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A statement that is attributed to the French writer has been widely circulated on the Internet that it is not worth wasting time on insufficiently good entertainment and non-reciprocal relationships. We decided to check if he said anything like that.
This phrase, indicating the authorship of Balzac, can be found on websites with selections aphorisms And quotes famous personalities. It is published by social network users (Facebook*, Telegram, "VKontakte", X) and blogging platforms (“Zen", LiveJournal). It can also be found at entertainment venues. portals.
Slightly less popular, but still widespread attribution this quote to the writer Alexander Green, in some sources it is even indicated that it was taken from his extravaganza story “Scarlet Sails"
French writer Honore de Balzac During his relatively short life he wrote dozens of novels, novellas and short stories. However, it is doubtful that at least one of them could have contained a quotation in the classical formulation: Balzac died in 1850, 45 years before the first ever film screenings held Lumiere brothers. The writer could not advise his readers to leave bad films, if only because during his lifetime there was no cinema yet. Of course, some science fiction writers "predicted» the development of technologies long before they were actually created, but Balzac is clearly not one of them.
However, in theory he could write something about boring books or a breakup, and then the quote could be updated with a piece about a bad movie. “Verified” studied the documents posted on the site Balzac's houses in Paris, as well asBalzac's Dictionary”, collected by Kazuo Kiriu, professor emeritus at Saitama University in Japan, who spent more than 20 years studying and systematizing written documents from the writer’s pen. Nothing like this could be found anywhere. This phrase was not found (even without mentioning a bad movie) and in works Balzac. The fact that he never wrote anything like this is supported by the fact that in the English- and French-speaking segments of the Internet the quotation being verified is practically never found (except except literally several sites, located in the .ru domain; probably their owners and/or users simply translated the phrase from Russian). If you search for a statement in the Google Books service, in the search results you can see only books published no earlier than 2020, the authors of which are either simply use phrase in his works without any attribution, or also attributed to 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 the quote mainly in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet) and had already seen the birth of the era of cinema, so theoretically he could write something similar. Nevertheless, in the extravaganza story “Scarlet Sails", which many Internet users who posted this quote on their pages indicate as the primary source, nothing similar was found. As with Balzac, this is not surprising: the text was written in 1916, and despite the fact that cinema already existed, it remained too outlandish an entertainment to be so dismissive of it and advise readers to quit bad films. This or a similar quote was not found in any other works Green, nor in memories contemporaries about the writer. Didn't give anything and the search was complete quote or separate it parts in the database of the National Corpus of the Russian Language, which contains a collection of texts by Russian-speaking authors with a total volume of more than 2 billion words.
Judging by the results of a Google search, for the first time in the formulation we are analyzing the statement appeared at the beginning of 2010 on the RusDemotivator website - and then without indicating anyone’s authorship. Previously, a similar idea in a formulation close to the one discussed was found in monologue satirist Mikhail Zhvanetsky: “Life is short. And you need to be able to. You have to be able to walk away from a bad movie. Throwing away a bad book. Leave a bad person." It was not possible to establish exactly what year the monologue was written, however, apparently, Zhvanetsky performed with it no later than 2008 - in the corresponding fragment of his concert on YouTube there is logo Rossiya TV channel, which was used in 2002–2008. “Checked” was unable to find earlier instances of such a quote on the Internet. Perhaps the statement we are analyzing acquired the form as a result of an inaccurate quotation from Zhvanetsky, and then was mistakenly attributed to Balzac and Green.
Thus, neither Balzac nor Greene have anything to do with the common quote about boring books, bad movies and breakups. Moreover, Balzac certainly could not give any advice regarding films, since he did not live to see the birth of cinema. In none of the works of both authors was it possible to find anything similar to the statement being verified. The first appearance on the Internet of the quote in the parsed wording occurred only in 2010, many decades after the death of both Balzac and Greene.
Correction from 11/06/2023: Incorrect information about the film “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station” by the Lumière brothers has been removed. The version of the analysis before changes can be found at link.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: Maxime Dastugue, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Read on the topic:
- Arzamas. 10 stories from the life of Balzac
- TechInsider. 5 books by science fiction writers who predicted our future
- Is it true that the first screening of the Lumière brothers' film "The Arrival of a Train" caused panic among the audience?
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