Quote:
Originally Posted by Bisquit
His poetry is very ... Russian and, therefore, it is not easy to translate his verses into another languages. Besides he used rather archaic language of Russian peasants which is hardly understood by contemporary Russians living in cities. The same thing happens with Vysotsky verses: he is the author of several hundreds of songs known by all Russians and generally all Russian-speaking citizens of xUSSR and he virtually unknown in the West just because it's almost impossible to translate their lyrics.
I wouldn't say that, he probably did use a little archaic words, but not too much and most of his songs are pretty simple to understand, I actually don't even understand what is so archaic in his songs, he uses a lot of methaphores that's true, but that is not anything that is so hard to understand. Every normal Russian that has a normal level of mentality and human education, which reads books, will never have a problem to understand anything that Yesenin ever wrote.
And if Russians from other citys not Moscow or Petersburg do not understand his language, I guess this people are lower level or elementary not educated enough. Every Russian suppoused to understand his songs. They are tought in schools since the 1st year of learning.