Poems and Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. The Hill.
Commentary to the song “The Hill”.
There are the six main messengers to mankind highlighted in the Holy Qur’an — the Prophets Adam, Noah, Abraham and Moses, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon them all. The seventh main messenger is Porphyry Ivanov, peace be upon him, whose appearance is similar to the appearance of One who is like to a son of man on the allegorical picture drawn in the Revelation to Saint John (these seven messengers, by all appearances, are the seven lamps of fire burning mentioned there). And the eighth main messenger is the awaited Mahdi (that is the guided one), who will fill the earth with fairness and justice — and for the eighth time, as the song says, we shall conquer the hill for ever (we have conquered and left it seven times).
These messengers are also symbolized by the colonists of Lincoln Island, whose adventures were narrated by Jules Verne in the novel “The Mysterious Island” (1875) — at first there were also six of them. The repentant former robber from the neighboring island Tom Ayrton, who joined them later, symbolizes the God of the Earth, and the captain of the ship “Duncan” Robert Grant, who rescued the colonists, symbolizes the Mahdi.
The number of members of the Polynesian expedition of Thor Heyerdahl (1947), narrated by him in the book “The Kon-Tiki Expedition” (1948), was also six, and the decisive assistance to their daring enterprise was provided by the President of Peru and, by his order, the naval minister of this country.
The song was written in 1965, its part was used in the film “I Came from Childhood” (1966).