Artist Vicky Stonebridge and Musician Tommy Beavitt at Inchmore art Gallery near Inverness
Vicky Stonebridge and Tommy Beavitt at Inchmore art Gallery near Inverness for the opening of a collaboration celebrating the work of Vladimir Vysotsky.
Lyricale
My English translation/adaptation of Vysotsky's famous love song Liricheskaya (Лирическая), performed at the 2011 Burns-Vysotsky festival in Ekaterinburg. This is a cultural rather than a literal translation; the last two concluding couplets express a rather different semantic meaning to the original. To me, the idea of the palace being already taken seems quite specific to the Soviet context in which Vysotsky wrote his song. In the British cultural context, it's obvious that the palace is already taken -- by the Queen! So my bittersweet ending is a translation of Vysotsky's thought to context of late capitalism in the UK. Apologies to any Russians who find this a betrayal of Vysotsky -- in my view, it's not possible to perform a poetic translation into a different cultural context without performing similar betrayals. I feel that my version is emotionally true to Vysotsky's song (though others will no doubt disagree).