"Lukomorye no longer exists" (Russian: Лукоморья больше нет) is a song with the subtitle "anti-fairy tale" by Vladimir Vysotsky. It was written between June and September 1967. Alternative titles include: "Lukomorye", "Song-Fairy Tale about Lukomorye", "Song-Anti-Fairy Tale".Vysotky V. Собрание сочинений в пяти томах. Том 3. Песни и стихи. 1968—1972. Тула: Тулица, 1997. V. 3. pp. 232, 368. Dykhanova B. S., Krylov A. E., Skobelev A. V., Shpilevaya G. A. Владимир Высоцкий: исследования и материалы 2007–2009 гг.: сборник научных трудов. Воронеж: ВГПУ, 2009. P. 74. The song is a travesty of the prologue to the poem Ruslan and Ludmila by Alexander Pushkin. In the song, Vysotsky compares the reality surrounding him with the fairy-tale world of Lukomorye. The text was published during the poet's lifetime, in 1977 in Paris, in the first collected edition of poems and songs Songs of Russian Bards. The author performed the song at concerts until 1976.
The song belongs to the so-called early period of Vysotsky's work. Pushkin, with his encyclopedic and universal creative world, was always interesting to Vysotsky, and this was expressed in 1966–1967 in a series of travesty songs and song-fairy tales, such as "Song about the Prophetess Cassandra", "Song about the Prophetic Oleg" (a travesty of Pushkin's ballad about the death of Oleg the Wise), "Song-Fairy Tale about Evil Spirits", "From Boring Sabbaths...", "Fairy Tale about Unfortunate Forest Dwellers" (), and others. The creation of the anti-fairy tale "Lukomorye no longer exists" is connected with the development of neomythological art — a trend that emerged in the Soviet artistic environment in the 1960s. The Soviet neomythologism of that time demonstrated a pronounced focus on the social aspects of the era, and Vysotsky, drawing on folklore and high poetry, shed new light on the "low" reality surrounding him.
The song contains not only "distant cultural layers" but also clear echoes of sources closer to Vysotsky's era, which influenced or were reflected in his work in one way or another. The traditions of folk humorous and folklore culture of various eras, Vysotsky's reading experiences, and certain events from the life of the bard and his circle had a direct influence on "Lukomorye". All of this, processed through the poet's perspective, is transformed into an organic song-poetic form that expresses the crisis of the world contemporary to him.
In the USSR, the song was first released in 1987 on the record Save Our Souls by the Melodiya company (the second in the series At Vladimir Vysotsky's Concerts), and in printed form, it was published in 1988 in a collection of the poet's selected poems, released by the Sovetsky Pisatel publishing house. The anti-fairy tale "Lukomorye no longer exists" has retained the relevance of the issues it raises for decades after its creation and has had a certain influence on some socio-cultural processes.
Song history
The history of the song's creation is connected, according to researchers, to various circumstances of Vysotsky's life and work. Even in his youth, Vysotsky wrote humorous pieces for student kapustnik performances, toasts for friends, and dedications in the name of literary classics, including the works of Pushkin: "If I ate and drank here, // I could say without hesitation: // I got what I wanted, — // I recall a wondrous moment". Also known is an early humorous poem by Vysotsky about school life: "And there on the stair landings // Traces of unseen people. // The principal there on chicken legs // Without eyes, without brains, without ears". According to literary scholar Anatoly Kulagin, Vysotsky felt an "inner, creative need" to choose Pushkin as a constant "poetic interlocutor", and with the creation in 1967 of a series of humorous songs, the bard's true "dialogue" with the classic began.
Several researchers of Vysotsky's work, analyzing the song, conclude that its origins could stem not only from the poem Ruslan and Lyudmila, but also from its numerous folkloric adaptations popular in the 1930s–1950s, as well as other sources and events from the bard's life and circle: The Tale of Tsar Saltan by A. S. Pushkin, Vysotsky's participation in the play Antiworlds (he began acting in this production in 1964, having joined the Taganka Theatre), and the Soviet theatrical community's acquaintance with the concepts of "anti-drama" and "anti-novel" (used in the mid-20th century in relation to the works of A. Robbe-Grillet, N. Sarraute, S. Beckett, E. Ionesco). The song also reflects knowledge that the poet gained during his student years. For example, information about the folk belief that wood spirits like leshy feed on bark ("Did I not bring berries?! — // The Leshiy wailed again, — // And how many kilos of bark // did I bring!") was acquired by Vysotsky at the MHAT School-Studio during lectures by art history professor B. N. Simolin. During those same student years, the poet met the widow of writer Mikhail Bulgakov, Elena Sergeyevna, and long before its first publication, read the novel the Master and Margarita. Acquaintance with this work was also reflected in the song Lukomorye no longer exists.Kaprusov M. N. Влияние профессии актёра на мироощущение и литературное творчество В. Высоцкого // Мир Высоцкого: исследования и материалы. М.: ГКЦМ В. С. Высоцкого, 2001. Iss. V. P. 414.
