II. Dos madres
¡ ! , , , . , , . . , , .
¿? ¿ , , ? , , , .
Three short novels and a prologue for B2
Three Exemplary Novels and a Prologue Tres novelas ejemplares y un prólogo
Miguel de Unamuno, 1920
Miguel de Unamuno’s Three Exemplary Novels and a Prologue, the complete original from the 1920 first edition, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 27,400 words and 11 words per sentence on average. Unamuno’s own prologue and three short novels, Two Mothers, The Marquis of Lumbría and Nothing Less Than a Real Man; the prologue and the Lumbría story are the densest, the other two run on dialogue.
- B2
- 27 406 words
- 5-8 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the prologue and The Marquis of Lumbría will be slow going: sentences of 17-20 words, wordplay on novela and nivola, and literary words such as adusta or consuetudinaria need looking up.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2: Two Mothers and Nothing Less Than a Real Man move in short dialogue lines, and the prologue and the marquis’s story can be read slowly, translating single words.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the book reads freely; only Unamuno’s irony in the prologue and the stately long sentences that open The Marquis of Lumbría still take attention.
Start readingThe average sentence has 11 words, shorter than in Niebla (13) and Aunt Tula (13) and close to Abel Sánchez (12), because two of the three novels, Two Mothers and Nothing Less Than a Real Man, run on dialogue at about 10 words per sentence. One word in sixteen has 9 letters or more. The difficulty is uneven: Unamuno’s prologue averages about 20 words per sentence with a long word every fourteenth word, The Marquis of Lumbría about 17, and the rest about 10. The vocabulary is literary, and the 1920 spelling keeps old accents. The catalog does not place a complete original below B2, hence B2, at the easy end of the level. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 27 406
- words
- 11
- words in an average sentence
- 5-8
- hours of reading
- 1920
- Calpe
Calpe, 1920. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Four texts, three stories. In the prologue Unamuno argues with his critics about what a novel is and why he calls these stories exemplary, as Cervantes once did. In Two Mothers the childless widow Raquel pushes her lover, don Juan, to marry another woman; what that marriage will bring is not told here. In The Marquis of Lumbría the old marquis don Rodrigo, who hides from the sun in a shuttered palace in the stern city of Lorenza, has two daughters and a wife who has given him no son. In Nothing Less Than a Real Man Julia Yáñez, the most admired beauty of Renada, is pushed by her father towards a rich marriage, and a wealthy man who made his fortune in America, Alejandro Gómez, appears. How these stories end is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Tres novelas ejemplares y un prólogo
IV. Nada menos que todo un hombre
, . . . .
— , — .
—¡, ; !
—, ¿ ?
— ...
—, .
—¿? ¿ ?
—¡... !
—¿ ?
—¡, !
. , . , .
Choose an underlined word.
Spelling of 1920
This edition keeps accents that spelling reform later dropped: constituído is today constituido, and aquélla is aquella. Read past them, the words are the ones you know. Raquel’s lines are set like a play, with the speaker’s name before a long dash, so the dialogue needs no quotation marks to follow.
Who is speaking
Dialogue here has no quotation marks: a long dash opens each line, and what follows a second dash, as in «Parece que está usted mala, Julia, dijo él», is the narrator, not the speaker. Also note faltábale el respiro: the old literary order faltábale means le faltaba, “she was short of breath”.
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
The Marquis of Lumbría opens with a 58-word sentence (Su fachada, en la que se destacaba el gran escudo de armas...) whose main point, todos sus huecos permanecían cerrados, arrives only at the end: translating the whole sentence in Reader keeps the thread from getting lost.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Miguel de Unamuno’s complete book, his prologue and all three novels, Two Mothers, The Marquis of Lumbría and Nothing Less Than a Real Man. The reader follows the 1920 first edition (Calpe, Colección Contemporánea), through the Project Gutenberg text. The title promises three novels and a prologue, yet Unamuno says in the prologue itself that it is a novel too.
Is there an audiobook?
Three Exemplary Novels 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 literary words such as adusta or consuetudinaria in The Marquis of Lumbría.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. In this book it helps most in the prologue, where sentences average about 20 words, and in The Marquis of Lumbría, at about 17, for example the opening sentence about the palace façade, 58 words long. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole book takes about 5-8 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. It has four parts of very different size: the prologue is about 2,950 words, Two Mothers about 7,700, The Marquis of Lumbría about 4,600 and Nothing Less Than a Real Man about 12,100, so each of the first three makes an evening and the last one two.
Where does the text get easier?
Right after the prologue. The prologue is the densest part: about 20 words per sentence and a long word every fourteenth word. Two Mothers then runs on dialogue at about 10 words per sentence; The Marquis of Lumbría climbs back to about 17, and Nothing Less Than a Real Man is again close to 10.
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 book every evening where you left off. Each of the four parts also opens from the contents on this page, for example Two Mothers, right after the prologue.