Thursday, January 29, 2015

Pinocchio





I’ve been focusing on Italian literature now for many months, so Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (more precisely The Adventures of Pinocchio: The Story of a Puppet, 1883) perhaps should not have offered many surprises. Instead, it hit me like a slap in the face. Never before, not even in Roberto Saviano’s books about the scourge of the Camorra or Pier Paolo Pasolini’s accounts of vicious street kids, had the darker side of Italian literature revealed itself so penetratingly. Pinocchio seemed to shed an illuminating – though not particularly sunny – light on what had otherwise impressed me as a national literature of unusual expressiveness, playfulness, imagination, intimacy, magnanimity, and attention to beauty. One need only think of the generous, attentive narrators of Ariosto’s “Orlando furioso” or Manzoni’s The Betrothed, and even when authors turn their attention to the terrible vicissitudes of life - Verga, for instance, or Belli, or Sciascia - there’s often a comic element that buoys one above life’s wretchedness.

In Pinocchio, however, while some of those sunnier elements and comedy are there, particularly in the expressiveness and play of imagination, the tone starts dark, and the challenges to which the puppet, dreaming of becoming “a real boy,” is put are beyond grim and perhaps even beyond Grimm. Early on, Pinocchio, falling asleep with his feet propped up by the fire, has his feet burned off. Not long after, accosted by a fox and a cat intent on robbing him, he is lynched on an oak tree. And this scene, coming after only 15 of the 36 chapters that make up Collodi’s book, would have been the end of the story had not the readers of the initial, serialized tales of Pinocchio clamored for more and had not Pinocchio, calling to his father like Christ during his execution, been resurrected for more. A note: once one starts down the path paved by Collodi’s religious allusions, one runs the danger of hopping onto runaway metaphors barreling towards going off the rails.

Translator Nicholas Perella’s 79 page essay on Pinocchio included in the bilingual edition I read is thorough to the point of making it nearly impossible for me to say anything about the book that he hasn’t already observed. I’ll just note one aspect upon which Perella only lightly touches - a few potent, fluid dichotomies in the story - which may help explain the book’s enduring popularity as well as some of its attraction for an adult reader looking for an essentially weird reading experience.

First among these, of course, is Pinocchio himself, an amalgam of wood and human spirit (those wanting a ride on a runaway religious metaphor may board now). Born from a father who forms the puppet from a block of organic material much like the Biblical god forming Adam (one wonders if that god was as surprised as Geppetto at the material’s sudden animation), Pinocchio is, throughout the book - or until at the end he discards his wooden frame and ascends into boyhood - a curious composite human-puppet, flesh that is at the same time not flesh, object that is at the same time human, a shape shifter of sorts. Repeatedly he suffers violence visited upon his wooden/human body; repeatedly he pulls himself back together or has help doing it. Collodi’s enjoyment in playing with this material is evident.

Even more fluid a dichotomy is that between life and death. In chapter 15, that final chapter of Collodi’s initial serial, just before Pinocchio dies from hanging, he encounters for the first time the character we’ll later know as The Blue Fairy, described as “a beautiful Little Girl with blue hair and a face as white as a wax image who, with eyes closed and hands crossed over her breast, without moving her lips at all, [says] in a voice that seemed to come from the world beyond: ‘There is nobody in this house. They are all dead,’” then adds, “’I am dead, too.’” Pinocchio is a fantasy with multiple instances of resurrection, in which death, despite the horror associated with it, is ever mutable into new life. Even a giant serpent Pinocchio encounters is alive, then apparently dead, then alive, then (a nice comic element) really dead – from laughing so much that his heart bursts.

A third interesting dichotomy is that between the moralizing thrust of the book – its insistence on obedience – and the delight readers (young readers especially) may find in Pinocchio’s repeated rejection of authority. If ostensibly the book is aimed at inculcating in children a respect for rules and toeing the line, the subtext is clear: little of interest may happen in life if one doesn’t transgress from time to time.  I’m speculating, but children may love the book in part because it allows them to go off on fantasies of disobedience under the guise of being instructed to do just the opposite.

I’ll add one last thing: in addition to Pinocchio’s fascinating darker aspects, the book contains some marvelously imaginative passages that make it a rewarding reading experience in general and a rewarding Italian reading experience in particular. There are many examples of the former – rabbit pallbearers, a thousand woodpeckers who peck Pinocchio’s nose back to a manageable size, a coach “the color of air…padded with canary feathers, and lined on the inside with whipped cream and ladyfingers in custard,” drawn by a hundred pairs of white mice and driven by a poodle. One favorite passage that strikes me as particularly Italian is Pinocchio’s fantasy, in chapter 19, of what he’ll do when the gold pieces he has planted in the Field of Miracles come up as coin-laden trees:

Oh, what a wealthy gentlemen I’d become then! I’d get myself a beautiful palace, a thousand little wooden horses and a thousand stables to play with, a cellar full of rosolio cordials and alkermes liqueurs, and a library chock-full of candied fruit, pies, panettoni, almond cakes, and rolled wafers filled with whipped cream.

All those baked and candied marvels! One is transported into a pasticceria. And a child dreaming of alcoholic cordials? Darkness be damned; how can one not want to be in Italy after reading this?

Many thanks to Amanda of the Simpler Pastimes blog for organizing the Pinocchio read-along. 

20 comments:

  1. After reading your Pinocchio commentary (and that of Wuthering Expectations' Tom), I am developing a palpable fear of puppets. :)

    But, more pointedly, I am very much enjoying your postings. All the best from R. T. at Beyond Eastrod.

