VLADIMIR VYSOTSKY (1938-1980)
How many songs about love have been written all over the world? Thousands? Millions? As many, I believe, as stars above us. The only issue with them is that a great number of these love songs, according to Sir Paul McCartney, are silly.
Perhaps the “Love Me Do” lyrics made him write the “Silly Love Songs” composition. Though in this very song Sir Paul states that “it isn’t silly at all”, this statement refers to love itself but not to love songs.
Vladimir Vysotsky proves that a love song can’t be silly. In his ‘The Ballad of Love” Vysotsky rises to the Shakespearean heights singing about love. He bases this song on the famous Rene Descartes’ maxim “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore, I exist”). Only with a slight transformation of this principle. Vysotsky’s maxim is “I love, therefore, I exist”! Listen to the English translation of Vysotsky’s “The Ballad of Love” performed by a Swedish vocalist and composer Michael Ohlsson.
THE BALLAD OF LOVE
The Flood had just returned to ocean quarters,
The olive twigs were gotten by the dove,
And off the foam of retreating waters
Ashore crept something by the name of Love,
And then for many centuries this squatter
Dissolved and faded in the air above ...
Since then you always see a pair who has
Inhaled into their hearts this toxic gas;
Their lives continue in the usual rhythm —
Anticipating nothing to occur
They suddenly start breathing in accord
With someone else’s hot, uneven breathing ...
Feeling’s born. It should not come and go,
And we all must realize its gist —
If you say “I love” — it means as though
You would say “I breathe” or “I exist”.
And there will be lots of far-off missions —
The land of Love is an enormous land.
The knights of Love are tested by partitions,
‘Cause Love and Parting go hand in hand;
Love always brings the knights to full submission,
Yet no repose, no rest these knights demand.
But having lost their heads they go on,
And even ready their lives to pawn,
Appalled by nothing, be it dire or gruesome,
They only want to save a magic thread,
Which has begun invisibly to spread,
To stretch and string between the loving twosome ...
Winds of Love inspired darlings so
That they even from the dead retrieved —
If you never loved then you should know
That you never breathed nor ever lived!
But in their love a lot of darlings choked,
They went away and back they never came.
With blood and tears their stories soaked,
But gossip never spared their names,
Though only love their deadly end provoked —
Let’s kindle in their honor candle flames ...
Their souls roam through the grassy dales,
Their voices merge into harmonic scales,
They breathe in the eternity together ...
They meet each other on the narrow trails,
On shaky bridges over misty vales,
On crossroads of the Universe they gather ...
Leave the lovers in the fields alone,
Wish they’d never finish their song...
If I breathe — it means that I’m in love,
I’m in love — it means that I’m alive!
Performance
Translated by George Tokarev
© GEORGE TOKAREV 2001
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