I always find unwrapping Christmas tree decorations brings mixed emotions to mind as many of the ones I use at home date from my childhood. Thinking of where particular ones came from, or of the associations they have with particular places or people who have passed or are no longer part of my life, is a bitter sweet experience and one I feel hard not to be nostalgic about. Here in Italy however, where we only have a small artificial tree I bought at IKEA a couple of years ago, all the decorations are relatively new and have little in the way of associations over and above me remembering I bought most of them in the local LIDL in Castiglione del Lago! This year however, I've just come across one decoration I do have a particular fondness for - a wooden jointed figure of Pinocchio I bought in a tourist shop in Florence when we spent Christmas there in 2012. The story of the little wooden boy with the long nose is probably one of Italy's best known folk tales and its perhaps co-incidental that just a couple of weeks ago I gave a talk on the early history of Disney where the film of Pinocchio was introduced. But where did the story of Pinocchio originate and why is the little wooden boy one of Tuscany's favourite sons??
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The jointed wooden figure Christmas tree ornament of Pinocchio
I bought in a Florence tourist souvenir shop a couple of years ago. |
Pinocchio is a character created by the Tuscan novelist and social commentator Carlo Collodi in the early 1880's. Collodi had started publishing books in the 50's, but Pinocchio became his signature work in 1881, when living in the town of Pescia, he sent a short story about the life of a wooden puppet to a newspaper editor friend in Rome; it was published in the children's section of the paper and went down well with its young audience to the extent the editor asked for more. Between 1881 and 1882 Collodi's work was serialized in the newspaper finally becoming a proper published book in 1883.
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| CARLO COLLODI & L'AVENTURE DI PINOCCHIO |
In the original serial version of the story of Pinocchio, the troublesome boy puppet, after numerous misdemeanours, has rather a dark ending when he is punished by being hanged from a tree at the end of chapter 15.
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| Collodi's first rather unpleasant ending to the story of Pinocchio |
A comissioning of further chapters from Collodi by the newspaper editor led to a more optimistic and palatable outcome in the 1883 book after the "fairy with the turquoise hair" (the blue fairy in the Disney film) transformed the wooden marionette version of Pinocchio into a real boy. The book was first translated in to English by Mary Alice Murray in 1892.
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| Illustrations from one of the early versions of Collodi's book. |
The story of Pinocchio will be familiar to many. Carpenter Master Antonio (known as Master Cherry to his friends) chooses a piece of pinewood from which to make a leg for his table only to discover the piece of wood shouts out at him as he begins work. Terrified of going further he gives the piece of wood to Gepetto, the poor wood carver who lives next door. Harbouring a secret ambition to earn a living as a puppeteer Gepetto begins work on the log aiming to produce a boy marionette as a substitute for the boy he'd never had. He names the puppet Pinocchio who is mischievous and troublesome from the start. When his feet are finished he kicks Gepetto and as soon as the woodcarver has taught him to walk he escapes the house and runs in to town. It's not long before a talking cricket which has lived in Gepetto's house for more than a hundred years warns the boy puppet of the consequences of pleasure seeking and disobedience. Angered by the advice Pinocchio throws a hammer at the cricket and kills it. He returns as a ghost later in the stories.
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| Falling in to bad company was an essential part of the Collodi story |
There are lots of tales in the ensuing chapters which describe the boy puppet's rather obnoxious character and the scrapes he gets in to. I love the one where he falls asleep in the house with his feet on a stove only to wake up later to find them burnt to a crisp causing Gepetto to have to make new ones for him. Easily led and naive in the extreme Pinocchio goes on to fall in to bad company and his perilous involvement with the cat and the fox is well known through its inclusion in the Disney film version of the story. Its in the later chapters, which formed the second part of the finished book, that Pinocchio comes under the benevolent influence of the fairy who will teach him to learn from experience and value study, hard work and above all responsibility. When he finally puts the saving of the life of Gepetto before his own by using his intelligence and actions to bravely rescue him from the mouth of the terrible dogfish that he comes of age. Shortly after, during a dream, Pinocchio visualizes the fairy visiting and kissing him. When he wakes he has been changed in to a real boy and his former puppet body lies lifeless nearby. Its the ending we all would have hoped for.
You might be forgiven for thinking I've fogotton one of the most important and endearing aspects of the story of Pinocchio - the fact that his nose got longer every time he lied - which of course he had a propensity to do. There are several references to this in the Collodi story perhaps the most moving the one where Pinocchio cries over his deformed nose but the solution to the problem being the fairy summoning woodpeckers to come and peck it back to normal size!!
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| Jen Grafton illustration of the woodpeckers descending onf Pinocchio's nose. |
Pinocchio is obviously a tale with moral value - obnoxious behaviour and the pursuit of hedonism results in adverse outcomes, whereas a moral code based on hard work and a caring responisble outcome reaps its own positive rewards. There is something akin to Ovid's "Metamorphoses" in the tale as well - many feel the positivity arising from the transformation and metamorphosis from wooden puppet to a living boy. In doing research for this posting I was also attracted to the theory proposed by one critic which suggested there was another paradigm to the tale of Pinocchio as well. The story was penned at a time when Italy had gone through its own transformation through the process of Unification and industrialization of the north of the country was changing society fundamentally. The movement of peasants from their simple country lives to dwelling and working in the industrial cities of places like Milan was fraught with difficulty for the naive and unsuspecting and perilous to say the least. This critic saw a parallel in the trials of the simple, naive wooden puppet as it took on a world outside the home of Gepetto the woodcarver. An interesting thought!
The Disney film version of the story of Collodi's Pinocchio released in 1940 was perceived by the critics to be a masterpiece of cinematography though strangely it was a bit of a disaster at the box office. Quite why is something of a mystery given the success of Snow White just a year or so before. One clever wag I spoke about this to suggested it was because the film didn't have a "princess" in it which is another interesting thought. What is also intriguing though is that Walt Disney himself perceived the Pinocchio as described in Collodi's book as potentially unattractive to a cinema going public. Put simply - Walt believed Pinocchio was too unlikeable.
He also thought the tall, elongated puppet as described in the book was too lifeless and so Pinocchio got a makeover. He was given a rounder and chubbier face, a bright yellow hat with blue band and a red feather, red lederhosen and big, bright blue eyes. His personality was also made warmer and friendlier and in essence "nicer" and the introduction of Jiminy Cricket - an enhancement of the talking cricket killed by Pinocchio in the book, was a touch of brilliance. Developed as Pinocchio's conscience, Jiminy becames a major character in the film. Having said all of this though, the film stuck in essence to the events, trials and tribulations introduced by Collodi in the book. The film also ends with Pinocchio being introduced to the viewer as selfless, sensible, responsible and brave. The boy came good!!
Last week I went in to a Sainsbury's supermarket back home in England before flying out to Italy. Guess what I purchased and brought with me - a digitally enhanced version of the original Disney film which I'll be sure to watch on Christmas Day. PERFECTO.
MERRY CHRISTMAS & A A HAPPY NEW YEAR
IAN XX
One person who has read this posting has questioned what Pinocchio would be like if he'd been created today. Now there's something to muse on and I'll leave you my readers to think about that - no suggestions from me!! It's also intereating to mention that the tourist souvenir figures sold in shops all over Tuscany are formed as a likeness of the illustrations in the Collodi books and not based on the Disney character. I think that's a good thing.
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