I. Розділ 1
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An orphan’s diary against a narrow town
The Princess Царівна
Olha Kobylianska, 1896
This is the complete novel by Olha Kobylianska in Ukrainian, not an adaptation, printed as a book in Chernivtsi in 1896 and kept here in that edition’s old western spelling. It is for C1 learners, and for patient B2 readers, who want one of the first Ukrainian novels about a woman who thinks for herself, told for most of its length through her own diary. It is long: about 96,300 words in 19 chapters, from about 1,300 to about 11,900 words each. If you would like to know the story first, the catalogue also has a B1 retelling of The Princess in simple modern Ukrainian.
- C1
- 96 333 words
- 16-27 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the plot and the dialogue are within reach, but the 1896 spelling and Natalka’s long reflective paragraphs will stop you on almost every line; the B1 adaptation of The Princess is a gentler way into the story.
B2C1
This text
At C1 you can read it chapter by chapter: once your eye accepts ся written apart, єго and она, the diary reads like a long conversation with a sharp, lonely mind.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 it reads freely; only the Bukovynian words, the Polish-shaped turns and the German quotations make you pause.
Start readingThe average sentence has 18 words, one of the longest averages among the catalogue’s complete originals: Захар Беркут and Boa constrictor, both C1, have 15. Only 7.2% of words have 9 letters or more, below the one-in-ten line and close to Тіні забутих предків (7.4%), which is C1 for its Hutsul dialect. Here the weight lies in the spelling and vocabulary of 1896 Bukovyna. The particle ся stands apart from its verb 3,169 times (родила ся), єго replaces його 718 times and она replaces вона 585 times; over 6,000 words carry ї after a consonant (нїчого, лїкар, сьвіт), and forms of котрий stand where today one writes який 263 times. Regional and Polish-shaped words return again and again: вуйко (“uncle on the mother’s side”) 58 times, нераз (“often”) 55, відтак (“then”) 43, пересаджувати in the sense “to exaggerate”. Some 360 words are German, French or Latin, in untranslated quotations from Heine, Nietzsche and others. Sentences are longest in chapters VII-XIII, at 21 words on average. Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 96 333
- words
- 18
- words in an average sentence
- 16-27
- hours of reading
- 1896
- Редакция «Буковини»
Редакция «Буковини», 1896. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Natalka Verkovychivna opens her diary with her birthday in November, a day old people call unlucky. Orphaned early and raised by a grandmother who has since died, she lives in a mountain town in Bukovyna with her uncle Ivanovych, a gymnasium professor, his wife, a Polonized German who resents every coin spent on her, and their children, among them her cousin Lena. Natalka reads in secret, thinks about the place of women and of her own people, and is mocked at home for her red hair and chalk-white face. At a concert followed by a dance she grows close to Vasyl Oriadyn, the proud nephew of the district’s head forester, just back from tutoring in Moravia. He calls her his princess and leaves to study, and soon the town talks of his card playing and debts. A widowed professor, Lorden, asks for her hand, and her aunt makes it plain that there is no other way out. Engaged and miserable, Natalka takes a step that scandalises the family, and nearly three years later she is writing in a provincial city, as companion to Mrs Marko, a doctor’s widow whose stepson serves as a ship’s doctor far away. Then people from her past come back. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Царівна
VIII. Розділ 8
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Choose an underlined word.
ся on its own: Приглянь ся
In the 1896 spelling the reflexive particle stands apart from its verb: Приглянь ся is today’s Приглянься (“take a good look”), визначала ся is визначалася (“stood out”), and віддасть ся is віддасться (“will marry”, said of a woman). Read the verb and its ся as one word. Two more old forms fill the aunt’s tirade: она for вона and єї for її.
Words shaped by Polish
Educated speech in Kobylianska’s Bukovyna borrows its shape from Polish: поправна (“correct”, Polish poprawna), пересаджує (“exaggerates”, Polish przesadza), лицює до (“suits”, Polish licować). In modern Ukrainian пересаджувати means “to transplant”, so trust the context, not the first dictionary sense.
Where the text gets harder
I-VIthe diary at home, more dialogue
VII-XIIIthe longest sentences
XIV-XIXthird person, shorter sentences
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
Whole-sentence translation in Reader helps with the questions Natalka puts to herself on the first page, such as Чи жіноче духове житє меньше цїкаве, як єї орґанїзм? (“Is a woman’s inner life less interesting than her body?”), where the old spelling and the comparison with як hide a short, bold idea.
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: the whole novel by Olha Kobylianska. She worked on it from 1888 to 1893, first in German and then in Ukrainian; it was serialised in 1895 in the Chernivtsi newspaper Буковина, then edited by Osyp Makovei, and came out as a book from the newspaper’s office (Редакция «Буковини») in Chernivtsi, dated 1896. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces that first book edition and its spelling, the Zhelekhivka used in Galicia and Bukovyna at the time: ся written apart (родила ся), єго for його, она for вона, ї after consonants (нїчого, лїкар). The author’s dedication to her mother is included; Makovei’s foreword and the edition’s two short footnotes are not.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audiobook on MovaReader: you read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. The first line already needs it: падолиста is the old western name of November (листопада today). In chapter II you will meet надлїсничий, the district’s head forester, whose house is at the centre of the town’s social life.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps where Natalka thinks through what she reads, as in chapter XVII: Де люди люблять ся, там мусить той корити ся, що найбільше любить (“Where people love each other, the one who loves most has to give way”), a line taken from the Danish writer Jacobsen. Single-word taps work without the plan too, up to a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 16-27 hours at a learner’s pace, reading with translation of new words: this is one of the longest books in the catalogue. The 19 chapters run from about 1,300 words (XIX) to about 11,900 (II); most have 2,500 to 8,000. The longest diary chapters are broken by asterisks into shorter entries (eleven in chapter II, six in chapter IX), so a sitting can end at any of them.
Where does the text get easier?
It is not even. Chapters I-VI, the diary at home, average 16.4 words per sentence, with plenty of family quarrels in dialogue. Chapters VII-XIII, the diary of the later years, are the hardest: 21.1 words per sentence, up to 26.3 in chapter VII, with long reflections and fewer voices. From chapter XIV the novel leaves the diary for third-person narration, and sentences drop back to 16.0 words. Long words stay between 6.9% and 7.6% in all three parts.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers your place, which matters in a book of this length. The contents on this page open any chapter, for example VIII. Розділ 8, which begins nearly three years after Natalka has left her relatives’ house.