Pinocchio

The Florentine Carlo Lorenzini (1826–1890), better known to the public of adults and children with the name of Collodi, borrowed from his mother’s town, was a patriot of the wars of Independence but also a bookseller, reviewer, publisher. He translated French fairy tales, including Perrault’s famous ones.

Divided between evasion and commitment, between caricatured satire of society and escape into fairy tales and fantasy, he wrote numerous texts but the most famous, the one for which he remained in the collective imagination, is “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, written in 1881 and published in 1883. With this novel, published in installments in the “Giornale per i bambini”, he was able to create an immortal character, almost a Jungian archetype: the wooden puppet who becomes a child at the end of the story as a reward for good behavior, model of the soft-hearted urchin, of the imaginative liar. The spread of the text was enormous, since the rights of the work expired, there are translations in all the languages ​​of the world. Many expressions in the book have become commonplace, such as “ridere a crepapelle” (from the scene of the snake dying for laughter) or “lies have short legs and long nose”, or “acchiappacitrulli”.

Poised between romanticism and realism, between a novel with gothic tones (see the hanging and the scary gravediggers rabbits) and the Dickensian popular miseries, it is essentially a picaresque narrative with moral intent. The story takes place in an unspecified place, north of Florence, in a poor town, animated by almost Vergian characters, who know a chronic hunger.

“Meanwhile it began to get dark, and Pinocchio, remembering that he hadn’t eaten anything, felt a whine in his stomach, which very much resembled his appetite.

But the appetite in boys soon grows; and in fact after a few minutes the appetite became hunger, and hunger was converted into a wolfish hunger, a hunger to be cut with a knife.

Poor Pinocchio immediately ran to the hearth, where there was a pot that was boiling and made the act of uncovering it, to see what was inside, but the pot was painted on the wall. Imagine how he felt. His nose, which was already long, became at least four fingers longer. “

The painted pot is the symbol of a world of people who strive with their imagination to make up for shortcomings and a life of hardship, who also find skins and cores good because they season them with the salt of their appetite, who teach their children to avoid vices, whims and needs but, above all, it is a symbol of creative imagination, of freedom from contingent need.

Unlike the almost contemporary “Cuore” by Edmondo de Amicis, dated 1886, the romantic tones are softened and the moral warnings merged in the figures, characters, scenes, adventures. The book is all based on the two poles of order and disorder, between the anarchic movement of the puppet and a static re-entry into the ranks, between the high road of morality and the secondary paths of fantasy.

“If I had been a decent kid, like there are so many; if I had wanted to study and work, if I had stayed at home with my poor father, at this time I would not be here, in the middle of the fields, being a guard dog at a farmer’s house. “

Moral teaching, education, the gendarmes, the judge, the blue fairy, the “poor father”, all tend to instill guilt in the puppet, to bring him back on the right path, to reintegrate him into the system, to make him abandon the childhood for maturity, for a gray becoming man. In the first version Pinocchio died, as a consequence of his insanity and the novel ended with the hanging sequence. However, those same figures who perform the task of moral guidance are also strongly caricatured and reveal the author’s intolerance for a certain type of rigid and suffocating education of the child’s talent. And, in fact, the acceptance of the text was not immediate, it was not recommended for children from good families to read it, in particular the involvement of the carabinieri caused a scandal.

But how much nostalgia the reader, and also the author himself, feels for the very lively, liar puppet — where by lie we also mean the free unfolding of a creative and redeeming fantasy — the puppet with mischievous eyes, with dancing legs, who slip away and get into black trouble?

“And the old wooden Pinocchio where he will be hiding?

“-There he is,” replied Geppetto; and he pointed to a large puppet leaning on a chair, with his head turned on one side, with his arms dangling and with his legs crossed and folded in half, it seems a miracle if he was standing.

