כדי לשחזר את השיר בשפה המקורית אם אינו מופיע לאחר לחיצה על שם השיר המסומן כאן בקוו תחתון או כדי למצוא גירסות נוספות העתיקו/הדביקו את שם השיר בשפת המקור מדף זה לאתר YOUTUBE
To restore the song in the original language if it does not appear after clicking on the name of the song marked here with a bottom line or to find additional versions Copy/Paste the song name in the original language from this page to the YOUTUBE website
התרגומים לאנגלית נעשו באמצעות המנוע "מתרגם גוגל" והתרגום הועתק לאתר בצורתו המקורית ללא עריכה נוספת
The English translations were done using the "Google Translate" engine and the translations were copied to the site in their original form without further editing.
Notes written by Izzy Hod: This song captivated an entire generation of youth, the youth movements in Israel and the Palmach, in the 30s to the 50s of the 20th century. The name of the song comes from the first line, of the first stanza, of the song. The correct translation, of the title of the song, in the original is, In a dig, and it would be more correct to translate it, In a excavation and because of the doubts, the Hebrew translator, Shimon Mansky, chose to use the first line, of the first stanza, Let the fire flicker in the fire place, as the name of the song. Mansky himself, referring to his translation in his letters, called the poem "excavation". Mansky's translation is accurate and many other versions written for the poem contain quite a few inaccuracies. The poet Alexey Alexandrovich Surkov, who was a newspaper reporter during World War II, participated in a visit in November 1941 as a journalists, in the village of Kashino, not far from Moscow. He was caught up in a day of hard fighting, which included, a short-range grenade battle, a retreat through a minefield and crossing a frozen river, on thin ice. At night, under the weight of the experience, he wrote a rhyming letter to his wife, about his feelings and emotions from that day. In February 1942, in the Pravda editorial at the front, Surkov was asked, by the composer Konstantin Yakovlevich Listov, if he had any texts for the composition. Surkov, remembered that emotional letter to his wife and reproduced for Listov, sixteen lines from it. After about a week Listov returned, borrowed a guitar from the photographer Mikhail Sabin and played Surkov the song, which he had read, in the dugout. The next day, when Sabin sang the song, accompanied by the guitar, Surkov realized that there was a hit here. The reporter Yevgeny Vorobiev and the photographer [guitarist] Mikhail Sabin performed the song on the Komsomolskaya Pravda editorial and the song was published in this newspaper on 25.3.1942. The path of the song was not easy. In the eyes of the commissars, it was considered decadent and not patriotic enough. Surkov was asked to change the lines, The road to you is difficult, but death is four steps. Surkov did not do this and the song was forbidden to be played in law, but in fact it was no longer possible to prevent it from the lips of the soldiers, who sang it on all fronts. The song was translated into Hebrew for the first time, by Avraham Shlonsky, for the play Present to the soldier in the Broom theater in 1944. Shlonsky called it, in a dugout. The song was played in the play, but was not recorded. At the same time, the poem was translated by Shimon Mansky, a member of Kibbutz Eilon. He called the song, in a dig and the song was taken up and sung in the name, which is its first line; Let the fire flicker in the fire place. For the same melody, in the camp in Cyprus, Yosef Goldblum wrote words that are not a translation. His poem is called, prisoner. The song, Let the fire flicker in the fire place [in a dugout, in a trench], was written in 1942 and was very common among Russian soldiers in World War II. These are the words in which the poet, Alexey Surkov, described how the song was born, during my rather long life in the world of literature, I was lucky enough to write several songs, which were composed and became popular songs. All these songs - both those written before the war and those born during the Great patriotic war - aimed at the heart of those who defended or are defending the honor and independence of their socialist homeland and kissed them in their hands. How did these songs come about? Everyone in their own way. But they have something in common - they were written as poetry for personal reading and reading to the audience and then, when a melody was written for them, they became poems. I will tell you the story of a song that was born at the end of November 1941 after one very difficult day for me at the front near the city, Istra, the song, Let the fire flicker in the fire place. If I'm not mistaken, it was the first lyrical song born from the flames of the Great Patriotic War, and matched what the fighters on the front and those who waited in the rear for the soldiers to return from the war, felt in their hearts. That's how it was. On November 27, we, the reporters of the newspaper of the Western Front, "Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda", and a group of employees of the political administration of the Western Front, arrived at the 9th Guards Rifle Division to tell its soldiers and commanders about our new mission, to write and document the fighting deeds of the warriors and their heroism. In the afternoon, after we left the divisional command post, we went by truck to the command post of the 258th Rifle Battalion [Guardsmen No. 22] of this division, which was located in the village of Kashino. It was at the exact moment that German tanks, moving in a valley near the village of Darny, cut off the division's command post from its fighting battalions. It was getting dark fast. Two of our tanks, while spraying snow to the sides, went towards the forest. The fighters and commanders who remained isolated in the village, gathered in a small dugout, under the command of the battalion commander, Lt. Col. M.A. Sukhanov. It was crowded in the small dugout, there was no room left, for us, and we decided to hide