Poems and Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. The Messenger.

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Commentary to the song “Tumen Oil”.

The thirteenth stanza draws the living image of Porphyry Ivanov, peace be upon him:

Producing lots of sparks, the gusher played, And in their light, I’ve seen the God of Oil: He held two cans, was naked to the waist, And took with pleasure a cold shower of oil.

The messenger of Allah wore only shorts (which covered his body from his navel to the lower parts of his knees as it is ordered in Islam), and he used to pour upon himself two buckets of cold water four times a day.

Vladimir Vysotsky also wrote about the advent of the God of the Earth in the song “The brains are struck and boil in every cell...” (1970):

And the Creator has come down from Heaven. Where does He live now?.. One day on the parvis, One could see an old homeless man who yelled, “I want you to aid God in such a hardcase!”

Indeed, once Porfiry Ivanov, peace be upon him, came to church and asked to give him all the proceeds of that day, but he was refused.

The tenth stanza says about the author of this publication, who served in the Navy, and who edited and interpreted many of the poems and songs presented here:

The seaman I so often argued with — I don’t remember on which ship he served — Confused just everything, and cried with fear, “Bros, land in view! it’s for sure land, my bros!”

The author believes that the poet would agree to what he said about his poetry. Islam was glo­ri­fied by great Russian poets and writers — Alexander Pushkin (this is well written about in the Russian article “Islam in the Works of A. S. Pushkin” by Haris Iskhakov) and Ivan Bu­nin, Leo Tol­stoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky — and Vladimir Vysotsky continued this tradition.

Another song where Vladimir Vysotsky wrote about the author is “A Case at the Mine” (1967), which narrates about the former naval officer who has gotten into trouble.

And, since the author happened to spend several years in Siberia, it is pertinent to recall here his favorite song about those places, which was written by Sergey Galganov and is called “The Ishim Waltz” (there is a video recording of a performance of this song).

The song was written in 1972.

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