Poems and Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. Life Is Twisted.

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Commentary to “A Ballad of the Bath-House”.

This ballad narrates about the men on the Heights, that are such souls as are not decidedly on the side of merit or decidedly on the side of sin, but evenly bal­anced on a partition be­tween heaven and hell, and who hope for the mercy of Allah, glorious and exalted is He (or, in other words, about the souls in purgatory).

Here comes to mind Gabdulla Tukay’s poem “Sadness” (1910).

The ballad was written in 1971.

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