This blog was going to be all about April but then I got side-tracked, dear readers. Onto the subject of misquotes perpetuated by the internet.
(I can hear the chorus of ‘Surely not, Caroline?’ all the way from, oh, the end of my study. Surely not that I got side-tracked, not surely there are no misquotes on the internet.)
Misquotes on the internet. So easily done. So pernicious.
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For those without a magnifying glass – “The trouble with quotes on the internet is that you can never know if they’re genuine,” said Abraham Lincoln.
Anyway – I was looking for quotations concerning April.
“April is the cruellest month.” Yes, T.S. Eliot, with your glass half empty. On the other hand, “April hath put a spirit of youth in everything,” said Shakespeare, with his glass half full.
So far, so good.
Then I came across this, attributed to Edna St. Vincent Millay. “April comes like an idiot, babbling and stewing flowers.” Strange, I thought. Babbling I can get, but STEWING flowers? Why would April be stewing flowers?
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Mmmmm, flower stew. Nom nom nom.
“Perhaps it’s a mistake?” my super-fast brain calculated.
I researched.
No, it CAN’T be a mistake, because it appears in that form on:
- thinkexist
- darienlibrary
- quotesdaddy
- quotecosmos
- classiclit
- quotestree
- hypequote
Even in a book available on Amazon – Jabbers: Webster’s Quotations, Facts and Phrases.
It’s also been used as the title for countless blogs and images…
Where does it come from, anyway? (None of the above cited the source.)
It wasn’t that easy to find (it being incorrect and all!)
HERE IT IS…
Spring
TO what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
STREWING flowers. STREWING…
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I expect Edna St. Vincent Millay is revolving in her grave. Or chuckling.
The joy of misquotes!
And every time I put ‘misquotes’ into Google, it asks ‘Are you sure you don’t mean mosquitoes?’ Ironic, eh?
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