділ 30
- XXXIРозділ 31
- XXXIIРозділ 32
- XXXIIIРозділ 33
- XXXIVРозділ 34
- XXXVРозділ 35
- XXXVIРозділ 36
- XXXVIIРозділ 37
- XXXVIIIРозділ 38
- XXXIXРозділ 39
- XLРозділ 40
- XLIРозділ 41
- XLIIРозділ 42
- XLIIIРозділ 43
- XLIVРозділ 44
- XLVРозділ 45
- XLVIРозділ 46
- XLVIIРозділ 47
- XLVIIIРозділ 48
- XLIXРозділ 49
- LРозділ 50
- LIРозділ 51
- LIIРозділ 52
- LIIIРозділ 53
- LIVРозділ 54
- LVРозділ 55
- LVIРозділ 56
- LVIIРозділ 57
- LVIIIРозділ 58
- LIXРозділ 59
- LXРозділ 60
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
In chapter I the peasants Rafalovych defended are “не тілько увільнені трибуналом, але надто мали надію в дорозі цивільного процесу виграти те фатальне пасовисько” (“not only acquitted by the court, but also hoping to win that fateful pasture in a civil suit”): translating the whole sentence in Reader sorts out the legal terms and the Galician тілько at once.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this levelBefore you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
Yes, it is the complete original, not an abridgement: all 60 chapters of Ivan Franko’s novel. It first appeared in 1900 in the Lviv journal Literaturno-Naukovyi Vistnyk. The text is that of volume XII of his Works in 20 volumes (Knyhospilka, New York, 1960), taken from Wikisource, and the spelling is that edition’s, with Galician forms such as се and тілько left as Franko wrote them. About two pages of chapter VII are missing from the scan of the 1960 edition; they were taken from the Leipzig edition (Українська накладня) and brought to the same spelling.
Is there an audiobook?
Crossed Paths has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the novel is read on screen. Tap a word to see its translation; you will need it most for court and office words such as меценас (counsellor, the way a lawyer is addressed) and староста (the district governor).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in reflective chapters such as XIV and XXXIX, at 26-27 words per sentence, and with lines like “але не міг пригадати собі, щоб де-небудь і коли-небудь знав сього панка” (“but he could not recall ever having known this gentleman, anywhere or at any time”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole novel takes about 16-27 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The 60 chapters are short, about 1,600 words on average: chapter XXV has about 700 words, and the longest, L and LX, about 4,350 and 4,800, so those two are best spread over two sittings.
Where does the text get easier?
Not by part: the difficulty is even across the book. In groups of ten chapters the average sentence stays between 10.6 and 12.9 words and the share of long words between 9.3% and 11.8%. What changes is chapter to chapter: dialogue chapters such as XXVIII and LVI run at 7-8 words per sentence, reflective ones such as XIV, XXXVIII and XXXIX at 23-27.
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 to the novel where you left off. Any of the 60 chapters opens from the contents on this page, for example XXIX. Розділ 29, where Yevhen rides through the autumn mist to the village of Babyntsi.