Pinocchio turned to look at him; and after he had looked at him a little, he said to himself with the greatest complacency:

-How funny I was when I was a puppet! … and how happy I am now that I am a decent kid — “

That Pinocchio is happy is certainly not reflected in the general melancholy surrounding the scene, which sounds of farewell, funeral, in contrast with the cheerfulness of impertinent pranks and rebellions. Pinocchio tells the biggest lie to himself, denying his own nature to conform to an ideal to which he yields out of convenience and duty, out of a spirit of sacrifice and self-denial. Sacrifice, self-denial, a sense of duty that have been the only foundation of education for too long and that today, on the contrary, have disappeared into thin air.

The descent into the belly of the whale may appear to today’s readers an obvious symbol but it was not for those times. In fact, it would have taken another thirteen years for Freud to talk about psychoanalysis and the unconscious.

The language of the work is lively, popular, full of Florentineisms and proverbs that later entered the common language.

Collodi’s Pinocchio was one of the most imitated books. A parallel literature also developed — almost a fanfiction — starring the puppet, which took the name of “Pinocchiate”. In 36 Tolstoy wrote an alternative version that differs greatly from the original. In 1940 Disney made a famous adaptation to cartoons. Also noteworthy is the adaptation of the Brothers Grimm’s “Le fiabe sonore”, with the voice of Paolo Poli, the Comencini drama of 1972 and, more recently, the film by Benigni.

And this, however, is my personal version.

Lies and fantasies

It started with an itch on the pinnacle of the nose. It was like a pinprick spreading out in increasing waves of tingling. The flesh turned red, the skin stretched and then curled into crinkle and woody knots.

Thirty-two and a half years had passed since Pinocchio was no longer a wooden puppet, however, every time he lied, his nose — the impertinent antenna that nature stretched out of his head — still transformed. It was always an unpleasant and embarrassing event. The last time the crime had happened in the Florence-Prato train and Pinocchio had made the journey closed in the toilet waiting for it to pass. That day, he remembered, he had shot a lie at the man sitting next to it, exaggerating the skill of his hunting dog.

But why did it happen here, on this cold December evening, while he was striding in his new coat, mirroring himself in a window full of Christmas decorations? He hadn’t been lying to anyone, he was just with his own thoughts. What exactly had he been thinking? He tried to remember. So he had looked at a new model of computer, then the tablet next to it, and finally the little talking robot. Ah, he now emembered. He had compared him to a puppet. Here are the puppets of the third millennium, he had thought. Fortunately, I am now a man of flesh and blood. I’m fine, I am where I wanted to be.

He looked back at himself in the window. He saw a handsome elegant man in his forties. He had changed a lot since his raids with Candlewick turned the village upside down and made poor papa despair. The ancient wooden structure, on closer inspection, was preserved in the joints, a bit stiff for his age, and in the sparse and sculpted waves of his hair. But it was always and only his nose that really betrayed him. Unruly and pointed, ready to turn into wood in the least opportune moments. Like now, with this icy sleet cutting his face.

He looked around. No one had noticed anything, thank goodness. It was late, the shops were closing. The last passersby hurried home with the collar turned up against the north wind. He pulled his hat over his eyes, then ducked into a second run movie theater. In the dark he would wait for everything to end.

Covering his nose with his hand, he asked for a ticket. The cashier raised two eyes fixed and distracted together. She looked sad, her mouth full of crumbs. She was one with the counter behind which she hid her dinner. Pinocchio looked away, more and more uneasy, and huddled even more into his coat. The cold froze his bones.

He entered the dark room and ran into the back row. They were showing a war movie from the 1950s. Near him there were some numb pensioners and a middle-aged couple, kissing with clandestine greed.

He stretched his legs, tried to relax. His nose showed no signs of returning to normal, on the contrary, in the cold of the room, it was the only part of his body still warm.

