III. Capítulo 3
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A decadent love story in a Galician palace
Autumn Sonata Sonata de otoño
Ramón del Valle-Inclán, 1924
Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s short novel from 1902, complete and not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 20,900 words and 12 words per sentence on average. 27 short chapters in which the aging Marqués de Bradomín visits his dying former lover Concha at the Palace of Brandeso; the sentences are short, but the vocabulary is rich and the style decadent.
- B2
- 20 858 words
- 3-6 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the old-fashioned forms (sentíase, fué, dió) and the rural and heraldic vocabulary (hórreos, estameña, linajes) will slow you down; the short sentences help, but almost every paragraph needs a word looked up.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2: the sentences are short and a good part is dialogue, so a chapter fits in one sitting, with the rarer words (cornisa, infolios) tapped and the style enjoyed.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the book reads freely: only the rarest words of the palace, the chapel and the old rituals slow you down, and the music of the sentences takes over.
Start readingThe average sentence has 12 words, a little shorter than Niebla and La tía Tula (13 each), which are also B2, because the narration runs on short exclamations and dialogue. What keeps the book at B2 is the vocabulary: 7.8% of the words, about one in thirteen, have 9 letters or more, which sits inside the range of the catalog’s other complete B2 texts and well above the adaptations. It stays below C1, which in the catalog starts at about one long word in ten. The difficulty is even: sentences run from about 8 words in the dialogue chapters XI and XIII to about 20 in chapter XXIII. Hence B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 20 858
- words
- 12
- words in an average sentence
- 3-6
- hours of reading
- 1924
- Renacimiento
Renacimiento, 1924. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
The Marqués de Bradomín, an aging seducer proud of his past, receives a letter from Concha, the great love of his youth, who is dying in the Palace of Brandeso in Galicia and begs him to come. He crosses the mountains on a mule and finds the old palace shuttered, the garden damp with autumn, and Concha feverish, tender and as beautiful as ever. Between her ill health, the visits of her daughters and her cousin Isabel, and the superstitions of the servants, their old love comes back for a few autumn days. How that visit ends is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Sonata de otoño
XV. Capítulo 15
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Choose an underlined word.
Names of things first
The passage is a still life of the garden gate: cornisa, linajes, estameña. Look these up once; the palace, its coats of arms and its peasants return in later chapters.
Verb plus se, written as one word
Sentíase means se sentía: the older order puts the verb first and glues se on. You will meet the same pattern with manteníase, acercóse and apartóse; read it as an ordinary reflexive verb.
Chapters
- ICapítulo 1
- IICapítulo 2
- IIICapítulo 3
- IVCapítulo 4
- VCapítulo 5
- VICapítulo 6
- VIICapítulo 7
- VIIICapítulo 8
- IXCapítulo 9
- XCapítulo 10
- XICapítulo 11
- XIICapítulo 12
- XIIICapítulo 13
- XIVCapítulo 14
- XVCapítulo 15
- XVICapítulo 16
- XVIICapítulo 17
- XVIIICapítulo 18
- XIXCapítulo 19
- XXCapítulo 20
- XXICapítulo 21
- XXIICapítulo 22
- XXIIICapítulo 23
- XXIVCapítulo 24
- XXVCapítulo 25
- XXVICapítulo 26
- XXVIICapítulo 27
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
Sentences like “Sentíase en el ambiente el hálito de los infolios antiguos encuadernados en pergamino” put the verb first and glue se to it: translating the whole sentence in Reader shows the order at once.
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 a learner’s abridgement: Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s complete Sonata de otoño (first published in 1902), in its 27 sections, which MovaReader numbers I-XXVII because the edition marks them only with ornaments. The text follows the Renacimiento edition (Madrid, printed in 1924) from Project Gutenberg, which also holds Sonata de invierno; only Otoño is taken here.
Is there an audiobook?
Autumn Sonata has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the book is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for rare words such as estameña or infolios.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the long descriptive sentences, for example “Sentíase en el ambiente el hálito de los infolios antiguos encuadernados en pergamino”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole book takes about 3-6 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. The 27 chapters are short, from about 340 to 1,360 words, so several fit into one evening.
Where does the text get easier?
It is fairly even, with no hard prologue to get through first. Sentences average 12 words; the slowest chapters are X (about 18 words per sentence) and XXIII (about 20), and the easiest are XI and XIII, built on short dialogue (about 9 and 8 words).
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 return to the book where you left off. Any of the 27 chapters also opens from the contents on this page.