Vladimir Vysotsky - (Paperback)

About the Book

Legendary singer, songwriter, and poet Vladimir Vysotsky is loved and admired like no other. A recent survey placed him as the most important cultural figure of twentieth-century.

Book Synopsis

Amongst people of the former USSR, legendary singer, songwriter and poet Vladimir Vysotsky (1938-1980) is loved and admired like no other. A recent survey placed him as the most important cultural figure of twentieth-century Russia, and some say he is the greatest Russian poet since Pushkin; others talk of him as the Russian Bob Dylan, or Jacques Brel. His songs championed the underdog, and even today, forty years after his death at a tragically young age, people in countries as far apart as Bulgaria and Kazakhstan weep at the mere mention of his name. Yet remarkably this is the first landmark collection of his lyrics and poetry in English.

The translators set themselves the hard task of translating Vysotsky's songs as first of all songs, not poetry, enabling readers to perform them in English. This collection of lyrics also includes sample sheet music for six Vysotsky's songs. Vysotsky himself used the seven-string guitar; the songs are adapted here to the western six-string classical guitar by John Farndon and West-End singer Anthony Cable.

This bilingual volume (Print Edition) gives a chance to enjoy Vysotsky's works both in English and Russian, just by flipping the book over.

Review Quotes

"Farndon, along with his cotranslator Olga Nakston, and musical collaborator Anthony Cable, has gone to the painstaking effort of not merely translating these works for the enjoyment of readers, but preparing them to be performed coherently in English. There is rhythm, they rhyme, they make sense, they are entertaining, they are moving and they are to be sung. It is a songbook." Thom Dinsdale, East-West Review

"Reading this collection of lyrics has certainly introduced me to one of Russia's most distinctive voices and the work of a man whose songs still mean so much to so many people. With his sympathy for the contradictions and the shortcomings of human nature, Vysotsky is a reminder that the best Russian culture is so often found on the margins, positioning itself at an angle to the orthodoxies required by those in power. He deserves to be much better known and appreciated amongst English readers and listeners than he is, and this selection of his work is a great place to start." Peter Lowe, RUSSIAN ART + CULTURE

Vysotsky "was an iconic poet, singer and songwriter and an extremely popular actor with legendary acting, both in theater (he played Hamlet at the Taganka Theater) and movies (his most famous role was policeman Zheglov in the cult Soviet TV series 'The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed'). He had a very deep voice with a very well recognized wheezing, which made all of his singing even more dramatic and eccentric." Alexandra Guzeva, Russia Beyond