Ballad of Childhood (; "I don't remember the conception hour quite well...") is an autobiographical song by Vladimir Vysotsky, written in 1975 for the play Look Back, While Leaving by Eduard Volodarsky. Author's variations of the title: Ballad of Childhood or Ballad of the Old House, Ballad of Childhood or Old House, Ballad of My Childhood, Ballad of My Old House, My Childhood, Ballad of the Old House, Ballad of the Old House, or Ballad of My Childhood.Petrakov A. Каталог песен и стихов В. Высоцкого // Вагант: приложение. М.: ГКЦМ В. С. Высоцкого, 1991. February (iss. 2). pp. 10—11.
The work reflects the author's real life impressions, recreates recognizable signs of the time. Almost all the characters of the ballad are brought out under their real names and surnames. Song fragments (under the title Song about times long gone by) are heard in the feature film The Second Attempt of Viktor Krokhin. During Vysotsky's lifetime, the ballad was recorded by him on the record (Polydor, France, fall 1977) and published in 1978 in Paris in the collection Songs of Russian bards by YMCA-Press. In the Soviet Union, the text of the work was first published in 1987 (Aurora magazine, No. 8).
Song’s history According to Stanislav Govorukhin and the Vainer brothers, Vladimir Vysotsky wrote the Ballad of Childhood in one day, in the margins of the Soviet Screen magazine. Work on the text began on the flight to Odessa and continued in the director's dacha. In the evening, the author offered his friends to listen to the new song.Vainer brothers. Жизнь со временем наперегонки // Владимир Высоцкий в кино. М.: Союз кинематографистов СССР. Всесоюзное ТПО «Киноцентр», 1990. pp. 143—144. Later, at concerts, Vladimir Semyonovich presented it to the audience as "little sketches from childhood": "It's about my old house on First Meshchanskaya Street, where I lived as a child".
As the poet claimed in his speeches, the song was written specifically for Eduard Volodarsky's play Look Back, While Leaving. The play premiered at the Moscow Art Theater on April 14, 1976 (directed by Oleg Yefremov and produced by Yevgeny Radomyslensky); it was subsequently performed in other theaters throughout the country.Smelyansky A. Олег Ефремов: театральный портрет. М.: Союз театральных деятелей РСФСР, 1987. pp. 136, 142.Олег Николаевич Ефремов (1927—2000). Библиографический указатель. М.: Московский Художественный театр, 2001. P. 140.
Thematically, the song is also close to the plot of the movie Viktor Krokhin's Second Attempt about post-war realities. Scriptwriter Eduard Volodarsky said that it could have been organically included in the context of the tape, but Vysotsky flatly refused to censor cuts of "the conception hour...”.Krylov A. E., Skobelev A. V., Shpilevaya G. A. Владимир Высоцкий: исследования и материалы 2009–2010 гг.: сборник научных трудов. Воронеж: Эхо, 2011. pp. 123, 131. Therefore, the first version of the film, shot in 1977 at Lenfilm, did not include the song. Researcher of Vysotsky's work, Mark Tsybulsky publicized the conclusion of the script-editorial board, which decided in August of the same year the fate of Victor Krokhin destiny. Among other claims the document pointed out that the creators of the tape “should once again check the appropriateness of the use of V. Vysotsky's song”. The film itself was banned immediately after its release and was not released until ten years later; the restored version features fragments of Ballad...Tsybulsky M. Вторая попытка Виктора Крохина. v-vysotsky.com (29 December 2015).
Vysotsky offered to perform Ballad of Childhood in the film the Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, but this initiative was not supported by the film's director Stanislav Govorukhin, who believed that such interference in the script would destroy the audience's trust in the image of Zheglov: "It will no longer be Captain Zheglov, but Vysotsky as Captain Zheglov".Ryazanov E., Vysotsky V. Четыре вечера с Владимиром Высоцким: по мотивам телевизионной передачи. М.: Искусство, 1989. P. 192.
First editions, performances, recordings The first public performance of the song was recorded in October 1975. The poem was published during the poet's lifetime in 1978 in Paris in the fourth volume of the collection Songs of Russian Bards,Песни русских бардов Париж: YMCA-Press, 1978. V. 4. pp. 11—14.Tsybulsky M. «Песни русских бардов» - первое собрание сочинений Владимира Высоцкого. «Владимир Высоцкий. Каталоги и статьи» (12 December 2013). and in the fall of the same year the song was released in France on the record La corde raide under the title "La ballade de l'enfance". The songs on this album are characterized by orchestral arrangements by Konstantin Kazanski.Tsybulsky M. О Владимире Высоцком вспоминает Константин Казански. «Владимир Высоцкий. Каталоги и статьи» (16 August 2006).
In the USSR, the poem Ballad of Childhood was first officially published in the 8th issue of the magazine Aurora in 1987. The Melodiya company released the song in 1990 on a record of the same name (the fourteenth in the series On Vladimir Vysotsky's Concerts, M60 49415 001), recorded in 1977.Владимир Семенович Высоцкий: что? где? когда?: библиографический справочник (1960-1990 г.г.) Харьков; М.: Прогресс; Студия-Л, 1992. pp. 57, 77. The last known public performance of the song by the author took place on July 16, 1980.
