Did Bradbury write: “August should be closed slowly, like a pear liquor”?

On the Internet, the text attributed to the American science fiction was widely dispersed on how to live properly Augustus. We decided to check if Bradbury wrote something like that.

The quote allegedly belonging to the American writer is completely like this: “August must be spent slowly, like a pear liquor. Pour into a small glass, lay out on a drop, and look through the glass at the sun. August nights must be diluted with lights of candles, milk, poured into a boat for a brownie, purring cat and stripes of grasshoppers. August days must be laid between the pages of books, like bookmarks, then to shake their heat in the dank of November, taking this book from the shelf. And I conjure you, well, you don’t shout at all corners: "Oh, here is August, here is autumn." Well, where are you in a hurry? Stop the clock. Drink a drop. "

This text Popular on entertainment And cognitive resources, it can be found in social networks ("VKontakte" Facebook*, "Classmates" Twitter, Telegram) and on the blog-platforms (Livejournal, "Picabu","Zen"). Bradbury and modern writers are attributed to a quote - for example, Zhenya Levkovich in the book "101 useful council advice"And Mikhail Bombusov in the collection of poems"Poet»Used the first phrase of this text as an epigraph.

In some posts Users are straight indicatethat the quote was taken from the story of Bradbury "Dandelion wine"Or his own novel"Summer, goodbye". However, neither in these works, nor in any other works Bradbury “Verified” failed to find such a fragment. There is nothing similar on the site Center for Ray Bradbury At the University of Indiana, where the largest archive of the texts of the writer (including unpublished), his personal correspondence, draft scenarios and other documents were collected.

If you try to look for this quote in English in Google, it becomes clear that, firstly, it is widespread in the English segment much weaker, and secondly, unlike the Russian-speaking, the wording is somewhat different. This indirectly indicates that the text was translated from another language, and this is strange, given that Bradbury wrote just in English.

In some sources As the author of the text about August, not Ray Bradbury is indicated, but a certain Rimma Chikhichin Noskov. On the page of this user on the Poems.ru portal in the fall of 2017, it really was published A story in which there is an excerpt very close in meaning, but significantly different from the spreading quote in vocabulary. For example, in the text attributed to Bradbury, Augustus is advised to “click slowly, like a pear liquor”, here “drink slowly, like a apple tree,”.

Another option for the attribution that Found Under this text, a certain sister of Valdes. The user with such a nickname managed to find on the blog platform Diary.ru, one of records In her diary, “the original text, persistently attributed to Ray Bradbury” is entitled (authorization on the site is necessary for viewing). It provides the text itself about August, and then the author’s commentary that when copying publication from it, the last lines and the last lines are often removed: “And certainly kiss. In August, your favorite lips have a very special taste. ” The post ends with the words “with respect, author”, which also testifies in favor of the fact that this is the source of the quote. Judging by the signature at the end of the post, the initial date of publication is August 3, 2016 (that is, a year before the indicated date of writing the story of Rimma Chikhichina Noskova). Four years later, the post was updated - and the date of publication changed on August 12, 2020. In the comments under the publication, the sister of Waldes also ironizes the fact that her text is often attributed to the American writer: “It is funny when you quietly sit on Dairi, but it turns out that you are already a classic and your name is Ray Bradbury.” 

Thus, “verified” could not find any evidence that Ray Bradbury has any relation to the text that has been dispersed on the Internet about August. Apparently, its author is a Russian-speaking user of the blog platform Diary.ru with the nickname of the sister of Valdes. It was in her diary that this quote was published first of all, and she herself wrote several times that her text scattered on the Internet with an erroneous attribution of Bradbury.

*Russian authorities They think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, an extremist organization, its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Photo on the cover: pexels.com

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. R. Bradbury. Summer, goodbye
2. R. Bradbury. Dandelion wine
3. Is it true that Ray Bradbury confused the temperature scale in the name of the novel “451 degrees Fahrenheit”?
4. Lee affirming Bradbury: “There are crimes worse than burning books. For example, do not read them "?