Vladimir Vysotsky. I Write to You. (Commentary.)

Poems and Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. The Interrupted Flifht.

Commentary to the poem “I Write to You”.

Here comes to mind Rudyard Kipling’s poem “I have eaten your bread and salt...” (1885):

I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.

Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease —
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?

I have written the tale of our life
For a sheltered people’s mirth,
In jesting guise — but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.

Vladimir Vysotsky said that if you throw on one scale all his activities in the theater, in the cinema and on the radio, and add his concerts to it, and place on the other scale only his work on creating songs, the second scale will outweigh.

The poem was written in 1972.

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