The Letter (Письмо)

"The Letter", Vladimir Vysotsky, USSR, 1967 One of Vysotsky's many war songs, this one featuring a young soldier who receives a letter just before a battle. v-vissotsky.ru offers the following commentary from Vysotsky: "For the film 'Ivan Makarovich' I wrote the song 'Half an hour before the attack'. A boy sings this song in the film to the accompaniment of an accordion. We filmed this episode near Minsk, in a market. And the boy sang this song. Women, who sold milk, sour cream - they all cried. They remembered that time. After all, in Belarus every fourth person died." - Vladimir Vysotsky, "Monologues From The Stage", Kharkov, 2000, pg. 30). v-vissotsky.ru also adds the following notes: It was not used in the film. It was performed by the author during a screen test for the film "The Second Attempt of Victor Krokhin". ----- As the beginning of this video indicates, this song has some alternate titles: "Letter Before The War" (Russian has no "a" or "the" so feel free to add whichever one you'd like) and "Half An Hour Before The Attack" (which is also the first line of the song). The narrative of the song is as such: ---- A young soldier receives a letter a letter from home. This is usually good news, "it's as if you're not here" (meaning you mentally leave behind the battlefield) if it's from your fiancee or parents. But something different happens, and it seems that they hurried to deliver the letter in vain. The letter is as such: "Sorry that I was silent. I won't wait." And that's all, save for a postscript at the bottom: "I'm leaving to somewhere far away. Just calmly battle, and forgive, if it comes to that." Together with the first explosion of the battle, the young soldier cries out sadly: "Postman, what have you hauled to me!? A second before death, in a triangular envelope, I've received a bullet wound!" The young soldier steps out of the trench with a machine gun around his neck, and he decides not to protect himself from any fragments. He "embraces the earth", and the wind sweeps away the scraps of the letter. --- A tragic song, in short. FOR MORE INTERPRETIVE TRANSLATIONS: I highly recommend the translation database available at wysotsky.com. Here's a link for the translations of this particular song:   wysotsky.com/0002/008.asp?n=260