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I. Перший виступ
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A lawyer and a lost love in Galicia, at B1
Crossed Paths Перехресні стежки
Ivan Franko
This is a retelling of Ivan Franko’s novel in simple modern Ukrainian, not the original: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who handle everyday Ukrainian and want a tense story of courts, local power and an old love that comes back. In the catalogue it is B1: about 6,400 words in 14 chapters, with 12 words per sentence on average and more than a third of the text in dialogue. Franko (1856-1916), the central figure of Ukrainian literature in Austrian Galicia, wrote Crossed Paths in 1900 about the first generation of Ukrainian lawyers and activists in the provinces; the complete novel is also in the catalogue, at C1.
- B1
- 6 380 words
- 1-2 hours
Will this text hold?
A2
Earlier
At A2 you will tap often: the story is clear, but it runs on words of courts and offices (староста, маршалок, вексель, завдаток), and many sentences join two clauses with і, а or бо.
A2B1
This text
At B1 it reads well if you are at home with the past tense: each chapter is one scene, more than a third is dialogue, and the few office words come back so often that you learn them as you go.
Check this passageB2
With room to spare
At B2 it is a quick read and a bridge to the complete novel in the catalogue (C1, about 98,000 words), where the same story comes with Franko’s Galician spelling and long reflections on politics and the law.
Start readingThe average sentence has 12 words, the same as the catalogue’s B1 adaptation of Marko Vovchok’s The Institute Girl, and as the complete Crossed Paths itself (12). The difference is in the words: here 5.6% have 9 letters or more, against 10.5% in Franko’s full text, close to the B1 adaptation of Panteleimon Kulish’s The Black Council (5.6%) and below Olha Kobylianska’s The Princess retold at B1 (5.9%). The Galician forms of the 1950s edition (се for це, тілько for тільки, кождий for кожний) are replaced by standard modern Ukrainian. What remains is a small set of period words that return often enough to learn on the way: офіціал (a court clerk) 18 times, меценас (the Galician way to address a lawyer) 15, маршалок (the district marshal) 15, староста (the district governor) 15, with віче (a public assembly), вексель (a promissory note) and ринський (the Austrian gulden). Sentences stay at about 11-13 words in every chapter; chapter X, on the marshal’s debts, is the densest, with about 10% long words. Hence B1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 6 380
- words
- 12
- words in an average sentence
- 1-2
- hours of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Dr. Yevhen Rafalovych, a young lawyer, moves from Lviv to a provincial town in Galicia and wins his first case there, defending twenty peasants from Burkotyn accused of a riot over a pasture. Outside the court he is greeted by Stalsky, a court clerk who was his cruel tutor when Yevhen was a small orphan, and who speaks of his own wife with cold hatred. The district governor warns Yevhen against meetings and agitation; the court president warns him against Wagman, the moneylender whose house he rents. Wagman, in turn, offers him a bold plan against the indebted marshal Brykalsky. A lady in black keeps watching his window from the park, and the caretaker Baran, a sick man with a dark past, watches everyone. Then Stalsky invites Yevhen to a family dinner, and he meets the wife: Regina, the girl he loved as a student and lost on the day she was married off. While a swindler turns the peasants against him, Yevhen begins to prepare the district’s first people’s assembly. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Перехресні стежки
VII. Біла сукня
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Choose an underlined word.
One word, three endings
The guardian appears three times in a row: опікуном after був (instrumental, “was the guardian”), Опікун as the subject (nominative) and при опікуні, “in the guardian’s presence” (locative after при). Read the ending first and you know the word’s role before you know the whole sentence.
Comparisons with як
Ukrainian compares with як, “like, as”: як молода наречена, “like a young bride”, and як у мертвої, literally “as with a dead woman”, that is, like a dead woman’s face. The noun after як keeps the case the sentence needs, so look at the ending, not only at the word.
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, MovaReader translates the whole sentence where single words mislead, as in Wagman’s boast Вони знають один закон, а я знаю десять способів обійти цей закон, “They know one law, and I know ten ways to get round that law”: обійти here means to evade, not to walk around.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not the original text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling in simple modern Ukrainian of Ivan Franko’s novel Перехресні стежки (Crossed Paths), first published in 1900. The plot follows the text of Franko’s collected works of 1956-1962 (volume 12) on Wikisource, the same text as the complete novel in this catalogue at C1. What changed: about 98,000 words in 60 chapters shrink to about 6,400 in 14; the Galician forms of that edition (се, тілько, кождий) and Franko’s long reflections on politics and the courts are replaced by standard modern Ukrainian or cut, and side episodes such as the marshal’s name-day feast and the count’s quarrels are told in a few lines. The main characters and events stay in their order. The ethnic slurs of the source, and its sweeping remarks about Jews and Poles, are left out.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version of this book on MovaReader; the text is read on screen. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears: here that will often be words of courts and offices of the period, such as вексель (a promissory note, the debts that hold the marshal) or завдаток (a deposit, which the innkeeper gives back in fear), and household words like балія (a wooden washtub).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. Most sentences can be read word by word, so you will want it mostly for lines whose meaning is more than their words, such as Yevhen’s Нас ділить не могила, а пусте слово, “It is not a grave that divides us, but an empty word”. Without the plan you can still tap single words.
How many hours does it take?
One to two hours for the whole book, at a learner’s pace with translation of new words, not a native speaker’s. The 14 chapters run from about 320 words (chapter X, “Чорні дні”) to about 640 (chapter XII, “Перед вічем”), so each one fits into a short sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
It is fairly even. Sentences stay at about 11-13 words in every chapter. Long words vary more: chapter X, which explains the marshal’s debts and the count’s grudge, has the most (about 10% against 5.6% overall), while chapter VIII, the conversation in the park, has the fewest (under 4%) and some of the shortest sentences. Chapter I is a little harder than what follows, because it sets out the town and Yevhen’s past.
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 14 chapters directly, for example chapter XI, “Новорічна ніч” (New Year’s Night).