Vladimir Vysotsky Let there be a Greet changes ahe

ESSAY- MEMOIR
by Vladimir Morgan
Ко Дню рождения В. Высоцкого

1.
During the sweltering summer of 1972, in what was then Leningrad, on the Chugunnaya Street, in the box of an office space, called the deliberation room, by the front door – at the end of which, and where at that time stayed the poet G. Pozhenyan with two other guys unknown to me, I, for the first time, met, face to face, with the greatest man of all men who lived with me in this world - Vladimir Vysotsky.
I use the epithet “great” not in derogation of merit of our other contemporaries. Each is good in their own way.
But, due to a deep emotional shock experienced by me long ago, from the first, once underground, listening of the songs by the “Wheeze”; I had once and for all the impression that Vysotsky - is us, is our era. Irrelative to whether or not a person has created an epoch-making piece like “Eugene Onegin” and “War and Peace”; genre depends on the state of society itself. For example: the ill-fated era of NEP in the Soviet Union is best displayed in the apparently candid adventures of Ostap Bender Ibragimovich. Later there even emerged an historical anecdote. A student from the future is asked: “Who is Leonid Brezhnev?” Answer: “a minor political figure from the era of Vladimir Vysotsky.”
And even more surprising now, is that in the whole of socialist realism with all its genre variety, reigning then in the Soviet Empire in all the languages, in our time there was not found any other form of poetic expression, but what came to us in eight hundred poems of urban ballads and songs of Vysotsky. There was nothing else. Though, with a passionate heart, the poet asked God for there to be something else.
In verse, song and artistic creations Vysotsky has it all. From Ninka the cleaner and street hooligans, flight in a civil aircraft and fighters of the penal battalion, to the story of Paris and an informal conversation with a retired General Secretary of the former “Native Communist Party”; Portraits, leading actors, a vast thematic breadth - irrefutable proof of the immensity of talent.

2.
So what was his, or rather, our era? As has now turned out we transferred right from the armoured car of Lenin to “Our locomotive, fly forward!” and immediately rolled into a mass-deaf, and sometimes openly solitary dissatisfaction; in all levels of government, in the ideological trenches and seasonal work of Soviet inhabitants. Despite the inertial pressure of the party apparatus.
Viktor Tsoi much later than Vysotsky threateningly demanded in his songs: “We want changes!” But one had to have an absolutely great prophetic intuition to foresee the future, while still in the seventies to feel that the train is derailed, and to speak as a national poet, by saying: “Let there be great changes ahead – I’ll never fall in love with that.” In everything, most importantly, Vladimir Vysotsky, as no one else in the Soviet times, managed to embody, in his work, the secret axiom of Russian Literature: artistic, poetic word - it is not a refined game in sparkling beads, but the utmost burden of exemplifying in himself the truth of life and the indestructible search for justice.
“Tell me, Seryoga?”

3.
All of this is difficult, and I write this so as not to confuse the reader with grandiloquence, however, for clarity.
Because at the time of the meeting with Vysotsky I was to some extent trained in the system of higher
philological education, and was able to distinguish sincerity from phoniness in poetry, a deep interest of the author from speculation on the theme. And he himself was not bad; did not go there, where the “party and government” pointed people. I only will add: we wanted the best. As they say, “lived and not grieved and such a thing received”.
And that summer of ’72, I spent the whole year working as a reporter-day labourer on the radio of the
Leningrad Optical and Mechanical Association, abbreviated LOMO.
My great namesake by that time also did well: in a temper dropped out of Construction Institute, where he studied at the urging of his parents, graduated from drama school, tried out his acting ability on the stages of two or three theatres in Moscow and arrived in the famous city on the Neva, now in the role of the immortal Hamlet. Taganka Theatre staged Shakespeare in the Palace of Culture named after one of the Soviet fiveyear plans; I do not remember exactly what the count was.
Artistic intellectuals and Soviet-partisan community of North Palmyra became unusually thrilled to see a
hitherto unknown Prince of Denmark, pronouncing Shakespeare soliloquy in translation by Boris Pasternak on an empty stage, at the edge of a freshly-dug grave, in sport tights
and a guitar at the ready ...
Some approved, others - not so much and some “for”, some – “against”.
To tell the truth, heated discussions around the image of the new Hamlet, personified on stage by Vysotsky, turned at times into hand-to-hand combat; especially in university dormitories.
And suddenly, in an environment of local journalists and newspapermen spread surprising news that
everyone’s hero will “perform” his songs in a conference room of LOMO. Someone even said, to a knownothing such as me, that every time, while visiting St. Petersburg, Vladimir especially loved this place for meetings with his listeners. Indeed, here at the time was one of the best stages with acoustic equipment in the Soviet Union of those days, with an intelligent and appreciative audience that loved the singer.

