I. Сміх
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From the pogroms of 1905 to Capri (B2)
Laughter and Other Stories Сміх та інші новели
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, 1955
Nine complete novellas by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky in Ukrainian, not an adaptation, first printed between 1906 and 1913. The selection is MovaReader’s own: it opens with the revolution of 1905 and the pogroms that followed it, passes through a prison, a manor house and a police officer’s home, and ends in the sunlight of Capri and at a night fair in the steppe. It is for B2 learners who want short, finished stories they can read in one or two sittings each. About 37,600 words in 9 chapters, one story per chapter, 10 words per sentence on average.
- B2
- 37 575 words
- 6-10 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the older spelling will stop you on every page: од for від, се for це, крови and смерти, and the long descriptive paragraphs of Він іде and В дорозі.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can read it: each story fits one or two sittings, about three paragraphs in ten are dialogue, and the old forms become familiar after the first story.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the stories read freely; only the spelling of the 1955 edition, the plant names and the officials’ ranks make you stop.
Start readingThe average sentence has 10 words, and 7.3% of words have 9 letters or more, about one in fourteen. That places the book between two other Kotsiubynsky titles rated B2, Intermezzo (9.8 words, 6.3%) and Dorohoiu tsinoiu (11.7 words, 8.8%), and well below the one-in-ten line of the C1 books such as Boa constrictor (10.0%). The difficulty is spread evenly: the stories run from 7.8 words per sentence (Сміх) to 11.5 (Він іде). What slows a learner down is the spelling and the older forms of the 1955 edition: од appears 131 times against 12 for від, се (“this”) 53 times, смерти for смерті 9 times, and ґ turns up 19 times in words like інтеліґенція and аґава. The prison and police stories add officials’ Russian-flavoured speech (братєц, околодочний надзиратель). There is no dense dialect like the Hutsul speech of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (C1). Hence B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 37 575
- words
- 10
- words in an average sentence
- 6-10
- hours of reading
- 1955
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1955. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Nine stories, each complete in itself. In Сміх (“Laughter”) Valerian Chubynsky, who has been making speeches at public rallies, hides with his family behind closed shutters on a day when a mob is being set on the intelligentsia, and only the maid Varvara stays calm. In Він іде (“He Is Coming”) a Jewish shtetl waits for a church procession that may turn into a pogrom. In Persona grata the prisoner Lazar is offered a job nobody else will take, and in Невідомий (“The Unknown”) a man in a death cell goes back over the deed that brought him there. Коні не винні (“The Horses Are Not to Blame”) puts to the test the fine words of Arkadii Malyna, a liberal old general, about land for the peasants; Подарунок на іменини (“A Name-Day Gift”) follows a police officer who wants to give his schoolboy son a present to remember; В дорозі (“On the Road”) tells of Kyrylo, an underground revolutionary waiting in a provincial town for a letter with orders, who meets a girl named Ustia. The last two pieces change key: На острові (“On the Island”) is a chain of impressions of Capri, its fishermen, donkeys and sea, and Як ми їздили до Криниці (“How We Went to Krynytsia”) recalls a light-hearted trip to a night fair. What happens next in each story is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Сміх та інші новели
IV. Коні не винні
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Choose an underlined word.
Од- where you expect від-
The 1955 edition keeps the older prefix од-: одхилила (“opened a little”) and одчиняли (“opened”) are today відхилила and відчиняли. If a dictionary finds nothing, swap од- for від-. Поспитала is спитала with an extra по-, “asked”.
Short infinitives and се, сі
Земля має належать: the infinitive has lost its final -и, so read належати (“to belong”). In the same way се and сі stand for це and ці: у сі тривожні часи is “in these troubled times”. Чудеснім настрою is the old locative of чудесному.
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
In the long descriptions, translating the whole sentence in Reader keeps the picture together, as in Старий мечет, сповнений нині так густо зерном, як колись правовірними за панування турків, був чорний од чорних згадок про криваві події (“The old mosque, now packed as tightly with grain as it once was with the faithful under Turkish rule, was black with black memories of bloody events”).
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this levelBefore you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: nine complete novellas by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, gathered here by MovaReader; the author never published a book with this title or this selection. They first appeared between 1906 and 1913: Сміх in the Kyiv journal Nova hromada (1906), Він іде (1906) and Невідомий (1907) in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk, В дорозі in Dzvin (1907), Persona grata in the anthology Z nevoli and Як ми їздили до Криниці in the newspaper Rada (both 1908), Коні не винні and Подарунок на іменини in 1912, and На острові in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk in January 1913, a few months before the author’s death. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces volume II of Kotsiubynsky’s Works (Твори) published by Knyhospilka in New York in 1955, and it keeps that edition’s spelling: од for від, се for це, смерти for смерті.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audiobook on MovaReader: the stories are read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. You will need it for words of the old regime such as околодочний (“district police officer”) and for the plants of В дорозі, like кульбаба (“dandelion”) and полин (“wormwood”).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps where a picture is built from a comparison, as in Йому так скучно, як англійському лорду, що бачив весь світ (“He is as bored as an English lord who has seen the whole world”), said of a donkey on Capri. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 6-10 hours, at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The stories run from about 2,900 words (Невідомий) to about 5,500 (Persona grata), so each one fits an evening or two.
Where does the text get easier?
It stays even rather than getting easier: every story sits between 7.8 and 11.5 words per sentence. Сміх, the first, has the shortest sentences (7.8 words) but the most long words (9.0%); Він іде has the longest sentences (11.5 words). Невідомий has the lightest vocabulary (3.9% long words) but is an inner monologue with almost no dialogue. Speech carries Сміх, Коні не винні and Подарунок на іменини, where more than four paragraphs in ten are dialogue.
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 a story. Each story also opens from the contents on this page, for example VIII. На острові, which begins with the narrator’s first evening on the island.