Spanish · Advanced
Read Sonata de primavera in Spanishwith every sentence explained
English title: Spring Sonata
Ramón del Valle-Inclán · 1904
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About the book
Sonata de primavera by Ramón del Valle-Inclán was first published in 1904. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 18,800 words.
A papal envoy, a dying bishop, and a girl who has promised herself to God.
In the days of the Pope-King, the young Marquis of Bradomín, one of His Holiness's noble guards, travels by post-chaise across Italy to the old walled city of Ligura, carrying a cardinal's hat for Monsignor Gaetani. He arrives to find the prelate on his deathbed, and is taken in by the Princess Gaetani in her shadowy palace of gardens, fountains and five beautiful daughters.
The eldest, María Rosario, is about to enter a convent. Pure, devout and frightened of him, she becomes the one temptation Bradomín cannot resist, and every scented garden path draws him deeper into a dangerous game.
Ramón del Valle-Inclán's Spring Sonata (1904) opens the life of Bradomín, the Don Juan who was ugly, Catholic and sentimental, told in four seasonal memoirs. Lush, ironic and musical, it is one of the jewels of Spanish modernist prose.
- Author
- Ramón del Valle-Inclán
- First published
- 1904
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 18,800 words
How it opens
ANOCHECÍA cuando la silla de posta traspuso la Puerta Salaria y comenzamos á cruzar la campiña llena de misterio y de rumores lejanos. Era la campiña clásica de las vides y de los olivos, con sus acueductos ruinosos, y sus colinas que tienen la graciosa ondulación de los senos femeninos. La silla de posta caminaba por una vieja calzada: Las mulas del tiro sacudían pesadamente las colleras, y el golpe alegre y desigual de los cascabeles despertaba un eco en los floridos olivares. Antiguos sepulcros orillaban el camino y mustios cipreses dejaban caer sobre ellos su sombra venerable.
Reading Sonata de primavera in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Spanish. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Spanish book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