4.
Former LOMO - one of the best and biggest companies in the world of optics, radio, television, sound
systems for aerospace and underwater exploration. At the time, there worked about forty thousand different people: all wore music production headphones, almost all entirely in white robes and slippers, in hermetically sealed rooms with a given microclimate, and the Polytechnic Institute at the base of the enterprise. Becoming the norm was a highly qualified worker, and even with two engineering diplomas.
Duralumin, glass, concrete...Cushioned chairs of the spacious conference-hall amphitheatre encircled
the small, friendly, open, semioval stage, equipped with a stationary microphone recording studio. And
the company itself, incidentally, was considered “closed”, of defence importance, and other journalists offsite were simply turned away from this most significant object. Information of local newsmen, delivered to the outside world, was carefully filtered through the secret department. And one more thing: in the large circulation newspaper of LOMO, called the “Banner”, during those years Sergei Dovlatov was working nominally, drawing material from there for his first short stories and growing there (and everywhere) into the biggest writer of our time.

5.
With all the strength of my legs I rushed to my radio editor, telling him about the imminent arrival of Vladimir Vysotsky. She made a strained wince.
- What do you propose to us?
- A musical-literary composition! - I shouted in a young-na;ve way, having been more than once broken,
though still not learning my lesson.
By the time, I managed to air the poetry of the still persecuted Edward Mezhelaytisa, to supply with music the soft, “chamber” world of the Leningrad poetess Tamara Nikitina, and other rarely printed lyricists, not counting the local talent from the literary association of LOMO. It seemed to me easily possible to create a radio composition to the works of Vladimir Vysotsky, taking into account the high degree of the brilliant originality of his poetic talent and the extensive official recognition of the poet, as a leading actor of Taganka.
But my editor was a woman approaching retirement age, knowing all the secrets and twists of the party life.
At the wonderful studio “MeZah” she often secretly copied the songs of the same Vysotsky, selling reels at 100ru apiece (at that time!), single-handedly using the access right of bringing in and taking out of the tape through the checkpoint. To me, however, the budding communist-speculator firmly put:
- No! Maybe only five minutes in the “News”.
Her scepticism and wariness were incomprehensible to me. In those days I was only thirty and still driven by healthy instincts of a naturally healthy man, yet completely failed to react to the fact
that only four years ago, in the hot summer of ‘68, under the chain treads of Soviet tanks
was destroyed the «Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and that in ‘72 began the usual
‘cleaning’ in the ranks of artistic intellectuals of the Union.
According to my current fellow-Montrealer, a remarkable artist Stanislav Kholmogorov, who worked in the Taganka theatre for twelve years, the passions and fear of the expected devastating crush of the troupe is expressed in the song of Vysotsky's “It’s not yet evening” in which the favourite theatre is associated with the pirate ship “Le Corsaire” which could scarcely stay afloat. Only a desperate phone call to “the turntable,» by the chief director Yuri Lyubimov to the General Secretary of Brezhnev helped him save his stage creation.
All this, of course, was not known at the time, neither to me nor the editor. But she was more experienced than me. The upcoming meeting in LOMO with Vysotsky was not announced anywhere in the city in advance, and I, professionally delighted at the absence of writing brethren, ran with a portable, Hungarian made tape recorder “Reporter – 5” to an interview with the poet. While my boss instantly went to the party committee to hold a council: whether to broadcast the message about Vysotsky or not?
6.
Another difficulty quite unexpectedly caught up with me at the door of the conference hall. Vysotsky’s fans - young women workers and urban girls, who “by pulling strings” managed to get in to the territory of the head company, have flooded all entrances and exits.
As it is expected of rivals, they stood in silence, estranged from one another; densely, as an indestructible wall. But when before the show, Vysotsky appeared in the cordon of national body-guards, hysterical admirers of the poet rushed to him in a pushing and shoving mass. To break through it would be terribly fun, but physically impossible. Tough guys managed to squeeze the unreceived genius into an oblong room. Five of them took a perimeter defence at the door and together with the shouting calls of young sirens “Volodya, Volodya!” mingled in my heated baritone “Press!” Press” “The press is here!” At this point I furiously worked with my elbows, raising the red book with gold stamping over the head as I shouted.
The bewildered bodyguard put his head to the door and said to the space:
- There's some kind of press...
- Who are you? - Abruptly asked a muffled bass as though it has caught a chill.
- I am the correspondent of the local radio!
- Ah-ah-ah…Then come in, - smilingly extended Vysotsky. Briefly, military-style and, yet, sympathetically he asked: - What's the need?
Vysotsky resided at the middle of the table for the Presidency, reigning in the center of the room, decorated like the furniture all around, akin to mahogany.
- Only a small radio talk for our listeners - union workers - I said.

