Le avventure di Pinocchio (‘The adventures of Pinocchio’) was written by Carlo Lorenzini, a Tuscan journalist who fought in the struggle to unite Italy and was a passionate supporter of democratic reform. It was published in serial form between 1880 and 1883 under the pseudonym of Carlo Collodi (Collodi was the name of his mother’s village), and later published in book form.
While many would claim to be familiar with Pinocchio, it is probably true to say that the Pinocchio that most children (and adults) around the world are familiar with is a rather grotesque travesty of Lorenzini’s original intention. Walt Disney’s 1940 film transplants the wooden puppet from a realistic Tuscan setting to a fantasy world of cuckoo clocks and lederhosen that resembles Switzerland or Bavaria, and in the process turns the pungent satire of the moral tale into a cute, sentimental cartoon. It is not only Walt Disney who is to blame for this: adaptations, abridgements, and translations of the story have been published at an unbelievable rate since 1883, and faithfulness to the original has not always been a high priority.
Pinocchio has been a victim of his own success. As well as the innumerable adaptations there have been sequels, films, plays, and also what we would nowadays call tie-ins: toys, cartoons, and even a theme park.
To see the original illustrations by Enrico Mazzanti can be a shock if one is expecting a cute, round-faced, big-eyed baby boy. Pinocchio was first drawn in a scratchy style as a scrawny, rather ugly figure that could only be a wooden puppet. But this is a truer reflection of Lorenzini’s intention, which was to produce a moral and didactic tale for children, and a social and political satire and a literary parody for adults.
Lorenzini grew up in the Tuscan countryside in poor circumstances, the son of servants. His childhood and his education at a seminary provided the backdrop for the book, and this is underlined by the colourful Tuscan flavour of the Italian, which places the story in a very specific time and place. He strongly believed in the improving power of education, especially now that the political objective of a united Italy had been achieved, but used his wit, sense of humour, and humanity to make his moral point in a way that appealed to children and enthused them with the desire to read.
Adults who read Pinocchio carefully will find social and political points strongly made. The story uses the traditional format of the fairy story (C’era una volta..., ‘once upon a time...’), but subverts the format by including in its cast of characters people of low social and economic status along with the talking animals and fairy-tale creatures. The humans experience cold and hunger and are far removed from the usual fantasy world of fairy tales. The magic in Pinocchio serves a very limited function: it never brings material benefits like money or food to the human characters, but operates on a separate plane. Pinocchio is a realist fairy tale.
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