Monument (Vysotsky's song)

The lyrical hero tells how “during life” he was not afraid of anything and did not fit “within the usual framework”, but after his death he was “narrowed”, “stunned” and “bent”, raising to the pedestal and retouching the features that he used to be different from others. The transformation into a monument begins immediately after death, with the removal of the death mask , from which “grave boredom passed through”, and the arrival of the undertaker with measurement.

The opening of the monument, set on the anniversary of death with a large crowd of people, is accompanied by “peppy singing” of the deceased from the tape recorder through the speakers, and his “desperate torn voice” is edited to “pleasant falsetto ”. The hero cannot be freed from the steel and stone of the monument, and he mentally throws to the fans:

The hero recalls the revived statue of the Commander, and he decides, following his example, to "walk" in the guise of a monument. He finally manages to wrest his leg from the pedestal, the monument leans in and falls, dispersing the crowd. This fall is accompanied by the realization: “It seems - alive!”

In the last lines of the text, which are not always included in the collections of Vysotsky’s works ^[1] , the author notes with satisfaction that with the fall the unique appearance returns to him and that he “left the people - from granite!” ^[2]

In collected works, the song dates back to 1973 ^[1] ( Vladimir Novikov considers it to be one of the “last songs” written at that time and considered by him in Vysotsky’s biography as an attempt to summarize the author’s life and creative experience ^[3] ). About 20 phonograms with the performance of the “Monument” are known, dating from May 1973 to March 1978 ^[4] . The notes to the “Collected Works in Four Volumes” emphasize that sometimes the author performed the “Monument” not as a song, but as a poem - without accompaniment and melody ^[1] . Vysotsky himself in 1978 said: “At first I made it a song, and then I stopped singing and left it in the form of poems” ^[5] .

The song was included in the 2nd series of the anthology “ Songs of Russian Bards ” published in France in 1977 (cassette 3 of the magnetic collection, in the collection of texts entitled “I was tall and slender in life ...”) ^[6] . In the USSR, the text of the “Monument” was officially published only in 1986 - in No. 9 of the journal Aurora ^[1] , and then in the first issue of the journal Chemistry and Life for 1988 - in a compilation entitled with a quote from this song “C magnetized tapes ... " ^[7]

In the double album of the company “ Melody ” “... Though I’ll stand a little more on the edge ...”, released in 1987, the text of the “Monument” performed by Leonid Filatov completed the second disc ^[8] . In the series “At the concerts of Vladimir Vysotsky”, also produced by the company “Melody”, the song “Monument” was included in the disc No. 12 “The Long Jump” (recorded in 1976 from the collection of M. Kryzhanovsky ) and in the disc No. 20 “My Hamlet” ( entry for May 1973). These albums were released in 1990 and 1991, respectively ^[9] . In France, the company Chant du Monde released the CD Le Monument ("Monument") ^[10] . The poem has been translated into Bulgarian several times - among the translators Zhivka Ivanov, Venet Mandev, Vasil Sotirov ^{[Comm. 1]} .

Literary critic V. A. Zaitsev takes the origins of the poem “Monument” by Vysotsky to a literary tradition originating from Horace 's ode “To Melpomene” (“ Exegi monumentum aere perenntus ... ”) and from an even more ancient Egyptian poem “The Glorification of Scribes”. The theme of literary heritage as a monument to the author in Russian literature developed “according to Horace”: for example, already in 1747, the “Monument” written by white verse by Lomonosov appeared . Derzhavin's “ Monument ” (“To the Museum”), created in 1895, and Pushkin’s poem of the same name , dated 1836, became widely known. Researchers consider Baratynsky ’s poems “My gift is wretched and my voice is not loud ...” (1828) and “Muse” (1829) to be a development of the “Monument” theme, and the “Non exegi monumentum” by the Decembrist poet G.V.Batenkov became a kind of polemic with classics ( 1856). At the beginning of the 20th century, the theme was developed by Bryusov , in whom two poems “Monument” appeared in 1912 at once - an almost literal translation of Horace (“I erected a monument eternally copper ...”) and the rhythmic-intonational development of Pushkin’s poem (with the epigraph “Sume superbiam ...” - “Filled with pride ...”). Subsequently, the image of a “living” (or revived) monument and, as a rule, the name “Monument” appeared in the works of Yaroslav Smelyakov , Boris Slutsky , Andrey Voznesensky ^[12] . Yuri Shatin writes about this Russian literary tradition and the place in it of Vysotsky’s song:

