Lukomorye no longer exists

Lukomorye no longer exists (Russian: Лукоморья больше нет) is a song with the subtitle "anti-fairy tale" by Vladimir Vysotsky. It was written between June and September 1967. Alternative titles include: "Lukomorye", "Song-Fairy Tale about Lukomorye", "Song-Anti-Fairy Tale". The song is a travesty of the prologue to the poem Ruslan and Ludmila by Alexander Pushkin. In the song, Vysotsky compares the reality surrounding him with the fairy-tale world of Lukomorye. The text was published during the poet's lifetime, in 1977 in Paris, in the first collected edition of poems and songs Songs of Russian Bards. The author performed the song at concerts until 1976.

The song belongs to the so-called early period of Vysotsky's work. Pushkin, with his encyclopedic and universal creative world, was always interesting to Vysotsky, and this was expressed in 1966–1967 in a series of travesty songs and song-fairy tales, such as "Song about the Prophetess Cassandra", "Song about the Prophetic Oleg" (a travesty of Pushkin's ballad Song of the Prophetic Oleg about the death of Oleg the Wise), "Song-Fairy Tale about Evil Spirits", "From Boring Sabbaths...", "Fairy Tale about Unfortunate Forest Dwellers" («Песня о вещей Кассандре», «Песня о вещем Олеге», «Песня-сказка о нечисти», «От скучных шабашей…», «Сказка о несчастных лесных жителях»), and others. The creation of the anti-fairy tale "Lukomorye no longer exists" is connected with the development of neomythological art — a trend that emerged in the Soviet artistic environment in the 1960s. The Soviet neomythologism of that time demonstrated a pronounced focus on the social aspects of the era, and Vysotsky, drawing on folklore and high poetry, shed new light on the "low" reality surrounding him.

The song contains not only "distant cultural layers" but also clear echoes of sources closer to Vysotsky's era, which influenced or were reflected in his work in one way or another. The traditions of folk humorous and folklore culture of various eras, Vysotsky's reading experiences, and certain events from the life of the bard and his circle had a direct influence on "Lukomorye". All of this, processed through the poet's perspective, is transformed into an organic song-poetic form that expresses the crisis of the world contemporary to him.

In the USSR, the song was first released in 1987 on the record Save Our Souls by the Melodiya company (the second in the series At Vladimir Vysotsky's Concerts), and in printed form, it was published in 1988 in a collection of the poet's selected poems, released by the Sovetsky Pisatel publishing house. The anti-fairy tale "Lukomorye no longer exists" has retained the relevance of the issues it raises for decades after its creation and has had a certain influence on some socio-cultural processes.