from mortar and machine gun fire on the steps leading to the dugout. The Germans were already in the village. They settled in two or three houses that survived and from there they fired at us continuously. - Well, what? Are we sitting idly in the dugout? - said the battalion's chief of staff, Capt. I.K. Valychkin. After talking something with the battalion commander, he turned to everyone in the dugout: - Come on, whoever has "pocket guns" [hand grenades], come on!...After I collected a dozen and a half hand grenades for him, including two of the "lemons" [hand grenades] which I kept just in case...Captain Valychkin, fastened the belt on the padded jacket and left the dugout. Give me cover - he erupted in no time. We immediately opened fire on the Nazis. And Valychkin crawled. Pulled out grenades. An explosion, another explosion, and the first house with the Nazis fell silent. It became quiet and then the brave Captain Valychkin crawled into the second house, then into a third house. Everything repeated itself, as according to a previously set scenario. The enemy fire subsided, but did not stop completely. When Captain Valychkin returned to the dugout, it was almost dark. The battalion commander had already left it along with the command post that had changed its location. We who remained in the dugout also began to retreat to the river in an organized manner. We climbed the ice under mortar fire. The Nazis didn't let us even when we were already on the opposite bank. The frozen ground we reached was scattered everywhere from mine explosions, and hit the helmets on our heads. We finally arrived at the village, Ulianbo, and only then did the commander of the engineering unit who was there tell Lt. Col. Sukhanov that we had passed through our own minefield...Lt. Col. Sukhanov, a brave and cold-hearted man, turned pale this time and explained, if any of us had stepped on a mine... There was nothing left of us. So, when we got a little more to the new place to which we retreated, Captain Valychkin, the one who threw grenades at the enemy submachine guns, sat down and began to eat soup, he dropped the spoon and the full plate and fell asleep. The man did not sleep for four days. And when the communication system was restored and a phone call came from the brigade headquarters, we could not wake him up, no matter how hard we tried. Inhuman pressure these people bore in the war! And just because they were like that, they could not be intimidated in any way and by anything. Impressed by what I experienced that day near the city, Istra, I wrote a letter to my wife, who then lived on a river, Kama. It contained sixteen lines of "personal" poetry, which I did not intend to publish, and even less to pass on to someone who would write music... The poems Let the fire flicker in the fire place would have remained only a part of the letter, had it not been for the fact that in February 1942 the composer, Konstantin Listov, would not have arrived in Moscow from the evacuation to which he was sent during the war and would not come to our system at the front afterwards and would not even ask me at a meeting in the editorial office "something you could write a poem about?" and then, luckily, I remembered the poems I had written to my home from and during the war, I found them in my notebook and after copying them cleanly, I gave them To Listov, absolutely sure that even though I have cleared my conscience, a song with a melody will not come out of the song, Let the fire flicker in the fire place. Listov ran his eyes over the lines, mumbled something indistinct and left, disappeared for a few days and everything was forgotten. But a week later, the composer appeared again in our editorial office, asked the photographer, Mikhail Sabin, for a guitar and sang his new song, calling it, The dugout, The trech". Everyone in the room, with bated breath, listened to the song. Everyone thought the song was successful. The sheet music remained in our hands and in the evening Misha Sabin, after dinner, asked me for the words and, accompanied by his guitar, sang the song again. It immediately became clear that the song "will go" and the melody will be remembered by everyone forever from the first time anyone sings or hears the song. The song really "went". On all fronts - from Sevastopol to Leningrad and Poliarny. However, it seemed to some of the morale guards of the front line that the paragraph: "... It is not easy for me to reach you, and it is four steps to death" was decadent, they asked and even demanded that the paragraph be deleted or changed. But I was horrified by the idea of changing the words - they very accurately conveyed what was experienced in reality, what was felt there, in the battle, and it was too late to spoil the song, it "went" beautifully. And it is known among poets, "You cannot delete a word from a poem". In contrast, the warriors at the front found themselves encouraged by the song. In my messy army archive there is a letter signed by six tank fighters who, after saying words congratulating the song and its authors, they wrote that they heard that someone did not like the line "to death - four steps". But it did not deter them. There are reports from those days that a version of the song without the lyrics, and there are four steps to death, was heard on some radio stations, but the outrage over these broadcasts caused the apparently corrected version to disappear. The literal description of the words of the song is as follows, Fire is flashing in a small stove, On the logs there is dew, like a tear. And the accordion sings to me in the dugout about your smile and your eyes. Bushes whispered to me about you, In the snow-white fields near Moscow. I want you to hear how my living voice yearns. You are now far, far away, between us there is snow and snow. It's not easy for me to reach you, and to death are four steps. Sing, harmonica, in spite of the blizzard, call the lost happiness. I'm warm in the cold dugout, From my unquenchable love.
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