Autobiographical motifs
The Ballad of Childhood is full of details that allow us to speak about the autobiographical character of the work. The narrative begins not with the traditional story about the day of birth, but with the "hour of conception" — this artistic device literary scientist Vladimir Novikov called "grim grotesque".
Then the poet uses the year of birth: "The first time I got freedom // By the decree of the thirty-eighth". Researchers interpret these lines in different ways: for example, literary historian Pavel Fokin, in his commentary to the collection of Vysotsky's works, gives a reference to the decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on amnesty for servicemen, which was issued on the eve of Vladimir Semyonovich's birth. According to publicist Vladimir Bondarenko, the song refers to another document — the decree of the Supreme Soviet on the prohibition of abortion in the USSR.Bondarenko V. G. Последние поэты империи. М.: Молодая гвардия, 2005. Vladimir Novikov disagrees with these versions and believes that certain legal acts have nothing to do with Ballad...: "What he wanted to say here is much simpler and at the same time deeper. Life is freedom in comparison with non-existence". The literary scientist Anatoly Kulaguin notes that by mentioning the "first term" spent in the mother's womb, the author of the song deliberately correlates with the history of the country and the time when "huge terms were shaved into long stages".
Among the topographical elements of the Ballad... stands out "the house on the First Meshchanskaya Street — at the end", where there was a large communal apartment where Vysotsky spent his childhood years.Bartosz Osiewicz. Автобиографический мотив детства в избранных авторских песнях Булата Окуджавы, Владимира Высоцкого и Александра Галича // AvtobiografiЯ. 2015. № 4. As Vysotsky's neighbor Vartan Ter-Minosyan recalled, in the pre-revolutionary period the house No. 126 on the First Meshchanskaya Street (now 76, Mira Prospect) belonged to the Abrikosov merchants, who rented "furnished rooms 'Natalis'". The "corridor system" described by Vladimir Semyonovich really existed there; however, the song mentions "thirty-eight rooms", while in fact there were thirty-seven. The Vysotskys lived in room 35.
Vysotsky, describing his own reality, introduces the reader/listener to a private history, but his creative task is much broader than demonstrating the experience of his own Soviet childhood. This experience is transformed into a large-scale historical and geographical reflection, revealing at the same time the generational experience of his generation.
Signs of time
The communal fraternity, the essence of which is articulated in the dialogue between the neighbor Yevdokim Kirillovich and his neighbor Gisya Moiseevna ("Oh, Gisya, we are a family: // You are all victims, too!"), was conditioned by common trials and shared experiences of loss: "Mine (relatives) were killed without news, // Yours (relatives) were innocently imprisoned".
The author's childhood impressions are humble life, eternal cold, German incendiary bombs ("And the people put out the 'incendiaries'!"), post-war disintegration of families (the lines "Our fathers and brothers // returned home — to their own and foreign homes!" refer, among others, to Vysotsky's family). Not far from the 126th house, according to Nina Maximovna Vysotskaya, POWs were working, and her son willingly communicated with them: "They were doing exchange business // Snotty ostrozhniki". Vladimir Akimov, a classmate of Vysotskaya's, stated that in exchange for bread, one could get not only the knives mentioned in the song, but also other things valued in adolescence: a lighter, a wheel made of coins.
The Moscow panorama of the second half of the 1940s also includes brief sketches that, in the words of the literary scholar Igor Sukhikh, create "a non-parade image of the end of the war: "The country of LimoniaResearchers propose different versions of the appearance of the Land of Limonia in Vysotsky's lyrics. For example, Anatoly Kulagin and Andrei Skobelev believe that the song contains a reference to the poem The Land of Limonia by the poet Anatoly Zhigulin, in which the image of a fairy-tale and festive planet is created. Vysotskologists remind us that in the criminal world Limonia is an ironic name for a not so remote place, "the Urkagan definition of prison camp life". Pavel Fokin, in his commentary on the text, suggests that Limonia may be a "fictitious toponym" reminiscent of exotic countries in general and Vertinsky's "banana-lemon Singapore" in particular. According to Leyla Abdullaeva, the appearance of fairy-tale Limonia next to real countries brings the image of the postwar world created by Vysotsky to the mythological level.Skobelev A. V. Много неясного в странной стране… II. Попытка избранного комментирования. Воронеж: Эхо, 2009. pp. 94—97. (Литературоведение). has come!"Sukhin I. N. На разрыв аорты (1960—1980. Песни-баллады В. Высоцкого) // Звезда: журнал. 2003. October (№ 10). From the exchange cases and knives that the students of the craft schools made from files, sometimes a new stage of life began, recorded in words that, according to Andrei Skobelev, "have almost a final meaning: "And so the romantics left the square as thieves".Skobelev A. V., Shaulov S. Владимир Высоцкий: Мир и Слово. Воронеж: Логос, 1991.Actually, this "house at the end of First Meshchanskaya Street", where the hero was born, lived and survived, is a sign of the time, "when the periods were long, we moved in long stages", and the multiethnic inhabitants were united by a common misfortune — war and repression... Such a combination of rough (in Russian blatnaya) and military themes and here creates a special, harsh and cruel flavor of the era.
Characters