A new book examines the unsettling origin story of “Pinnochio”—and illuminates why it persists in popular culture.
, in the public’s mind, from the father of Mickey Mouse to the creator of the animated fairy-tale feature—thereby making his work a fixture in the imaginative life of almost every American child—“Pinocchio” feels like the odd one out. Many people say it is their least favorite. It is surely the most frightening.
It’s not an even trade, though. Pinocchio, for all his naughtiness, suffers terribly. Early on, at home alone, he lies back in a chair, propping his feet against the room’s brazier. He then falls asleep, and as a result his feet are burned off. When Geppetto returns home, he bursts into tears and lifts the puppet to his breast. Pinocchio hangs on for dear life. He can no longer stand up. His legs are smoking stumps. The drawing of this scene in the novel’s first edition is hard to look at.
“Seldom has a work of literature been so overshadowed by its celluloid adaptation,” John Hooper and Anna Kraczyna write in the introduction to their new translation of “” . “This is a book with a mission: to rescue Pinocchio,” they declare.
Collodi was a committed republican. Twice, in 1848 and then in 1859, he signed up to fight for the Risorgimento, the movement that sought to liberate the Italian peninsula from the foreign powers that, for most of his lifetime, ruled it. Like many radicals, however, Collodi was not happy with the outcome of the Risorgimento: a constitutional monarchy with a weak king, Victor Emmanuel II, who cared more about the rich and the middle class than about Italy’s millions of poor people.
A strong north wind had come up, which, blowing and howling furiously, slammed the poor hanged puppet back and forth, causing him to swing violently like the clapper of a joyously ringing bell. And that swinging caused him the sharpest spasms while the slip noose, tightening more and more around his throat, was choking him.
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