I. Valse melancolique
— — , , , „“, .
, … „ “ , , … . …
Music, art and village life in Bukovyna
Valse mélancolique and Other Stories Valse mélancolique та інші новели
Olha Kobylianska, 1905
This is Olha Kobylianska’s complete 1905 collection in Ukrainian, not an adaptation: all fourteen stories, sketches and prose poems of her book До сьвіта, kept in that edition’s old western spelling. It is for C1 learners, and for patient B2 readers, who want short, finely observed prose about music, art, women’s lives and the Bukovynian village from the author of The Princess. It runs to about 35,600 words in 14 chapters, one per piece, from about 300 words to about 12,400.
- C1
- 35 584 words
- 6-10 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the stories are within reach, but the 1905 spelling, the music-school vocabulary and the long lyrical sentences will slow you on almost every line; start with the short sketches Через море and Слїпець, or meet Kobylianska first in the B1 retelling of The Princess.
B2C1
This text
At C1 you can read it piece by piece: once your eye accepts ся written apart and ї after consonants, the stories read as quiet, exact portraits of artists, peasants and animals.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 it reads freely; only the Bukovynian words, false friends like штука (“art”) and the German and French phrases make you pause.
Start readingThe average sentence has 13 words and 8.3% of words have 9 letters or more: on those two numbers alone this would be B2. Kobylianska’s own Царівна, printed in the same western spelling, has longer sentences (18 words) but fewer long words (7.2%) and is C1; Кайдашева сім’я in its 1879 spelling is C1 at 7.8%. Here too the weight lies in the 1905 Zhelekhivka. The particle ся stands apart from its verb 977 times (розпадаю ся), over 2,100 words carry ї after a consonant (нїчого, тодї, лїс), 175 words put a soft sign before в (сьвіт, цьвіт), and 112 loanwords are spelled with ґ (інтелїґенція, ґраціозний). The first story adds the vocabulary of a music school: музика in 44 forms, гармонїя 26 times, струна 19, фортепян and резонатор 9 each, and штука used 17 times in the old sense of “art”. Western words return often: відтак (“then”) 54 times, заєдно (“always”) 16, нераз (“often”) 13, and about 80 words are German, French or Latin. Sentences vary from piece to piece: the dialogue Балаканка про руську жінку and the fairy tale Сумно колишуть ся сосни average over 20 words, the fable Через море 9. Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 35 584
- words
- 13
- words in an average sentence
- 6-10
- hours of reading
- 1905
- Українсько-руська видавнича спілка
Українсько-руська видавнича спілка, 1905. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
The book opens with its longest piece. Marta, who is studying for her teaching exams and gives English lessons for money, shares two elegant rooms with her childhood friend Hanna, a gifted, quick-tempered painter, a Germanised Pole who is copying a Correggio and dreams of Italy. The rent goes up, so they look for a third tenant, and a visiting card arrives from Sofia Doroshenko, a pale young woman in black with a loose coat button and worn gloves. Hanna wants to turn her away; but Sofia moves in with her one treasure, a black piano with a fine soundboard, and when she plays a Chopin étude again and again, the rooms change around the three women. Thirteen shorter pieces follow. In На полях a peasant couple who have worked twenty years for a few acres wait to hear whether their elder son Vasyl will be called up. In Під голим небом a shaggy red mare that hates the whip pulls a poor family’s sleigh across a frozen plain as a blizzard rises. Балаканка про руську жінку is a conversation between a gentleman and a lady about educated Ukrainian women; Через море is a quarrel between two seagulls about crossing the sea; in За готар an old village priest walks through deep snow to see a stranger found lying near the village; Думи старика is an old man’s address to his grown children. Between them stand prose poems about roses, stars, lilies and poets, and a mountain fairy tale about a forest king and his lake. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Valse mélancolique та інші новели
VI. Під голим небом
.
; . , , . , — . ; , , , , , , . . — , — .
.
Choose an underlined word.
ся on its own
In кинула ся (“threw herself”) the reflexive particle is a separate word, as everywhere in this 1905 edition: read it as кинулася. The same lines have нїм and нїчого, where ї after a consonant is simply і today (нім, нічого).
Who is she?
After the first line the mare is never named again: Не була гарна, Йшла пильно, Батога ненавидїла. The feminine past-tense ending -ла tells you she is still the subject, so keep her in mind until a new noun takes over.
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
Whole-sentence translation in Reader helps with Hanna’s half-mocking words to her friend in the first story, А я тобі кажу, Мартухо, що царство на земли належить все таки до тебе (“And I tell you, Marta dear, the kingdom on earth belongs to you after all”), where the old locative на земли and the pet name Мартухо hide a short, bitter compliment.
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 an adaptation: all fourteen pieces of Olha Kobylianska’s book До сьвіта. Новелї і нариси (“Before Dawn. Novellas and Sketches”), published in Lviv in 1905 by the Українсько-руська видавнича спілка, in the book’s own order. Our title takes the name of the first and longest story, Valse mélancolique; the book itself is called До сьвіта, and the selection is the author’s, not the catalogue’s. Where the author dated a piece, the dates run from 1898 to 1903 (Чернівцї, Кімполюнґ). The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces the 1905 edition and its spelling, the Zhelekhivka then used in Galicia and Bukovyna: ся written apart (кинула ся), ї after consonants (нїчого, тодї), сьвіт for світ, є after consonants as in житє. The author’s two footnotes are left out, and one printer’s slip (a hyphen after a dash) is corrected. A period word for Jews that is offensive today occurs a few times in passing.
Is there an audiobook?
MovaReader has no audio for this book: it is read on screen, and tapping any word brings up its translation. In the first story Hanna goes off на совганку, to the skating rink, a western word you will not find in a modern textbook; in За готар the village men are ґазди (singular ґазда), the farmers who head a household.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps with the old man’s words in Думи старика: Згадуйте предків своїх, щоб історія перед вами не згасла і золотої нитки не згубіть… (“Remember your ancestors, so that history does not go out before you, and do not lose the golden thread…”), where the possessive after the noun and the two different imperatives are easy to misread. Without the plan you can still tap single words, within a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 6-10 hours at a learner’s pace, reading with translation of new words. The 14 chapters are very unequal: Valse mélancolique alone has about 12,400 words, a third of the book, broken by asterisks into short scenes; Балаканка про руську жінку, Під голим небом, За готар and Думи старика have about 3,000 to 4,300 each; five prose poems and sketches (Рожі, Акорди, Там звізди пробивались, Слїпець, Мої лїлїї) have only about 300 to 500 words and fit into a few minutes.
Where does the text get easier?
It changes from piece to piece rather than from start to end. The fable Через море (9.4 words per sentence, 4.9% long words) and the sketch Слїпець (11.1 words, 3.4%) are the easiest; the village scenes На полях and За готар, with plenty of dialogue, stay around 10-11 words. The hardest are Балаканка про руську жінку, an argument about women’s education at 20.8 words per sentence and 10.6% long words, and the fairy tale Сумно колишуть ся сосни at 20.2 words. Valse mélancolique sits near the book’s average, at 13.3 words and 8.7%.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers your place. The contents on this page open any piece directly, for example VIII. Сумно колишуть ся сосни, a short fairy tale about a forest king who loves one small mountain lake.