7.
In the song, which appeared after, called “Interview” Vysotsky gave an unflattering feedback on the activities of mass media, but I believe that this is not about me. And the cautious Soviet journalists, I think at the time, did not spoil with their attention. Perhaps that is why Vysotsky raised his eyebrows in surprise to my words, looked intently at me and roared in a stronger voice:
- After...After the concert. Ten minutes, no more.
But I did not leave, and remained closer to the corner of another table, long as the landing
platform, which stood at the side, by the right wall of the entrance.
- Now that there sits a correspondent with us - said G. Pozhenyan - I will recount to all one incident, about which I heard from a military sailor...I do not know what part of the world's oceans, their submarine, had an accident and fell to the ocean floor. Lying at the bottom, the sailors endured for forty-eight hours, suffocating from lack of oxygen, drenched in sweat. Several members of the crew went mad, and among them an officer, party official, but in the isolated compartment of our sailor and his comrades turned out to be a taperecorder with the songs of Vysotsky. All those long, terrible hours the sufferers constantly played Volodya’s cassettes, and survived; the special emotional state, which helped the sailors to endure, was produced by the song “Save Our Souls.”
Squinting, as if peering into the darkness through the spotlights, the theme of heroism was picked up by Vysotsky; – Well, I have recently had an occasion to rehearse...We stood on stage at the edge of the grave. Where there was a certain wooden beam. And suddenly my partner stumbles and flies headfirst straight towards the corner’s sharp edge. My heart jumped. But I managed to catch this guy and tell him: “Now you owe me your life till the grave”. And he laughed: “No, he says, now you have to support me till retirement!”
In the course of the story I first got a glimpse of the poet and noted his excellent physical fitness, sturdily built body of a man who was not very tall, with excellent movement coordination and instant reaction. I was struck by a two-sided impression, made by his face. By his appearance, the face of the poet could quite easily pass for an ordinary Moscow hooligan, if not for some subtle, perhaps, acquired later, with the tireless work on his persona, hint of inner nobility. Hair bang, heavy chin, bushy eyebrows, protruding lower lip and constantly restrained inner strength. It seemed that in his account Vysotsky was interested in the moral aspect of the “rescue - gratitude.” He apparently was thinking about it, when he noticed that I stubbornly had long since secretly turned on my “Reporter”.
- Well, ask me already - he smiled understandingly.
- Vladimir - clearly and boldly, as if on the air, I asked my first question. - Can you tell me how to call you by your patronymic?
- Why is this to you so important? - Unexpectedly sharply and seriously responded Vysotsky.
- You are a popular poet, a famous artist of the most renowned theatre in the country and abroad, you are older than me and our meeting is official. I cannot in front of radio listeners call you just Volodya. Somehow it is incongruous with the situation. - As I could, I explained.
- Well, Semyonovich, - reluctantly muttered Vladimir. And retorted: - What's yours?
- Well, Ivanovich. - I picked up in the same tone. - So, Vladimir Semyonovich, please tell me how you evaluate your work? You – who is a minstrel, bard, singer?
- I am a poet! - Solid as a mathematical formula known by heart, said Vysotsky. - I am a poet who writes poetry and performs them with a guitar. I never sing another's song or poem. I think that, if Pushkin had
lived in our time, he'd also performed his poetry with a guitar. He seems to have played some musical instrument.
- Who is your favourite poet?
- I love all in various ways. You cannot love just one poet discriminatingly.
- If you are a worker of the written word, where and which of your books can be read by our audience?
Vysotsky delayed answering. G. Pozhenyan intervened: “That question I will answer. We, his friends, are helping Volodya with the release of the first poetry collection. It will be released soon. We hope.”
- And what advice would you give to young people. How to become famous or, say well-known?
- Take to the streets, for example, Gorky Street - Vysotsky shrugged his shoulder in a shiver - select a window which is biggest - and kick! So that pieces of glass shatter down. - His examples were, as they say, of “the adversary.” – Depends on which fame one strives for.

8.
Vysotsky was unable to continue. The door was rashly opened and, having escaped from the hands of bodyguards, into the room rushed in, a flushed from the fight, blonde with false eyelashes and blush on
the cheeks, in a dazzling silver dress with lurex, all resembling a cosmic creation. Hypnotically entranced she approached directly towards Vysotsky. Well, not at Mr. Pozhenyan, would she approach, who was
sitting near, with moustache, a fat, and elderly man!
- What will it be! What will it be! - Anxiously pounded the thought in my head. - Who is she, this girl, this young woman? Betrayed and abandoned? Seduced and defamed?
I became really worried about the outcome of the interview. Moreover, since the hands of “a fleeting phenomenon” were strangely and even ominously behind her. But Vysotsky, who was sitting at a table half turned towards me, did not change his position, only stared at the girl in a sulky boxing defence.
- The dead silence established in the room. It seemed, any moment now something would happen...But not having received the anticipated reaction of adoration from the poet, the former passionate fan turned around in disappointment and – what do you know, where did everything go to? - Not fluttered, but ran out heavily. Oh, God! What expected this girl in absentia love, whom did she anticipate to see and whom to meet?
- So, - the even voice of Vysotsky brought me back to the prose of life – Let’s continue our conversation...

