He did not return from battle

Admirers of the talent of Vladimir Vysotsky consider this work one of the main in his work. According to researchers, the poem is one of the poet’s most significant songs written about the war and is “amazing in the accuracy of emotions and intensity”, reaching the “heights of the tragic sound” of this subject. For the hero on behalf of whom the narration is being conducted, life was divided into two halves - before and after his friend did not return from the battle. The couplets of the song vividly and vividly reveal the images of the heroes, the essence of their relationship, while they were together, and the abyss of loss of a loved one who did not return from the battle. The storyteller lost not just a fellow ally, a like-minded person, he lost a friend, who during the days of the war became his second "I" ^{[3] [4]} . The refrain of this work, the line that sounds at the end of each quatrain, by its constant repetition characterizes the hero’s condition as well as possible: shock, confusion, the transition from memory to memory from the realization that “he did not return from battle” ^[5] . In the repetition of this refrain there is an expression of persistent thought, an unexplored solution to the question. The answer to it comes in the last words of the song - “Everything is now the same, only it seems to me / I didn’t return from the battle” ^[6] .

According to the memoirs of Viktor Turov (director of the film “ Sons Go to Battle ”), the song “He did not return from battle” was written by Vysotsky in the summer of 1969 in Novogrudchin ( Belarus ). In the evening, when the film crew gathered around the fire, Turov asked Vladimir to write a song for the film about the loss of a fighting friend; “He was silent for a long time. Then he slowly got up, nodded his head, and went to rest. And the very next day the song was ready ... ” ^[7] .

Vysotsky’s creative researcher Sergei Zhiltsov noted that the character of a deceased friend shows the qualities of a hero from a script with the working title “Remember, the war happened in the forty-first” (a film in which Vysotsky had to play one of the roles, but which was not launched in production) ^{[7] [8]} .

For the first time, the song was performed for a wide audience during the premiere of the film “Sons Go to Battle” in November 1971. This event coincided with the premiere of the play “ Hamlet ” of the Taganka Theater , where Vysotsky played a major role ^[9] . In 1973, it was published at the melody of the Melody company under the title “Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky from the Movies” along with the works “Song of the New Time”, “ Mass Graves ” and “Song of the Earth”, and in the same year came out on mini -single of the WTO plant of the same name ^{[10] [7]} . In 1976, the record company Victor released in Tokyo a vinyl disc "Collection of popular Soviet songs", which included the works "Ships Stand" and "He did not return from the battle" ^[11] . In 1979, she entered the collection “Ballads and Songs” ( M .: Melody; Budapest: Balkanton ), and in October 1980, the company “Melody” released the first Russian giant disk “Vladimir Vysotsky,” which included “He did not return from the battle. " The song was also used in the 1980 movie Mercedes Driving the Chase , directed by Yuri Lyashenko, A. Dovzhenko Film Studio ^{[12] [13]} .

The poem was translated into Polish and published in 1976 (Student and Nurt magazines, translated by Jan Chopik and Jerzy Litvinov), in the same years Andrzej Lajborek on the stage of the “New Theater” in Poznan, he staged a performance based on Vysotsky’s work, which included the song “He didn’t return from battle” ^[14] . At the beginning of the seventies, it was used in the play “Death and Death Amendment” of the Sofia Theater of the war based on the play “Not Listed” by Boris Vasiliev ^{[7] [12]} , and in April 1977 the poem was translated by Ivan Nikolov was published in the Bulgarian newspaper "Student Tribune" ^[15] . In 1990, it was published in English in the book "Hamlet with a guitar" (" English Hamlet with a guitar ") ^{[16] [17]} . In Italian, the work was released in May 1993 in a book and on a disc entitled “Volodya's Flight” ( Il volo di Volodja ), and also sounded to the music of Sergio Sacchi ( Italian Sergio Sacchi ) performed by Eugenio Finardi at the festival in San Remo on October 31 of the same year - this day of the festival was dedicated to the memory of Vysotsky and was named by its organizers “Gift to Volodya”. In addition, the song is mentioned in an article by Daniele Didero ( Italian: Daniele Didero ), who wrote a review of the book by Professor of Theology, a member of Angelicum Giuseppe Barzagi, “Thoughts on God” ^{[18] [19]} . In 2002, in Israel, a translation of Mark Gordon into Hebrew, the poem entered the textbook on Russian literature ^[20] . The song was also translated into Japanese (“Soviet Literature” (1985, No. 92)), Romanian (in the weekly Tribuna) ^[21] , Nepali (translation by Krishna Shrest) ^[22] .

