A text attributed to the famous poetess, in which she allegedly talks about her love for the last month of summer, has been widely circulated on the Internet. We checked whether this attribution is correct.

The full passage reads as follows: “They say that August smells like autumn. Don't know. Maybe... But I love this last hello of summer. This is my month. And the apples are ripe, and the sunflowers are still standing in the fields, and the honey has arrived, and the dahlias are in full bloom... And the warm rays of the sun gently and easily embrace the colorful asters, and starry showers illuminate the dark sky, and watermelons are being brought from the melon tree. And the bells ring in the churches, honoring the Savior and the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. And even though autumn is inevitably approaching, August is still summer... Hello, August!”

This text can be found on social networks (Telegram, Facebook, "VKontakte", TikTok), on blog platforms (LiveJournal), on library websites and in Russian regional press.

The most complete collection of works by Marina Tsvetaeva is considered seven volume book, published by Ellis Luck in the 1990s. As the poetess's archives were revealed, the publishing house published two more volumes of her notebooks. In addition, several collections of Tsvetaeva’s letters are available - her correspondence with her husband Sergei Efron, writer Boris Pasternak and poet Nikolai Gronsky. In none of these “Verified” books was it possible to find the viral text about August.

A story about love for August attributed to Tsvetaeva began to spread on the Internet in the second half of the 2010s. In one of the early publications, from August 1, 2017, "Verified" found a different attribution. On this day, the text about August was published on website of the department of Russian language and literature Donetsk Republican Institute of Additional Pedagogical Education on the Blogspot platform. At the end of the text the source was indicated: Irina Martova, “My Moments”. But as an epigraph, the author of the post used a quote from poems Marina Tsvetaeva: “August is the month of stellar showers.” This is probably why the confusion arose: someone decided to copy the text and mistook the signature to the epigraph for the name of the author of the entire passage.

To verify the accuracy of the attribution, we found a text by Martova entitled “My Moments.” It is included in two collections of a modern writer: “Such different people" And "A fleeting miracle" However, none of them contain the excerpt about August that went viral on social networks.

“Verified” turned to Martova herself for comment. "These are lines from my novel"Shine, love and forgive...", the writer answered. “They were written a long time ago, they were published on Facebook (in my opinion, in 2015) and immediately reprinted by many." In Martova’s profile on this social network, the excerpt was indeed published August 1, 2015.