I. Розділ 1
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Franko’s Carpathian epic of 1241 for C1
Zakhar Berkut Захар Беркут
Ivan Franko, 1960
Ivan Franko’s complete historical novella in Ukrainian, not an adaptation, in the text of the 1960 Knyhospilka edition. It is for C1 learners who want a long, rewarding read: about 51,600 words in 9 chapters, 15 words per sentence on average, with chapter I the hardest.
- C1
- 51 613 words
- 9-14 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 chapter I will be slow going: about 18 words per sentence, a dense description of the region, and old forms like смерти or тої that your dictionary does not list.
B2C1
This text
At C1 you can read it straight through: the hunt, the assembly and the battles move on dialogue, and the long descriptions open up with a tapped word or a translated sentence.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the story reads freely; only the 13th-century vocabulary and the edition’s old spellings make you pause.
Start readingThe average sentence has 15 words, among the longest in the Ukrainian catalogue, and one word in ten has 9 letters or more (10.4%). Kotsiubynsky’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, for comparison, averages 12 words and 7.4%, and Franko’s own Boa constrictor 15 words and 10.0%. Chapter I is the densest, at about 18 words per sentence and 12.7% long words; chapters VIII-IX ease to about 13. On top of that comes the spelling of this edition and Franko’s Galician Ukrainian: old genitives such as смерти, крови and єдности (today смерті, крові, єдності) occur 88 times, and the forms тої, чимраз, дальше, нині and вкінці (today тієї, дедалі, далі, тепер, нарешті) 117 times, besides 13th-century words like копа (the village assembly) and смерд (a peasant, as the boyar scornfully says). Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 51 613
- words
- 15
- words in an average sentence
- 9-14
- hours of reading
- 1960
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1960. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Spring 1241 in Tukhlia, a free mountain community in the Carpathians that governs itself through its assembly. The new boyar Tuhar Vovk, granted land here by Prince Danylo of Galicia, holds a great hunt, and young Maksym Berkut, son of the village elder Zakhar, saves the boyar’s daughter Myroslava from a bear. The two fall in love, but Tuhar Vovk despises the peasants and their self-rule, and the community summons him before its assembly under the ancient linden tree. Meanwhile the Mongol horde that has burned Kyiv is moving west toward the mountain passes. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
The trades that cut the forest
Franko lists the people now felling Tukhlia’s forests: воларі (ox drivers), рубачі (woodcutters), трачі (sawyers) and ґонтарі (shingle makers, from ґонти “wooden shingles”). The letter ґ is a hard g, as in English “go”. The sentence opens with Що давно... (“Where once...”), Franko’s way of setting the past against тепер (“now”) in the same sentence.
Old genitive in -и
This edition keeps the genitive in -и where modern Ukrainian writes -і: єдности, святости, крови stand for today’s єдності, святості, крові (and смерти for смерті elsewhere). Two more Galician forms here: тої for тієї (“of that one”) and котру for яку (“whom”). Стрітитися is the old form of зустрітися, “to meet”.
Where the text gets harder
Idifficult start
II-VIIthe plot takes over
VIII-IXshorter 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
Franko’s own commentary in chapter I runs in long chains of clauses, such as “Кожний дбає тільки про себе, не розуміючи того, що таким робом роздроблюються їх сили, ослаблюється громада” (“Each cares only for himself, not understanding that this is how their strength is split and the community weakened”): there translating the whole sentence in Reader saves time.
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Ivan Franko’s complete historical novella, chapters I-IX, with the Pushkin epigraph he chose and his closing note of place and date (Nahuievychi, autumn 1882). It first appeared in 1883 in the Lviv magazine Zoria. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces volume XIII of Franko’s Works in 20 volumes (Knyhospilka, New York, 1960), and keeps that edition’s spelling: смерти, крови and єдности instead of today’s смерті, крові, єдності. Franko’s separate preface is not included.
Is there an audiobook?
Zakhar Berkut has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the novella is read on screen. Tap a word and its translation appears; you will need it for words like чимраз (“more and more”) or дебрах (“in the ravines”).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in chapter I, where sentences average about 18 words, and in Franko’s long portraits of his characters, such as “Від малку виріс він у глибокім почуванню своєї єдности з громадою і святости громадської волі” (“From childhood he had grown up with a deep sense of his unity with the community and of the sanctity of its will”) in chapter V. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole novella takes about 9-14 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. Its 9 chapters run from about 2,800 words (chapter IX) to 9,400 (chapter III), so a chapter takes one or two evenings.
Where does the text get easier?
After chapter I. Franko’s portrait of Tukhlia then and now and the bear hunt make chapter I the densest part: about 18 words per sentence and 12.7% long words. Chapters II-VII average about 15 words and 10.4%, and the last two, VIII-IX, ease to about 13 words and 9.2%.
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 novella where you left off. Any of the 9 chapters also opens from the contents on this page, for example chapter III (III. Розділ 3), the assembly under the old linden tree.