Did Balzac say: “You need to be able to close a boring book, leave the bad movie and part with people who do not value you”?

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On the Internet, a statement was widely dispersed that it was not worth spending time on insufficiently good entertainment and non -pace -free relationships that the French writer is attributed. We decided to check if he said something like that.

This phrase indicating the authorship of Balzac can be found on sites with collections aphorisms And Quote famous personalities. It is published by users of social networks (Facebook*, Telegram, "VKontakte" X) and the platform blog ("Zen" Livejournal). It is also found at entertainment Portals.

A little less popular, but also widespread also attribution this quote to the writer Alexander Green, in some sources It is even indicated that she is taken from his story-Feria "Scarlet sails".

French writer Honore de Balzac For his relatively short life, he wrote dozens of novels, stories and stories. However, it is doubtful that at least one of them could have a dispensed quote in the classical formulation: Balzac died in 1850, 45 years before the first film show in the history of film show Brothers Lumier. The writer could not advise his readers to leave bad films, if only because there was no movie during his life. Of course, some science fiction writers "predicted»The development of technology long before they were created in reality, but Balzac is clearly not one of them. 

Nevertheless, theoretically, he could write something about boring books or parting, and then the quote could be modernized by a fragment of bad cinema. "Verified" studied the documents posted on the site Balzac's houses In Paris, as well as "Balzac dictionary", Collected by the Honorary Professor of the University of Sitama in Japan, Kazuo Kiriu, who studied and systematized written documents that came out of the pen of the writer for more than 20 years. Nowhere could you find anything like it. This phrase was not found (even without mentioning a bad movie) and in works Balzac. In favor of the fact that he never wrote anything like this is also said by the fact that in the English and franco-speaking segments of the Internet, the verified quote is practically not found (for exception Literally a few sitesplaced in the domain of .ru; Probably, their owners and/or users simply translated the phrase from Russian). If you look for a statement in the Google Books service, you can see only books published no earlier than 2020, the authors of which either simply Use a phrase in their works without any attribution, or also attributed Her Balzac or Green. 

Unlike Balzac, with possible authorship Alexandra Green Everything is somewhat more complicated. He wrote in Russian (which explains the distribution of quotes mainly in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet) and already found the birth of the era of cinema, so theoretically he could write something like that. Nevertheless, in the novel-Feria "Scarlet sails", Which many Internet users who have posted this quote on their pages indicate as the source, nothing of the kind was found. As in the case of Balzac, this is not surprising: the text was written in 1916, and despite the fact that cinema already existed, it remained too outlandish entertainment in order to treat it so neglecting and advise readers from bad films. There was no such or similar quote in no other works Green, nor in memories contemporaries about the writer. I did not give anything and the search is in full quote or separate it parts In the basis of the National Corps of the Russian Language, which contains a collection of texts of Russian -speaking authors with a total volume of more than 2 billion words. 

Judging by the results of the search in Google, for the first time in the formulation we have analyzed, the statement appeared At the beginning of 2010, on the Rusdemotivator website-and then without an indication of anyone's authorship. Previously similar thought in close to the disassembled formulation was found in monologue The satirist of Mikhail Zhvanetsky: “Life is short. And you have to be able to. We must be able to leave a bad film. Throw a bad book. To leave a bad person. " It was not possible to establish exactly in which year the monologue was written, however, apparently, Zhvanetsky performed with him no later than 2008 - in the corresponding fragment of his concert on YouTube there is Logo TV channel "Russia", which was used in 2002-2008. “Verified” failed to find on the Internet earlier cases of using such a quote. Perhaps the statement we have analyzed as a result of inaccurate citation of Zhvanetsky, and then by mistake, Balzac and Green were attributed.

Thus, neither Balzac nor Green have anything to do with common quote about boring books, poor cinema and partings. Moreover, Balzac could definitely not advise anything regarding the films, because he did not live to come to the emergence of cinema. None of the works of both authors managed to find anything similar to the verified statement. The first appearance on the Internet quotes in the disassembled formulation occurred only in 2010, many decades after the death of both Balzac and Green. 

Correction from 06.11.2023: Incorrect information about the film “Arrival of a train to the La-Sota Station” brothers was deleted. The version of the analysis before making changes can be found by link.

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

Photo on the cover: Maxime DastuguePublic Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Arzamas. 10 stories from the life of Balzac
2. Techinsider. 5 books of science fiction writers who predicted our future
3. Is it true that the first show of the film of the Lyumier brothers “The arrival of the train” caused panic among the audience?