Researchers may also consider Vysotsky's “Monument” within the framework of the topic of the “dispute with the classics,” Mayakovsky occupies the most prominent place. So, in the 1924 poem “Jubilee”, Mayakovsky disputes the traditional view of poetry as a “monument” to its authors, talking about its direct participation in modern life ^[12] . The author of the "Jubilee" brought Pushkin off the pedestal, going for a walk with him, and threatened to lay dynamite under his own monument ^[14] (the lines “I should rely on the monument during my lifetime. // I would put dynamite - well, splatter!” Vysotsky himself spoke from the stage in the performance of the Taganka Theater “Listen!” ^[15] ). A critical understanding of the theme of the monument to poets also appears in the 1930 poem “ Out loud ”, in which Mayakovsky dreams of talking to his descendants, “like living with the living” ^[12] :

Vladimir Novikov, paying attention to the similarity of ideas of Mayakovsky and Vysotsky, however, writes that Vysotsky’s theme is more universal. Mayakovsky "too much ... clicks on" I, "while Vysotsky’s lyrical hero is any poet at all, and his appearance (" I was tall and slender in life ") does not necessarily coincide with the real appearance of the author himself ^{[14 ]} . In addition, literary scholars note that in the text of Vysotsky, the monument appears not only as an unnecessary detail, but as something unnatural, killing itself. Yuri Shatin writes that in the “mythological art” symbolizing the resurrection, Vysotsky “is associated with the necrosis of the once living form”, it is “framed”, narrowing the infinity of the personality, and the hypocritical bustle around its discovery is lifeless ^[13] . Novikov’s monument is a case that is put on a living person ^[16] , “this is always a distorted copy, this is a prison for a living soul” ^[14] . The parallel between the monument and the stuffy and cramped prison cell is also drawn by the Bulgarian researcher Irina Zakharieva ^[17] .

In the text of Vysotsky, there is also a direct reference to Mayakovsky: if the latter Lenin is “more alive than all the living”, then Vysotsky writes “And I thought that I did not threaten // To turn out all the dead dead ...” ^{[1] [14]} . At the same time, the central image of the final part of the text - the image of the statue of the Commander descended from the pedestal - refers already to the work of the author of the most famous Russian “Monument” - to “The Stone Guest ” by Pushkin ^{[12] [2] [Comm. 2]} . A. Krylov and A. Kulagin find yet another reminiscence in the text: the words “Those who approached with the usual standard - retreated” have something in common with the review of Mayakovsky in Yevgeny Yevtushenko 's poem “The Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station ” ^[19] .

Another meaning layer in the “Monument”, according to Anatoly Kulagin, connects this text with Shakespeare’s “ Hamlet ”. The poem was written at the beginning of 1973, when Vysotsky’s work was especially strong philosophical “Hamletian” motifs ^[18] , and in the episode with the removal of the death mask, which erases the individual and replaces it with the “grave boredom” of toothless smile, Kulagin sees a parallel with the scene with Yorika’s skull: “Where are your puns now, your funny tricks, your couplets? <...> Anything left to gossip over your own toothlessness? ” An important role in the poem, according to the literary critic, is played by the motive of a cardinal discrepancy between the hero’s self-awareness and the way he looks in the eyes of others. The same theme sounds in another Vysotsky’s poem of the same period - “ My Hamlet ”, but in the “Monument” it is also reinforced by the acuity of posthumous perception ^[20] .

• Vysotsky V. S. Monument // Collected Works in four volumes / Compiled and written by V. I. Novikov , O. I. Novikov . - M .: Time; WebKniga, 2009. - T. 2. Songs. 1971-1980. - ISBN 978-5-9691-0413-6 .
• Zaitsev V. A. “Monument” by Vysotsky and the traditions of Russian poetry // World of Vysotsky: research and materials, issue III / Comp. A.E. Krylov and V.F.Sherbakova. - M .: State Cultural Center-Museum of V. S. Vysotsky, 1999. - T. 2 . - S. 264—272 .
• Krylov A.E. , Kulagin A.V. Vysotsky as an encyclopedia of Soviet life: Commentary on the poet’s songs. - 2nd ed., Rev. and add. - M .: Bulat, 2010 .-- S. 246-248. - ISBN 978-5-91-457-008-5 .
• Kulagin A.V. Pushkin and others // Vysotsky's Poetry: Creative Evolution . - Ed. 3rd, overwork. - Voronezh: Echo, 2013 .-- S. 156-158. - ISBN 978-5-87930-100-5 .
• Novikov V.I. Draw a line, put an end // Vladimir Vysotsky. - M .: Young Guard, 2013. - S. 201-203. - (The life of wonderful people). - ISBN 978-5-235-03554-6 .