My favourite short story is "The one who waits". sorry, I don't have the english name, I read it in french. For me Bradbury is a poet and science fiction is just a way to lead people read poetry. If you can give me your feeling about it (and the english name of the short story)

I don't know, but if you give us some of the plot, we may be able to figure it out . . . unless there are some French speakers here who might know off hand?

I will try to resume the plot (my english is very poor) : a rocket arrives in a planet. There's a thing in a hole (puit) who takes posession of people's soul before they die. At the end everyone is dead and the thing keeps waiting a new event to come

I'm sure your English is better than my French. I don't recognize the story from this description. What collection is it in? Do you have it in a Bradbury collection or a short story anthology?

I can't remember the collection, I read it a long time ago and I loved it so much that I recopied it... I should have bought it immediatly ! It's not so important anyway. I'm happy to read some comments of Ray Bradbury's fan, even if it's hard sometimes for me to understand of what short story people are talking about. have you got a book, a kind of biography or an essay about his work to advice me?

Betty,
I wonder if the story you're referring is "The One Who Waits" in the collection "THE MACHINERIES OF JOY" or "LES MACHINES A BONHEUR" (Denoel).

Thank you for your answer, I also think it's the right reference...

There is an short short story in "The Martian Chronicles" called "The One Who Waits." Also, I agree. Bradbury is an amazing prose artist and a poet. I am a poet myself and I wish to write as well as he does.

Merci

"The One Who Waits" would be a great choice as being Bradbury's most poetic piece, or even his best piece. This story is great as it has all of those classic metaphors and images and mood, not to mention that rythmic cadence, or poetic pacing that makes this man so great. It's art. Like watching a great dancer perform, or seeing Picasso attack the canvass with a brush, or the sandy beach with a popsicle stick. It's a virtuoso performance with an audience of one. It's personal, yet public--it's mine and it's yours, but it could never be ours. And it's beautiful.

================================================

"I live in a well. I live like smoke in a well. Like vapor in a stone throat. Overhead I see cold stars of night and morning, and I see the sun. And sometimes I sing old songs of this world when it was young. How I can I tell you what I am when even I don't know? I cannot.

I am simply waiting."

Something like that shouldn't be applauded. Something like that deserves a moment of silence.

The audience sat there in awe, stunned by what they had just witnessed, too stunned to applaud. As if applause could ever do justice to what had just taken place.

================================================

It may be his finest writing.

If I remember, I'll tell him so tonight.

It is a classic Bradbury story.

Clearly, the language itself is poetic. As indicated, the opening and closing paragraphs (identical to each other) are amazingly written and very evocative of feeling over delineated fact. The sense of the being of the "Martian"--in its essence--is poetic. The kind of being described (well, not really described) is poetic in its nature. The Martian doesn't even know for sure what it is: "How can I tell you what I am when I don't know? I cannot." There is a sense of a being, but not a description. There is also no real character growth in the sense that the being doesn't understand its own nature any more at the end of the story than at the beginning. The nature of souls is interesting. Are the souls of the earthmen permanent and eternal? They recognize they have been "taken over" but appear powerless to do much about it. The one man warns the others to leave and kills himself, but the martian soul merely inhabits another. Then it inhabits all together. Or is the martian "soul" more than one being? It occupies several individual humans at once, yet describes the situation as, "We are one." It is kind of like a Trinitarian view of God--multiple beings/personalities in one personage. Yet there are still five men, but now a single soul. But the five men seem (based on the first two earthmen who are "taken over") to retain their own sense of identity--though now they have lost autonomy of control (even of their being). They recognize themselves as individuals who have been taken over, but have a very limited range of options as to trying to "take themselves back".

As with many Bradbury stories, it is a poetic horror story that raises questions of the nature of the soul, the will, the self, free will, and the fear of losing ones self.

Great story. It raises, and fails to clearly answer, all kinds of questions.

Both the language and the sense of the story are poetic--with images and language that evoke feelings and moods, but don't answer questions.

I had not read this story in years. This is one of the things I like about these message boards--I am given the "invitation" to revisit some of these great Bradbury stories.

Thanks for flagging this one. It was fun to re-read it!