In 1970, one of the employees of the Taganka Theater , Anatoly Menshchikov , distributed a questionnaire in the troupe, in which - among others - there was a question about the artists' favorite song. Vysotsky called the Holy War . Remembering this episode, Menshchikov admitted that his initial bewilderment was soon replaced by the understanding that the actor and poet was sincere in his reply: “I learned about his childhood in war. I understood what this song means to him ” ^[23] . Researchers note that Vysotsky, who did not see the battles with his own eyes, called his works about the war "song-associations." They did not have a pathos, lofty image of exploits, but some listeners who did not know the biography of the bard believed that they were written by a front-line poet. The author himself, answering questions from the audience, said: “Firstly, we must not forget about this. The war will always excite us ... Secondly, I have a military family. Thirdly, we are children of the war years, for us it will never be forgotten. ” In his lyrics, Vysotsky often spoke on behalf of that pre-war generation, the image of which he captured in his own song " Ballad of Childhood ": "And as a small front help - // My sand and a holey jug" ^{[24] [25]} .

The basis of the military cycle of Vysotsky was not only his childhood impressions, but also the “battalion”, far from the official ideology, the memoirs of familiar front-line soldiers, including the poet’s relatives and friends. The recognition of the stories that became the plot of the songs is largely due to the fact that the author in his songs retained the conversational, confessional intonation of his interlocutors ^[26] . It is in these "eyewitness accounts" that, according to the philologist Maryam Hasanova, contains "the historical memory of the people" ^[26] . The song “He didn’t return from battle” included in this series is a kind of “ epitaph for the fallen comrade”. Compositionally, the song is structured in such a way that at first in the character’s monologue claims or belated resentments towards the departed friend sound (“He didn’t let me sleep, / He got up with sunrise”). The true experiences of the storyteller are revealed in the last couplet, when he admits: “We had enough space in the dugout, // We were running out of time for both” ^[27] .

These are the true feelings of the hero. The loss of a friend is the loss of oneself. And instead of pathos and high vocabulary, we see simple and everyday words with such a deep psychology that they make you physically feel the hero’s inner emptiness ^[27] .

On the issue of authorship

In the credits of the film “Sons Go to Battle,” Vysotsky is designated only as the author of the lyrics; it also indicates that the composer Stanislav Pozhlakov composed the music for them. In the published documents of the Belarusfilm film studio about the shooting of the film (Appendix to the “Installation sheet of the black and white film“ Sons Go to Battle ”” dated 02/11/1970) Pozhlakov is indicated by the composer of one of the versions of the songs “Sons Go to Battle” and “Songs about the Earth. " In a later “Cover Sheet ...” (dated January 18, 1971) Boris Fedorov is the author of the music for these songs and the song “Sons Go to Battle”. In the column “music” of the song “He didn’t return from the battle” in both installation sheets it is indicated - “processing by Boris Fedorov”. Surname Pozhlakova in later documents is not mentioned in any of the songs ^[28] . According to the memoirs of the head of the ensemble "Tonic" Boris Fedorov, in the early autumn of 1967, Viktor Turov turned to him with a request to record songs for his new picture. The initial plans of the director were associated with the singer Vladimir Makarov , however, the "concert" sound of the works performed by him did not suit either the director, the film crew, or the artistic advice. At the end of November of the same year, Turov announced that Vysotsky’s songs, which would more closely match the dynamic style of the film, will sound in the tape ^[29] . Preparation for recording, including arrangement , took place in an emergency mode for one day. The bard, who arrived in Minsk by night train, handed over the cassette to Fedorov and “stipulated some details of the instrumentation and the nature of the sound of the songs”. Direct studio work took place in the evening and at night ^[30] . As Fedorov specified, Vysotsky’s verses and music did not require special “combing”, and the ensemble sought to preserve his performing style ^[31] . Separate explanations of the head of "Tonika" related to the situation associated with the appearance during the installation of the picture "Sons go into battle" surname Pozhlakov:

