Ballad of Childhood

Ballad of Childhood (Russian: Баллада о детстве; “I don't remember the conception hour quite well...”[1]) is an autobiographical song by Vladimir Vysotsky, written in 1975 for the play Look Back, While Leaving by Eduard Volodarsky.

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...”.

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.

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".

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.

[20] 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.

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,[27] create "a non-parade image of the end of the war: "The country of Limonia[Notes 1][28][8][29] has come!

"[27] 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".

On the other hand, he speaks on behalf of his characters, among whom there are practically no fictitious ones: almost all the inhabitants of the 126th house (except for Marusya Peresvetova, who bore the surname Trisvetova)[31] are presented under their real names.

[32] As Vladimir Semyonovich's mother recalled, in January 1938 a postcard from the Yakovlevs arrived at the maternity hospital where the future author of Ballad... was born: "All the neighborhoud congratulate you on the birth of a new citizen of the USSR!

"[33] At a certain point, the Yakovlevs and the Vysotskys even reconstructed the wall that separated them, opening the double door that had been installed in the days of the Abrikosov merchants (after the revolution it was boarded up and mortgaged) and thus creating a common space.

[36] In the last months of his life, Vysotsky often reminisced about the post-war years and turned to his comrade — the actor and chief administrator of the Taganka Theater Valery Yanklovich with a proposal to go to the First Meshchanskaya.

Mikhail Lermontov turned to understanding the "paradoxes of generations", confessing in Thought: "And a secret cold reigns in the soul // When the fire boils in the blood".

This poetic theme is developed and leads to a paradoxical and ambiguous finale, according to Vysotskologists: "There was a time when there were cellars, // When there were real deals, and prices could be lower,[Notes 3][39][40] // And canals flowed where they should, // And in the end where they should fall.

А. Nazarov believes that in the criminal destiny of Vysotsky's generation he describes the movement "upwards", not "to the pioneers, Komsomol or party bureaucrats", but to the social "bottom", in fact there is a break in the "circular bond of fear and meanness".

Andrei Skobelev calls it "a conflict between the 'top' and the 'bottom,'" while Kulagin sees a connection with the lines of Vysotsky's poem My Hamlet: "The weight of heavy thoughts drew me up, / And the wings of flesh dragged me down, to the grave."

The work describes numerous disparate events; in the words of E. Kanchukov, the "cellular" structure of the song "resembles a communal apartment, when the plot is assembled from closed block rooms".

This observation applies not only to the Ballad of Childhood, but also to Vysotsky's other works: like many of his contemporaries who grew up in a communal environment, the "sense of elbow" is very important to him: "His strong man becomes himself only when he feels that he belongs to the whole".

In "Vysotsky's Song Theatre" there are no detailed descriptions of the actors: the characters and fates of the heroes are revealed through their short lines or the author's brief remarks, which reproduce certain events of their biographies.