July 25, 1980
Between three and half past four in the morning, Vladimir Vysotsky died. Poet, actor, bard.
I'm less than half a century old—forty-something. I'm alive, protected by you and the Lord for twelve years. I have something to sing about when I appear before the Almighty, I have something to justify myself to Him with.
These lines are from a poem Vysotsky wrote as a farewell to Marina Vlady on June 11, 1980, on a postcard from the Hotel Viazur: "And ice below and above—I'm torn between, should I break through the top or drill through the bottom?" Vysotsky was leaving after a week and a half of living in the south of France and a week and a half of interrupted treatment at the Charenton special clinic. He told his wife about his illness and his first morphine injection in the spring of 1980. She wrote:
"Now I know everything. You dared to utter the 'forbidden' words."
In a month and a half, Vysotsky would be gone. Friends described the song "My Sadness" as his last poetic text—he performed it for the first time on July 14 at a concert at the Moscow Research Institute of Experimental Machines and Metrology.
I walked, I wandered, stepping now with my heel, now with my toe,
I feel like I’m breathing and feeling good…
Suddenly a serpentine melancholy, a green melancholy,
She managed to jump on my neck
He gave his last solo concert on July 16th in Korolev, near Moscow. His last song performed in public was "I Don't Love":
I don't like myself when I'm a coward.
It annoys me when innocent people are beaten.
I do not like when they climb into my soul
Especially when they spit on it.
His last stage appearance took place on July 18th, playing Hamlet. Three days later, he was no longer able to play Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment. When the head of personnel asked him about his unusual pallor ("What's wrong, Volodya?"), he replied, "I'm going to die soon."
And, smiling, they broke my wings,
My wheezing sometimes sounded like a howl,
And I went numb from pain and powerlessness
And he only whispered: “Thank you for being alive.”
From July 25th to 28th, people flocked to the Taganka Theater around the clock. They laid flowers, lit candles, and hand-copied the poem "Ice from below, and from above..." Friends printed 10000 autographed photographs of Vysotsky and distributed them free to visitors. The planned on 27 July "Hamlet" was cancelled. No one returned their tickets to the box office.