As far as I remember, Pozhlakov did the clavier arrangement of Vysotsky’s songs, and there was an idea to use it in the movie, but it did not work. It was not Vysotsky’s music, but something completely different in spirit. <...> My surname is indicated as the author of music on some songs. Why this happened, I honestly do not know and can’t clarify anything. This is a clear mistake of the one who prepared the material for printing ^[32] .

Composer Solutions

The musicologist Shafer Naum Grigorievich ranked the tune "He did not return from battle" to "masterpieces of song creation." In his work, he praised the aesthetics, warmth and sincerity of the composer's solution to this song. He noted the lyricism and masculinity, the refinement of each musical phrase of this work, combined with the simplicity of melodic and rhythmic drawings. Despite the fact that it was far from always possible to create an arrangement revealing the depth of the song, suitable in style, with the song "He did not return from battle", things were different. The ensemble, accompanying the poet, managed to avoid "variety standardization", "artificial motorism." The arrangement did not turn the listeners away from the serious subtext. Before the recording, performed by Vysotsky, one could hear this seemingly ready-made song in the amount of three or four quarters. And, perhaps, it was the reaction of the listeners that influenced the decision to record the work in the amount of 4/4, thereby allowing to look behind the open curtain of the bard’s creative laboratory, which for many was an incomprehensible secret ^[33] .

During his lifetime, Vysotsky was perceived by the audience mainly as an actor and a bard, whose popularity was largely formed by diverging tape recordings throughout the country. The gradual recognition of him as a poet began in the first half of the 1980s, when the collection Nerve was published; according to the literary critic Igor Sukhikh , from that moment on, Vysotsky - already posthumously - had to “pass the test with a paper sheet” ^[34] . Among the first articles exploring the philological aspect of Vysotsky’s work was the publication of the theoretician and literary historian Sergei Kormilov, “On War and Human Unity” ( Russian Speech Journal, 1983, No. 3). As Kormilov himself later recalled, the first version of his article, entitled “The Poetic Language of Songs by Vladimir Vysotsky,” was rejected by the publication because of fears of objection from Soviet censorship , but the editors of the journal suggested the author prepare another version of the text analysis for publication - with a bias in military theme and with a different headline ^[35] .

Kormilov’s article, in particular, refers to the fact that “Vysotsky’s pathetics” often includes lyrical intonations. So, in the song “He did not return from battle” there are no words “hero, memory, sadness, sorrow”, however they are invisibly present in the consciousness of the storyteller. The word “fallen” is a synonym for the word “dead” in the text, and the monument to the fallen soldiers is the world left after them, in which everything that they valued during their lifetime is preserved ^[35] . “Vysotsky’s typical instantaneous transition from concreteness to generalization and vice versa, leaving no impression of artificiality. Here again, there are no words that usually speak of a world so hard conquered: a clear sky, a cloudless morning, dew, and at the same time it is all there, but it was said about this completely differently, not directly and at the same time exhaustively precisely ” ^[35] .

The theme of front-line brotherhood, which is one of the key in Vysotsky’s work, is revealed not only in the story of a comrade who didn’t return from the battle, but also in the similar song “There are eight of us, two of us”, telling about the unity of people connected by invisible family ties both during life and after the death of one of them ^[35] . A similar analysis was later made by the literary critic Vladimir Novikov , who, when studying the “coordinates of Vysotsky’s world,” included the song “He didn’t return from battle” in the conditional thematic series “War and Peace” (direction “Two”). There, according to Novikov, "a living soul always finds a soul mate" ^[36] .