9.
- Vladimir Semyonovich, please tell me how originated the concept of the unfamiliar to the audience image of Hamlet, whom you play on stage? – I asked a question in the second part of our interview.
And once again, in front of my eyes, flickered the red arrow on the blue scale of the sound indicator, responsive to every sigh and a pause of the “banned” celerity, sitting in front of me.
- One day - Vysotsky dictated thoughtfully – we were with Yuri Lyubimov in a fast train in one compartment. I told Yuri how I see Hamlet and the whole play. Beginning with a monologue “To be or not to be”; there, in this sentence, a question mark is nowhere present in Shakespeare. And we must not canonically assume that Hamlet - is a sort of half-mad person entangled in the nets of circumstances. No, Hamlet is a street artist who has not lost his mind. He - the prince, courtier, he was taught this science: to manage oneself, his destiny and people. His age is of quite a mature man. Not accidentally, but deliberately, he impales with his sword an eavesdropping adversary behind the curtain. He consciously crushes all his enemies. It is for this he arrived by ship from England to restore order in his home...”
And then, in the conference room rang the bell for the first call.
- What would you like to wish our radio listeners-optics? - I blurted out knowingly.
- To be healthy. To produce more glasses, binoculars, photo cameras, microscopes. Well, what else is there?
- And to you, Vladimir Semyonovich, further creative successes and achievements!
I drew from my pocket a theatre program of “Hamlet” and asked Vysotsky for an autograph; His mind already on stage, he literally repeated his wish word for word, adding only “Dear Optics”. And we went into the auditorium.

10.
“This evening, I remember for a lifetime.” There’s no other way to say it. Light in the theatre dimmed during the performance. Old-fashioned Russian shirt of crimson color with a hot hue was tucked into trousers, this time it was a stage costume for Vysotsky. In the opening of the shirt the veins on the throat of the wheezing poet dangerously swelled. From time to time, making sharp movements on the stage, he spat pink saliva into the garbage bin at the edge. But the poet did not stop singing, transforming into his characters, and even into a fighter-jet. The audience enthusiastically grasped concealed irony in the poems of the poet, and boiling pain, escaping from his tortured throat, it seemed, was the pain of a lost human dignity.
The final consonants in words were shocking. No one sang like that before Vysotsky. Conventional rules, from the youth of mankind, prescribed the singer to «swallow» consonants, achieving ideal open-sounding vowels. Innovator by nature and a rebel, Vysotsky overturned what existed before him. He “stretched out” seemingly dead end sounds of words, and they came to life, obedient to his incredible efforts. Everything will turn out fine.
Soon, a new manner of performance will become a scoring standard. But Vysotsky was here first.

11.
I do not know if anyone before me had the courage to interview the poet, persecuted by the party? It is least likely. There were no films and videotapes of theatre performances, in which the Prometheus-Vysotsky was involved. In the whirlwind of life's storms, I lost part of my material, and the rest I sent to the Commission on literary heritage. But the farther away the time, the bigger and more boldly appears for descendants the complex and multifaceted creativity of Vysotsky.
At that time on Prezhevalsky Street, in the October district of Leningrad, near the Theatre Square and that very Palace of Culture named after the …nth in a row of futile five-year plans, in the place of Mr.Raskolnikov lived fared my younger and only brother, Alexander. I saw Vysotsky once again for the last time in the summer when we went about our business.
In the familiar crimson blouse, boots, riding on a saddled horse, the poet triumphantly crossed the asphalt area of Theatre Square and the tangled tram rails there. The policemen, who were constantly on duty here, did not stop the rider. They knew him by face. And who suspected then that the singer of the era would be called the “wheezing” poet of the late twentieth century? In the heat of perestroika and bloody Sabbath (read “counterrevolutions”) obscurely was killed my brother, Alexander; Chechen gunmen killed my seventy-year old father Ivan Danilovich for the fact that he spoke Russian. But the herald of the future, Vladimir Vysotsky is memorable to me just like that: the sun, riding on a fastidious
horse in the clatter of hooves. Where did the poet get his horse in this stone city? As if it was borrowed from one of the numerous statues of Leningrad-St Petersburg-Peeter-North Palmyra...

Montreal,
07/08/1999 -2009.