I. Земля
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Village and city stories of the 1920s, C1
The Land and Other Stories Земля та інші оповідання
Vasyl Vrazhlyvyi, 1925
Eight complete stories by Vasyl Vrazhlyvyi in the original Ukrainian, not an adaptation: the whole of his book «Земля» (The Land, Kharkiv, Knyhospilka, 1925), in the book’s own order. For advanced learners (C1) who want to see Ukraine in the hungry, uneasy years after the civil war from below: a student without a ticket at a sleepy railway station, two brothers digging clay for a sack of flour, a hired farmhand torn between his wife and a girl on the farm, a former brothel keeper selling sweets in a basement in the years of the New Economic Policy, beggars living in dugouts by a city rubbish dump. Vrazhlyvyi (real name Vasyl Shtanko, 1903-1937), a peasant’s son from Opishnia in the Poltava region, was a prose writer of the 1920s who belonged to the peasant writers’ union Pluh and then to VAPLITE; he was shot in December 1937. About 21,400 words in eight chapters, one per story, about 4 to 6 hours of reading.
- C1
- 21 375 words
- 4-6 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the dialogue-heavy stories such as «Ліс», «Темрява» and «В ярах» are within reach, but the image-laden descriptions of «Земля» and «Паштетня», the 1921 spelling (инший, що-ж) and the words of 1920s institutions will slow you on most pages.
B2C1
This text
At C1 it reads in a week or two, a story per sitting; the stories are independent. Start with «В ярах» or «Ліс», go on to «Земля», and leave «Паштетня», the densest in vocabulary, for later.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the language sets no obstacles; what remains is Vrazhlyvyi’s eye: hunger, crime and the small people of the 1920s shown without comment, in a prose that turns every landscape into a living thing.
Start readingLong words (9 letters or more) make up 10.0% of the text, the share at which the catalogue moves an original to C1: level with Kosynka’s In the Rye and Other Stories (10.1%), C1 village prose of the same years. Sentences are short, 8 words on average, as in Khvylovy’s Blue November and Other Stories, also C1, because much of the book is dialogue: in «Ліс» two paragraphs in three are spoken lines. Short sentences do not make the vocabulary lighter. The book keeps the 1921 spelling: the particle written with a hyphen (що-ж, де-ж, ти-б: 99 times), инший, иноді and инколи for інший, іноді, інколи (32 times), вартости and самотности in the genitive, замісць, кешеня and лямпа for замість, кишеня, лампа, and ґ in ґвинтовка (rifle). The 1920s bring their institutions: ДПУ (the state political police), комнезам (committee of poor peasants), профквиток (trade-union card), міліціонери; officials and townspeople speak a Russian-tinged Ukrainian (приказ, розговарювать, конєшно, Можна-с), and the city outskirts their slang (шпана, братва). On top of that comes a style dense with images, where nature acts like a person and verbs are coined for the moment (піскуватилась, перетінюється). Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 21 375
- words
- 8
- words in an average sentence
- 4-6
- hours of reading
- 1925
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1925. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Eight stories of the early 1920s, set in villages, on the railway and in a big city. In «Земля» (“The Land”) a student riding home without a ticket to bring in his father’s harvest is detained at a sleepy station by an agent of the political police; he takes the lock of his makeshift cell apart with a pocket knife and slips into the night, where a cry for help from the riverside forest changes everything. In «В ярах» (“In the Ravines”) the landless brothers Kalenyk and Khvedir dig clay in dark pits for the potters in exchange for flour, while Khvedir has a bad cough and no money for medicine, and Kalenyk’s wife waits with hungry children. In «Роздоріжжя» (“The Crossroads”) Hordii, hired for the season by a farmer, leaves his young wife at home and falls for Maryna, a girl from the Katerynoslav region who works on the same farm. «Паштетня» (“The Pastry Shop”) goes down into a basement shop where Nehodiachkina, who once kept a brothel, and the ruined landowner Siuselin sell sweets in the years of the New Economic Policy and plan to take up their old trade again, with his nieces Julie and Antonina. In «Ліс» (“The Forest”) Yarema goes night fishing although his wife begs him to stay at home, because armed men hide in the woods. «Вовчі Байраки» (“The Wolf Ravines”) follows the one-armed beggar Syzon, his sick wife Vekla and her sons, who live in dugouts by the city rubbish dump. In «На станції» (“At the Station”) the railway watchman Hryhorii tells a friend on night duty the story of his wife, which began with a drunken prank: he passed himself off as an agent fighting moonshine. In «Темрява» (“Darkness”) a group of poor peasants led by Fedos Perevud climbs through the thatch of a rich farmer’s house on a stormy night. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Земля та інші оповідання
V. Ліс
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Choose an underlined word.
