Songs by Bulat Okudzhava

About Okudzhava

Melancholy and irony, my creative maturity, I owe principally to the war. It is not surprising that my poems are so often about war; my first autobiographical prose debut was about war. When I was at the front, I understood my weakness and became convinced that although much depends on the individual's efforts and will, he still depends on objective circumstances which force him to suffer and deprive him of happiness, and at times - of his life. In the war, I became angry at the cruelty of this fate, that so unfairly took away many people close to me; but nevertheless, I learned the great art of forgiveness and understanding. War taught me not to be enthusiastic about parades and not to take pretty playing of the military band, appropriate in a comedy or an operetta, too seriously. For me the war has not yet ended, because I still see its victims. War, which helps politicians out of predicaments, destroys the vital requirement of people: the stability of life; it threatens to break the ties uniting the present and the past, a necessary condition for any possible further progress.

Because I tried to express these well-known truths in my work, I was called a pacifist. This is not entirely true. If anyone shoul threaten ny house, I would pick up a club; if an enemy should attack my country, I would begin to shoot, but not with joyous enthusiasm... - B. S. Okudzhava