A text attributed to the American science fiction writer about how to live August correctly has been widely circulated on the Internet. We decided to check if Bradbury wrote anything similar.
The full quotation, allegedly belonging to the American writer, reads as follows: “August must be strained slowly, like pear liqueur. Pour into a small glass, sip drop by drop, and look at the sun through the glass. August nights should be diluted with the lights of candles, milk poured into a bowl for the brownie, the purring of a cat and the chirping of grasshoppers. August days must be placed between the pages of books, like bookmarks, so that you can shake out their heat in chilly November, taking this book off the shelf. And I conjure you, don’t shout at all corners: “Oh, here comes August, here comes autumn.” Well, what's your hurry? Stop the clock. Drink drop by drop."
This text popular on entertaining And educational resources, you can find him on social networks (“VKontakte", Facebook*, "Classmates", Twitter, Telegram) and on blogging platforms (LiveJournal, "Peekaboo", "Zen"). Modern writers also attribute the quote to Bradbury - for example, Zhenya Levkovich in the book “101 useful life farming tips" and Mikhail Bombusov in the collection of poems "Poet"used the first phrase of this text as an epigraph.
In some posts users directly indicatethat the quote is taken from Bradbury's story "Dandelion wine"or his own novel"Summer, goodbye" However, neither in these works nor in any other works Bradbury "Verified" was unable to locate such a fragment. There is nothing similar on the site Ray Bradbury Center at Indiana University, which contains the largest archive of the writer’s texts (including unpublished ones), his personal correspondence, draft scripts and other documents.
If you try to Google this quote in English, it becomes clear that, firstly, it is much less widespread in the English-speaking segment, and secondly, in contrast to the Russian-speaking segment, the wording is somewhat different. This indirectly indicates that the text was translated from another language, and this is strange, given that Bradbury wrote in English.
In some sources the author of the text about August is not Ray Bradbury, but a certain Rimma Chikhichina Noskova. On this user’s page on the portal “Stihi.ru” in the fall of 2017 there was indeed published a story in which there is a passage that is very close in meaning, but differs significantly from the widespread quote in vocabulary. For example, in the text attributed to Bradbury, August is advised to “strain slowly, like pear liqueur,” here - “drink slowly, as if straining apple mousse.”
Another attribution option that meets under this text is a certain Sister Valdez. We managed to find a user with this nickname on the blog platform diary.ru, one of records her diary is entitled “Original text persistently attributed to Ray Bradbury” (login required to view). It contains the text itself about August, and then the author’s comment that when copying a publication, the obscenities and the last lines are often removed from it: “And be sure to kiss. In August, your favorite lips have a completely special taste.” The post ends with the words “With respect, author,” which also indicates that this is the original source of the quote. Judging by the signature at the end of the post, the original publication date was August 3, 2016 (that is, a year before the indicated date of writing the story by Rimma Chikhichina Noskova). Four years later, the post has been updated and the publication date has changed to August 12, 2020. In the comments under the publication, Sister Valdez also ironizes that her text is often attributed to the American writer: “It’s funny when you’re sitting quietly on Dairy, and it turns out that you’re already a classic and your name is Ray Bradbury.”
Thus, “Verified” was unable to find any evidence that Ray Bradbury has anything to do with the text about August that went viral on the Internet. Apparently, its author is a Russian-speaking user of the blog platform diary.ru with the nickname Sister Valdez. It was in her diary that this quote was published first, and she herself wrote several times that her text was spread on the Internet with an erroneous attribution to Bradbury.
*Russian authorities think the company Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: pexels.com
Read on the topic:
- R. Bradbury. Summer, goodbye
- R. Bradbury. Dandelion wine
- Is it true that Ray Bradbury got the temperature scales mixed up in the title of his novel Fahrenheit 451?
- Did Bradbury State: “There are worse crimes than burning books. For example, don’t read them?
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