It was the fairy’s curse, he reflected, the old blue whore who had been his mother. If she really loved him as she said, she would not have tormented him with the blackmail of goodness. Every good deed, one piece of wood less. Did he help an old woman cross in traffic? One finger away. Did he give alms in the churchyard? Here, instead of a wooden ear, he found himself with soggy cartilage. To conquer a whole body he had struggled his entire childhood, up to the terrible, wonderful, day when even his wooden penis had distilled a wholly human white pearl. But nothing was enough. In the moment in which he altered reality even by a very small gap, he had to run repentant to hide the cumbersome fruit of his guilt.

Yet, in front of the computer showcase, the engineer Pinocchio had not told any of his usual lies. He hadn’t inflated the power of the car, the stunts of the penis, the secretary’s breasts. He hadn’t blown the project to a colleague. He hadn’t flattered anyone, he hadn’t artfully complimented anyone to ingratiate himself with superiors. He just couldn’t figure out where he could have gone wrong.

But he was starting to feel strangely good. The projection room was like a welcoming womb. He was immersed in the lake of flashes that rained from the screen and the heat was spreading from his nose to the rest of his body. He gripped the piece of wood in his fingers. It was like having a cup of hot coffee in your hands, a burning stove. He closed his eyes.

He saw a carpenter’s shop, distant in time, scented with woodchips and with a carpet of soft sawdust. An elderly man was carving a log. He hummed happily.

“I’ll make your eyes and you will see. I’ll make your mouth and you will speak. I’ll make your heart and you will love. “

It had been a desire, a gift of love, a magic formula.

Four long wooden lashes had fluttered in amazement, one leg had jumped and pebbly approached, eager to rejoin the rest of the body.

“I’ll call you Pinocchio.”

The wooden puppet had smiled, his round eyes bright with malice. He was a cheerful, terrible, very lively puppet. Geppetto, his father, loved him precisely for his pranks.

The first years of his life had been carefree, then came the awareness of diversity, the need to appear someone else. The innumerable string of lies.

He told the Fire Eater puppets that he was the son of a sultan. He sold the abecedario to go and see the theater. Magical theater, full of masks, quick-change and liar, fantastic, innocent. He told Candlewick that the two of them weren’t donkeys, but noble racehorses, while, worried, they felt their hairy ears in the gloomy funfair of the Land of Toys.

In that life he had worn clothes of flowery paper and hats made of breadcrumbs, he had burned his feet and had a brand new pair carved by Geppetto, he had learned to eat skins and dregs, he had conversed with talking cricket. And he always had Candlewick with him.

Candlewick. Nose up, eyes of pitch, he makes one and thinks a hundred. Candlewick actor, liar, only friend.

When Candlewick got out of jail, everyone in the village had turned their backs on him. Pinocchio first, because by now pink knees of flesh were sticking out of his trousers and everyone advised him to stay away from bad company. Think about studying, they told him, think about your father, think about getting a position now that you are a real child, that you no longer have a sawdust head. So he had moved to Florence and Candlewick had died of an overdose in the toilet of a bar.

That’s where the point was.

He had told the biggest of lies to himself. The lie was his desire to necessarily look like the others. Because the same is beautiful, the same is normal, the same is true. But he wasn’t like the others. No, he was not a human being, he was a wooden puppet. And he wasn’t an engineer, he was an actor. He had to be on stage, along with other puppets like him.

He loved the theater, he loved Candlewick and even the Cat and the Fox. He also loved the fairy, but only when she showed herself to him in the form of a shiny snail or a blue goat.

A blue light fell on him from the screen, circling his hands in a halo. His grip became a vise, his fingers twitched and tingled. Pinocchio looked at them for a long time, amazed. Then he smiled.

They were back to wood.

He left the cinema with the twisting and creaking gait of his youth. He sang. “I’ll make your heart and you will love”.

He walked past the cashier. They looked at each other: a big happy-looking wooden puppet, bundled up in a Versace coat, and a middle-aged woman, with a winking blue glint in her hair.