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    1. Ah, well, a fear of puppets is understandable, and some of the illustrations of this particular one are terrifying. I wonder how, exactly, Collodi pictured Pinocchio? Heaven forbid it was with clown make-up.

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  2. I had been dithering all day - why can't I write this thing? Ah, because I was, it seems, waiting for your post, which I have now looted.

    I love Pinocchio's "library."

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    1. Dangit, I forget to mention that that collection of culinary delights constituted a "library" (not so different from how I might constitute my own, when I think about it). Another thing I forgot to mention, and surely attractive to child readers: there is a ton of sugar in Pinocchio.

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  3. I wonder, when I read Pinocchio, about the desire "to be real." Once we become human, we seem unable to escape the desires and flauntings which lead us down dark paths. Fortunately for Pinnochio, love conquers all.

    Still, I'll always think of Italians as representative of the more abundant and joyful side of life, even when there are books like Pinocchio and Ten and even the Neopolatin novels of Ferrante which indicate otherwise.

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    1. Bellezza - I'd have been curious to know what Collodi would have done if his young fans had begged for still more of Pinocchio, this time not after his demise at the end of chapter 15, but after his becoming real at the end of the final version. As Tom pointed out over at Wuthering Expectations, that real boy seems pretty boring compared to his adventurous puppet self.

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  4. For crying out loud, you know I meant Neopolitan novels, right?

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    1. Neapolitan. Got it. I mess that up at least half the time I try to write it.

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  5. I wasn't surprised just by how grim/dark Collodi's Pinocchio is, but how weird. It really was like nothing I had expected--far more wild in its imaginings than I had realized it would be, and far more insistent on the obedience message than I had anticipated. I imagine that it must be a delight for kids, and there's so much meat--and oddity--to it, that I'm not surprised that adults should have so much interest (outside of visiting a childhood classic). I almost feel I need to read it again before I can even begin to think about what I think about it.

    Thanks for joining in with the read! I enjoyed reading your thoughts.

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    1. Amanda - Thanks - I think I'm with you on weighting the weirdness vs. the darkness of the book. I rather wished I'd read it again before posting. Though more often than not I check books out of the library rather than buy them, I made an exception for this one without really thinking about it. I'm glad I did, as I expect I'll be returning to some of those weird passages more than a few times.

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  6. Great review, Scott, and it piques my interest in reading Pinnochio at some stage; I had no idea that it would be quite as dark and creepy as your description indicates!

    Do you think there might be a link between The Blue Fairy character in Pinocchio and Lila's childhood story in Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend? A year has passed by since I read the first Ferrante novel, so the details have started to fade, but I wonder whether there might be a connection?

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    1. Thanks Jacqui. I was especially grateful that the Pinocchio read along occurred just as I was reading Ferrante's novels. I think Pinocchio figures into them quite a bit, particularly in the novels' abundant attention to the roles of school and education. The most explicit reference is, of course, via Lila's book, one of the more important of the many texts that float about within those novels and one that underscores the enduring centrality of Pinocchio as a formative text for Italian children. As a potentially illuminating exercise, some teacher of Ferrante's Neapolitan books should ask his or her students to try to write Lila's Blue Fairy story.

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    2. Fascinating stuff. I hope you'll be able to find the time to write about Ferrante's Neapolitan novels as I'd love to read your take on them. Your thought on students writing Lila's Blue Fairy story - I can well imagine someone running with that idea!

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  7. Fascinating commentary Scott.

    I never actually read this but I always had the notion that there was something very dark about it.

    I am going to try to find some rosolio cordials and alkermes liqueurs tonight.

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    1. Thanks, Brian. Let me know how it works out with the cordials! The history of alkermes liqueur is well worth looking up - a fascinating concoction that once got its scarlet color from crushed insects and also contained all kinds of herbs, flakes of gold leaf, and powdered lapis lazuli.

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  8. Luckily, Collodi's transformation of Pinocchio did not stop anyone else. My favorite Pinocchio illustrator made Spanish-language sequels. Do you want to see Pinocchio turned into a witch? How about Pinocchio journeying to the center of the earth? Of course you do!

    The Ferrante thing - this is just what I am talking about - even when Ferrante makes her literary reference as explicit as possible, English-language reviewers deliberately ignore it. They don't want there to be any literature in Ferrante.

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    1. Those Spanish illustrations are great. I would love to read some of those stories.

      Ferrante is unusually explicit with her (many) literary references. I have a lot more I'd like to write about that, but perhaps I'd better hold off until I try writing a Ferrante post.

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  9. They left out Pinocchio's crucifixion from the Disney version I saw as a kid :(

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  10. A wonderful review and so many pertinent observations! Reading Pinocchio reminded me of Hilaire Belloc's moral poems, in particular, Matilda Who Told Lies and Was Burned to Death. My daughter still loves that one. I wonder sometimes, while T.V. tends to desensitize some, it may also make situations more real for others. I really think we are much more sensitive to the violent actions in Pinocchio than children (and adults) of previous generations. Perhaps they were used to such moral stories and took them in stride. I was quite surprised with the content of Pinocchio but once I adjusted to where it was going, I found it rather amusing. I hope that doesn't make me bloodthirsty by modern standards. ;-)

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    1. Thanks, cleopatra. I don't know the Belloc poems but will look them up. I much prefer the "bloodthirsty" elements in works like Pinocchio to those awful children's books that try to treat children as precious innocents incapable of reading about such things. It interests me that Collodi inserts some elements - resurrection, for instance - that seem to remove the sting of the awfulness, that make it somehow real and unreal at the same time. It's as though he's adapting his young readers to the grimness of life while at the same time giving them an outlet for not being overwhelmed by it.

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