Une saison en enfer: reading level, length and free edition
Une saison en enfer by Arthur Rimbaud is a prose poetry in French. Our team rates it C2. It runs to 7,111 words with 2,243 different word forms, about under 1–1 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Project Gutenberg.
- Author
- Arthur Rimbaud
- Language
- French
- Level
- C2
- Form
- prose poetry
- Words
- 7,111
- Different word forms
- 2,243
- Forms for 95% / 98%
- 1,888 / 2,101
- Reading time
- under 1–1 h
- Free edition
- Project Gutenberg
Long poème en prose où Rimbaud fait le procès fulgurant de sa propre vie.
Is Une saison en enfer right for your level?
To recognise 95% of the running words in Une saison en enfer, you need its 1,888 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 2,101.
A word form is any spelling that appears in the text, so “walk” and “walked” count twice, and names count too. These numbers are a guide to how much vocabulary the book asks for, not a test. The level itself was set by hand by our team. Before you commit, read one page of the free edition and count the words you do not know: the one-page test takes two minutes.
Which words should you know before you start?
These are the words that Une saison en enfer uses most often but that are not among the 2,000 most common word forms across all 37 French books in our library; the number is how many times each appears. Names of people and places are left out. Learning a handful of them first makes the opening chapters easier.
- danse 9
- charité 7
- race 7
- cœurs 6
- démon 6
- villes 6
- divin 6
- sagesse 6
- vienne 6
- nègre 5
- soif 5
- enfance 5
- boue 4
- damné 4
- vision 4
How does it begin?
«Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s’ouvraient tous les cœurs, où tous les vins coulaient.
From the Project Gutenberg edition, which is in the public domain. If this paragraph already feels slow, try a book one level lower.
How long does it take to read?
| Words | 100 wpm | 150 wpm | 200 wpm | 250 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7,111 | 1 h | 1 h | under 1 h | under 1 h |
Learners reading a book at their level often manage 100 to 150 words per minute, and readers in their first language 200 to 250. Where these speeds come from, and a calculator for your own: How long does it take to read a book?
Where can you read it for free?
The free edition is Project Gutenberg eBook #56668. Project Gutenberg publishes books that are in the public domain in the United States, as EPUB, Kindle and plain text, free and without an account. Copyright terms differ by country: if you live outside the United States, check that the book is out of copyright where you are before you download it.
To read it with a translation over every word you tap, open it in Readlang Mobile on iPhone or iPad.
What to read next at C2
French books at the same level that ask for a similar amount of vocabulary:
- Du côté de chez Swann, Marcel Proust: 168,956 words, 7,107 forms for 95%
See also all French books by level and books at C2 in all five languages.