According to the memoirs of the poet's wife, Lyudmila Abramova, in the early 1960s, Vladimir Vysotsky became fascinated with reading science fiction literature, particularly favoring the works of the Strugatsky Brothers, and in 1966, he personally met Arkady Strugatsky. According to Abramova, "the mutual impression was, of course, tremendous. The commonality of creative interests was reflected in Vysotsky's writing of the song , created against the backdrop of the Strugatsky Brothers' work on Snail on the Slope. The authors took great pride in the fact that their ideas, related to the development of a similar theme, emerged simultaneously. A year after meeting the Strugatskys, Vysotsky wrote a whole series of song-fairy tales: Song-Fairy Tale about Evil Spirits, Fairy Tale about Unfortunate Fairy-Tale Characters, From Boring Sabbaths..., and in June–September 1967, the anti-fairy tale Lukomorye no longer exists. The idea of placing fairy-tale characters in contemporary reality was implemented by the Strugatskys in their 1965 novella Monday Begins on Saturday, where some events take place on Lukomorye Street. However, Vysotsky, drawing on the Strugatskys, demonstrated in the very title of his work that he was developing the theme in a completely opposite direction.
A presumably early version of "Lukomorye" has been preserved, also playing on the prologue to Ruslan and Lyudmila: "I used to read Pushkin all night until dawn — // about the green oak and the golden chain there. // And now I find myself at Lukomorye, // Sent on a mission to Pushkin's places". Further, the narrator recalls how he worked on canals and power plants (hydroelectric power stations and TPPs) and saw there a green oak covered with carved initials and cans lying on "unseen paths". By the narrator's admission, he also encountered March cats there, but they did not respond to his request to "sing". The poem, according to Kulagin's assessment, was close in genre to a poetic feuilleton, but it was also built on contrasts—juxtaposing what the narrator read in Pushkin with what he saw in the surrounding reality.
In the original version, the song's refrain: "Calm down, calm down, my sorrow in my chest, // This is only the prelude, the tale lies ahead" was repeated after each verse, and later, less frequently, in various variations. The first known lifetime recording of the song dates to November 1967, the last to 1974. From 1976 onward, Vysotsky stopped performing Lukomorye at his concerts. Fyodor Razzakov linked this circumstance to Vysotsky's visit to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum (this took place in October 1977). According to the researcher, acquaintance with the places where the poet's school years were spent also indicates a change in the bard's attitude toward Pushkin's work — it became more reverent than in his youth.
First editions, criticism, translations into other languages
In 1971, the American branch of the recording company Collector Records released an English-language record titled Songs of the Soviet Underground translated by Mikhail Allen and performed by Nugzar Sharia, a Georgian actor who had emigrated from the USSR. A year after its release, the Paris-based publication Russian Mind published an extensive review by Pyotr Kursky, who thoroughly analyzed the quality of the translation and performance of the song Lukomorye ni longer exists, included in this collection. The critic viewed Lukomorye as "sharp social satire on contemporary Soviet society" and lamented that "deciphering Aesopian language of Vysotsky and explaining the meaning of each image would be highly desirable, especially for those putrid in Western countries". In 1974, a record was released in the USA with an unknown circulation, referred to as the Andrejevsky Album after the Soviet emigrant who illicitly produced it from a mediocre recording of Vysotsky. The first song in the collection was Lukomorye no longer exists.Kravchinsky M. Музыкальные диверсанты / Резанова Н. Нижний Новгород: Деком, 2016. P. 162. During the poet's lifetime, the song was published in Russian in 1977 in Paris in the collection Songs of Russian Bards,Песни русских бардов / оформление Льва Нусберга. Париж: YMCA-Press, 1977. V. 2. P. 4.Tsybulsky M. «Песни русских бардов» - первое собрание сочинений Владимира Высоцкого. «Владимир Высоцкий. Каталоги и статьи» (12 December 2013). and at the end of 1978, its text was printed in an author's selection included in the first issue of the almanac Metropol.
In the USSR, widespread, uncensored publication of Vysotsky's poetic and prose texts began only after he was posthumously awarded, in 1987, the State Prize of the USSR "for creating the image of Zheglov in the television feature film The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed and for the author's performance of songs".Yakusheva G. V. Русские писатели 20 века. Биографический словарь / П. А. Николаев. М.: Большая Российская энциклопедия, 2000. P. 169. Lukomorye no longer exists was released in 1987 on the record by the Melodiya company Save Our Souls (the second in the series "At Vladimir Vysotsky's Concerts"). The series, consisting of 21 records, was prepared by Vsevolod Abdulov and Igor Shevtsov with the participation of the commission on Vysotsky's creative legacy. For the first time, in chronological order, the bard's concert activities were showcased, covering a fifteen-year period and over 250 songs. The record covers were designed by artists of the Taganka Theatre—David Borovsky and Semyon Beiderman. The front and back covers, in addition to an annotation (for this record, it was written by Bulat Okudzhava), featured rare, previously unpublished photographs of Vysotsky at concerts. The Save Our Souls record used concert recordings from 1967 (the year the song was created) recorded by Mikhail Kryzhanovsky. In printed form, Lukomorye was included in 1988 in a collection of the poet's selected poems, published by the Sovetsky Pisatel publishing house.Владимир Семенович Высоцкий : что? где? когда?: библиографический справочник (1960-1990 г.г.). Харьков: Прогресс; М.: Студия-Л, 1992. pp. 23, 52, 280.