A pocket knife against a lock
The student takes the door apart with the tools of his folding knife: the «одвертка» (today’s викрутка, a screwdriver) has already loosened the «ґвинтики» (small screws) of the handle, and now the blade, sharpened on the cement window sill («на луткові»), cuts the wood around the lock. Watch the sentences shrink as his heart races: «Руки працювали хутко.» The note he leaves is written for the agent who arrested him.
A forest that talks back
Vrazhlyvyi gives the river and the reed the verbs of people: the river «торохтить» (rattles), the reed «киває голівками» (nods its little heads). «Лісовик» is double here: the forest spirit of folk belief and, in the speech of the 1920s, a man of the armed bands hiding in the woods; Yarema fears both. «Гу-гу» is the eagle owl (пугач) he expected a few lines earlier.
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
Vrazhlyvyi’s peasants speak in half-sentences and leave the meaning between the words, and whole-sentence translation in Reader helps with lines such as Kalenyk’s words to his small child in «В ярах»: “Немає землі, дитинко а то-б не журились.” (“We have no land, little one, or we would not be grieving.”).
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s version: all eight stories of Vasyl Vrazhlyvyi’s book «Земля» (The Land, Knyhospilka, Kharkiv, 1925), in the book’s order, from «Земля» to «Темрява». The book itself is titled «Земля», after its first story; the catalogue calls it The Land and Other Stories. Four of the stories had already appeared in his first collection «В яру» (Pluh, 1924), and none is later than 1925. The text follows the Wikisource transcription of the 1925 edition and keeps its spelling, the orthography of 1921: инший and иноді for today’s інший and іноді, the particles -ж and -б joined with a hyphen (що-ж, ти-б), вартости for вартості, замісць for замість, кешеня for кишеня. The author’s own punctuation is kept too, including a few lines of dialogue closed with a dash. «Паштетня» is about a brothel run under the sign of a sweet shop, and some characters use crude curses; the text is left as the author wrote it.
Is there an audiobook?
The Land and Other Stories has no audiobook on MovaReader: the stories are read on screen. Tap a word to see its translation; you will need it from the first story, for words such as профквиток (a trade-union card, which the student in «Земля» carries by mistake: it belongs to a friend) or дрезина (a railway handcar, which the station master wants to send for guards).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps where the speakers think aloud in fragments, for example the two fishermen in «Ліс» talking by the night river: “Тяжко жити… І чого ті лісовики б’ються? Нехай-би бились, а нас не чіпали-б” (“Life is hard… And why do those men in the forest fight? Let them fight, if only they left us alone”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole book takes about 4 to 6 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The stories are of similar size: «Паштетня» has about 3,900 words, «Земля» about 3,500, «Вовчі Байраки» about 3,200, «На станції» about 2,700, «Роздоріжжя» about 2,500, «В ярах» about 2,200, «Темрява» about 1,900 and «Ліс» about 1,500. Each story makes one sitting, from a quarter of an hour to about an hour.
Where does the text get easier?
It changes from story to story rather than from start to end. Sentences are longest in «Земля» (about 10 words) and «Вовчі Байраки» (about 9) and shortest in «Ліс» (about 5), where two paragraphs in three are dialogue. Long words range from 5.7% in «Вовчі Байраки», which opens like a folk tale, to 12.4% in «Паштетня», the densest story for vocabulary. The stories are independent, so you can start with chapter II, «В ярах», or chapter V, «Ліс».
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened. Any story also opens from the contents on this page, for example «Вовчі Байраки» (VI. Вовчі Байраки).