I. Ціпов'яз
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Land hunger and a vineyard plague (C1)
The Flail Binder and For the Common Good Ціпов’яз та інші оповідання
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, 1955
Two complete early stories by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky in Ukrainian, not an adaptation, written in 1893 and 1895. Ціпов’яз (literally “flail binder”, a mocking name for a peasant good only for threshing grain with a flail, a clodhopper) is what a father calls his younger son Semen when the boy refuses to go to school. Для загального добра (“For the Common Good”) takes Kotsiubynsky’s own job of the 1890s, fighting the vine pest phylloxera, into a Moldovan village on the Prut. The selection is MovaReader’s own. It is for C1 learners, and for strong B2 readers looking for a step up, who want Ukrainian village prose of the 1890s. About 25,100 words in 6 chapters: the first story whole, the second in its five parts.
- C1
- 25 125 words
- 4-7 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 Ціпов’яз is within reach, with its plain peasant dialogue, but Для загального добра, with commission vocabulary and Romanian words, will stop you on almost every line.
B2C1
This text
At C1 you can read both: Ціпов’яз in two or three sittings, Для загального добра part by part, tapping the Moldovan words such as каруца and мамалига.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the stories read freely; only the 1955 spelling (котрий, зупинивсь, радости) and a few Romanian words make you pause.
Start readingThe average sentence has 12 words, and 10.7% of words have 9 letters or more, above the one-in-ten line that separates C1 originals from B2 ones. Харитя та інші оповідання, another early Kotsiubynsky collection from the same 1955 edition, stays at 9.2% and is rated B2; Stepan Vasylchenko’s Талант та інші оповідання, at 10.4%, is C1. The two stories are far apart, though. Ціпов’яз, a village story full of peasant speech, has 8.2% long words and 11.4 words per sentence, close to Дорогою ціною (8.8%, B2). Для загального добра climbs to 12.7% and 12.8 words per sentence, as dense as Іван Іванович та інші оповідання (12.8%, C1): the language of a government commission (філоксера and its derivatives 62 times) meets the Romanian words of a Moldovan village, such as домнулє (“sir”), мош (“old man”), каруца (“cart”) and примар (“village head”). Ціпов’яз adds Russian officialese in quotation marks (прошеніє, “petition”, 18 times, and «без последствія») and western forms in speech: коби (“if only”), най (“let”), йно (“only”). The 1955 spelling keeps forms of котрий where today one writes який 31 times, past tenses like зупинивсь 15 times and genitives like радости. Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 25 125
- words
- 12
- words in an average sentence
- 4-7
- hours of reading
- 1955
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1955. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Ціпов’яз (“The Flail Binder”) is set in a village in Podillia. Semen Voron, a landless farmhand on the landlord’s estate, has saved 150 roubles in four years of service and wants to buy three morgs of land from the small landowner Yankovsky, right next to the field of his older brother Roman. Roman, a sly village clerk who looks down on peasants, had been saving for that very land, yet he lends Semen the missing money at twenty percent. Semen marries Domna, the orphaned maid he loves, and settles with his mother Naumykha, but the “foolish thoughts” of his childhood come back: why do the masters own fields without end while the villagers split their strips into garden beds? When the village meeting only talks, he pays a scribe to write a petition to the tsar himself and waits month after month for an answer, while Roman keeps looking at the field beside his own. Для загального добра (“For the Common Good”) takes place in Loieshty, a Moldovan village on the Prut in southern Bessarabia. Zamfir Neron, a proud vine grower, hears that “doctors” are coming to cut down and burn vineyards. They arrive: Tykhovych, a conscientious official of the phylloxera commission, with two students, the joking Savchenko and the hunter Rudyk, nicknamed Don Quixote. The village refuses them lodging and talks of guns, and Tykhovych explains in his imperfect Moldovan what the tiny root louse does. Then the digging begins. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Ціпов’яз та інші оповідання
III. Різні погляди
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Choose an underlined word.
A threat in the negative: не діждати
Ще я не діждалася, щоб ти… means “I have not lived to see you…”, and the mother’s answer Так ти ж не діждеш means “you will never live to see that day”: the verb діждати(ся), “to wait until, to live to see”, in the negative is a common way to say “never”. Note also матір’ю-мужичкою, a hyphenated pair, “your peasant mother”.
Who is speaking? Look after the line
Here the speaker is named after the words, behind a dash, with the verb first: гуділо в юрмі (“the crowd hummed”), хвилювались… молдувани (“the Moldovans grew agitated”). With a crowd talking at once, read the whole paragraph, then the tag at its end tells you whose voice it was.
Where the text gets harder
Ilighter vocabulary
II-VIdenser vocabulary
Translation while you read
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In part IV of Для загального добра, translating the whole sentence in Reader helps with Tykhovych’s attempt to justify himself: рятуючи життя, мусить часом відтяти ноги пацієнтові, зробити його навіки калікою (“to save a life, he sometimes has to cut off a patient’s legs and make him a cripple for ever”), said of a doctor.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: two complete stories by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, put together by MovaReader; the author never published a book with this title or this pair. Ціпов’яз is dated 28 January 1893, Vinnytsia. Для загального добра, dated 16 February 1895, first appeared in the Lviv journal Зоря in 1896, where it won the journal’s prize; in the Russian Empire it was printed in Ukrainian only in 1904, in Chernihiv. Kotsiubynsky knew the subject first hand: from 1892 to 1896 he worked for the phylloxera commission in Bessarabia. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces volume I of his Works (Твори), published by Knyhospilka in New York in 1955, and keeps that edition’s spelling: котрий beside який, зупинивсь for зупинився, радости for радості. The edition’s footnotes on Romanian words are not included. Ціпов’яз uses жид, the period’s word for a Jew, which is offensive in modern Ukrainian, 21 times.
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 village words such as полукіпок (“a small shock of sheaves”) in the first pages of Ціпов’яз, and for Romanian ones such as каруца (“a cart”, from Romanian căruță) in Для загального добра.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps with the mother’s proverbs in Ціпов’яз, as in Більш на світі землі горовитої, ніж рівної, більш чоловік мусить горя прийняти, ніж радости (“There is more hilly land in the world than level land; a man has to take in more sorrow than joy”). Single-word taps work without the plan too, up to a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 4-7 hours at a learner’s pace, reading with translation of new words. Ціпов’яз, about 11,000 words, is one long chapter in six scenes divided by asterisks, enough for two or three sittings. Для загального добра, about 14,100 words, comes in five parts: four of about 2,900 to 3,500 words and a short last one of about 1,600; each part fits one sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
It gets harder after the first story. Ціпов’яз has 11.4 words per sentence and 8.2% long words, the level of a B2 book. Для загального добра rises to 12.8 words per sentence and 12.7% long words and stays there in every part (11.7% to 13.7%): the lightest is the first part, Перший грім, the densest the second, Різні погляди, where the students and the official argue about their work. In both stories about a quarter of the words are dialogue.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers your place, so you can come back in the middle of a story. The contents on this page open any chapter, for example IV. На роботі, where the commission goes into the vineyards at dawn with spades and a magnifying glass.