Poems and Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. A Ballad of Fighting.
Commentary to “A Ballad of the Children of Books”.
As the epigraph to this ballad, there can be used Lucius Annaeus Seneca’s words: “Vivere militare est.” (“To live is to fight.”)
Another title of the ballad is “A Ballad of Fighting”.
The children of books symbolize the people of the Holy Scriptures — the Muslims, the Christians and the Jews.
The ballad was written for the film “The Arrows of Robin Hood”, see commentary to “A Ballad of Time”.
The presented text is adapted from Vyacheslav Chetin, Sergey Roy and George Tokarev’s translations.