When analyzing the text “He did not return from battle,” the researchers pay attention to numerous repetitions, due to which “there is a deepening of the psychological perspective.” For example, the personal pronouns “he” and “I” are used in various cases 21 times; the “not” particle is included in the combinations “not so”, “not to the beat”, “not to understand”, “they will not leave”, “did not return” 13 times; the words "sky", "forest", "water" are also used repeatedly. По мнению филолога Татьяны Долотовой, четыре раза произнесённое — применительно к этим существительным — местоимение «тот» образует фон, на котором контрастным элементом выглядит частица «только» («Только он не вернулся из боя»). За счёт этих художественных приёмов в песне создаётся «новая реальность, констатация факта, который лирический герой не может до конца осознать и с которым он не может примириться» ^[37] . Различные повторы, по утверждению филолога Анны Митиной, ссылающейся на мнение лингвиста Николая Шанского , превращают некоторые строки из песен Высоцкого в устойчивые фразеологические обороты — к ним, в частности, относится выражение «А в ответ — тишина» ^[38] . Игорь Сухих обращает внимание на количество афоризмов, вышедших из песен Высоцкого, — по словам литературоведа, в «Словарь современных цитат» включено более семидесяти его крылатых выражений, «пригодных на все случаи жизни» ^[34] . Среди них — «„Друг, оставь покурить“ — а в ответ тишина» и «Наши павшие — как часовые» ^[39] .

Концовка песни («Наши мёртвые нас не оставят в беде, // Наши павшие — как часовые…») содержит строки, которые, по мнению филолога Ольги Шилиной, придают тексту «мощное онтологическое звучание: память предстаёт здесь как некая связующая нить между поколениями, между павшими и живыми». Этот мотив единения душ, вероятно, восходит к давним христианским традициям и тем временам, когда поминальные обряды проходили без разделения на живых и усопших ^[40] .

• Список произведений Владимира Высоцкого
• Песенно-поэтическое творчество Владимира Высоцкого

• Бакин В. Владимир Высоцкий. Жизнь после смерти . — М. : Алгоритм , 2011. — 500 с. — (Лучшие биографии). — ISBN 978-5-457-51403-4 .
• Высоцкий В. Сочинения. В 2 томах / Предисл. С. Высоцкого; Подгот. текста и коммент. А. Е. Крылова . — М. : Художественная литература , 1991. — Т. 1. — 639 с. — ISBN 5-280-02361-2 .
• Гасанова М. А. Своеобразие военных песен Владимира Высоцкого // Вестник Дагестанского государственного университета . — 2016. — Т. 31 , вып. 2 . — С. 33—41 . — ISSN 2542-0313 . Архивировано 14 июня 2017 года.
• Душенко К. В. Словарь современных цитат: 5200 цитат и выражений XX и XXI вв., их источники, авторы, датировка . — М. : Эксмо , 2006. — 832 с. — ISBN 5-699-17691-8 .
• Новиков В. Высоцкий . — 7-е изд., доп.. — М. : Молодая гвардия , 2013. — 492 с. — (Жизнь замечательных людей). — ISBN 978-5-235-03554-6 .
• Раззаков Ф. В. Высоцкий: козырь в тайной войне. Другая версия биографии великого барда. . — М. : Эксмо, 2009. — С. 305. — 960 с. — (Книги Раззакова о великих артистах). — ISBN 978-5-699-36352-0 .
• Vladimir Vysotsky. Belarusian pages 4. Memories. Archival materials / Compilation and processing of texts B. Shakalo, A. Linkevich, Yu. Sidorovich. - Minsk , 2001.
• Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky: what? Where? when ?: bibliographic reference book (1960-1990) / ed. A.S. Epstein. - Kharkov : Progress; Moscow : Studio-L, 1992 .-- 399 p. - 50,000 copies. - ISBN 5-87258-006-1 .