Sandra L. Beckett

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Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio is one of the great classics of children’s literature. Although 1981 marked Pinocchio’s one hundredth birthday, the puppet is alive and well and thriving in contemporary children’s literature, not only in Italy, but around the world. An article published by Italo Calvino in the Unesco Courier to mark the centennial was fittingly titled “Pinocchio, the Evergreen Centenarian” (11). Calvino insists on the “fertilizing power” of Pinocchio, which influences all Italian writers, “whether consciously or (more often than not) unconsciously”. These intertextual seeds are planted in their childhood since “Pinocchio is the first book which they all come to after (if not before) learning the alphabet” (12). If Italian children are exposed to Collodi’s work almost before they can walk, that is certainly not the case in the rest of the world. Few children of any age (or few adults for that matter) carry Collodi’s integral novel in their literary baggage. Yet Pinocchio has an uncontested place in the canon of Western children’s literature and is considered part of the literary heritage of all children. For the most part, it is not the puppet conceived by Collodi that dominates the collective imagination, but the Disney image from the 1940 animated film adaptation, which has become the “original” version for most young people.

Like Little Red Riding Hood or Alice, Pinocchio continues to inspire countless retellings around the globe. Intertextual play with Pinocchio is a widespread phenomenon in children’s literature because authors can assume that their young audience is familiar with some version of the story, albeit often an adulterated one, and will read the new work in relationship to it. This is the assumption made by Gianni Rodari when he alludes to the “other” Pinocchio in his poem “L’altro Pinocchio”.

Pinocchio has inspired some of the finest illustrators in the world. The Bulgarian illustrator, Iassen Ghíuselev, who won the Illustrators of the Year Award at the Bologna Book Fair in 1994 for his striking interpretation of The Adventures of Pinocchio, is no exception when he admits that Collodi’s story remains a favourite among the many books he has illustrated. The vast range of the visual interpretations is remarkable; it has been rendered in every medium imaginable, from simple line drawings to exquisite oils. Sakura Fujita illustrates the tale for young children in multi-media collage. Roberto Innocenti’s powerful paintings, with their distinctive detailed style, daring perspectives and earthy palette, offer a hauntingly realistic rendition that re-creates Collodi’s tale in the animated street life of nineteenth-century Italy. In vivid-coloured grease pencil, Lorenzo Mattotti emphasizes the magical, fantastic aspect of Collodi’s work and creates an atmosphere reminiscent of the commedia dell’arte. Many illustrators of Collodi’s tale offer highly original interpretations, but the scope of this paper does not allow us to explore these visual retellings.

Pinocchio is an unmistakable intertextual referent for readers of all ages, and direct and indirect references to the story pervade Western literature. The young adult novel Pinocchio’s Sister, about a girl and the pretty wooden doll in her ventriloquist father’s famous vaudeville act, does not even mention Pinocchio other than the direct paratextual reference in the title. Some allusions to the tale are strictly pictorial, as in the case of Mitsumasa Anno’s wordless picture book Tabi no ehon II (Anno’s Italy), which gives the puppet and Geppetto a place of honour in this vast iconic representation of Italian culture. Pictorial allusions to Pinocchio are common in picture books that use the technique of bricolage to blend together several fairy tales in what Rodari calls an “insalata di favole” (Grammar 38-39). The self-willed puppet finds his way into La terrible bande à Charly P. (The terrible band of Charly P.), the story of a rebellious rock band composed of five of Perrault’s most famous fairy-tale characters and managed by his authoritarian great-great-great-grandson. He is the one large figure that stands out in the audience, cheering them on and waving a definiant fist. In Feliz Cumpleaños Caperucita Roja! (Happy Birthday, Little Red Riding Hood!), the Pinocchio allusion is textual as well as pictorial, because his name appears on the list of storybook characters Little Red Riding Hood is inviting to her birthday, while his image (that of a very young Pinocchio) is depicted, with the other fictional figures, in a huge thought bubble.

In some picture-book retellings, Pinocchio becomes the protagonist of an entirely different story. One particularly original appropriation of the puppet is found in Fünfter sein (Fifth), a moving depiction of the anxiety and fear of the unknown that pervades a doctor’s waiting room. With remarkable simplicity and sobriety, the author and illustrator create a poignant atmosphere of anxiety and apprehension that readers share with the characters. A simple change of perspective in the final illustration completely dissipates the fear and tension, as readers look past the last patient into the mysterious room, where a doctor smiles reassuringly in front of shelves of toy parts that include a couple of shiny, new, red Pinocchio noses.

Gianni Rodari has returned over and over to Collodi’s masterpiece in his fiction as well as his theoretical writings. La filastrocca di Pinocchio (The nursery rhyme of Pinocchio) tells Collodi’s story in comic-strip format with four-line rhyming captions. It offers a “faithful translation” of Pinocchio rather than a reinterpretation, according to the preface, which describes it as “a tribute” to Collodi and “an invitation” to read the original work. In fact, Rodari’s catchy nursery rhymes and Verdini’s cartoon-style images cast the story in a new light, although it is not a free adaptation in the manner of Salvador Bartolozzi’s popular 1920s Spanish comic series Pinocho contra (against) Chapete, which pits a noble, idealistic Pinocchio against his evil enemy Chapete. Rodari’s later texts devoted to the famous wooden puppet were all playful, highly original reworkings. The protagonist’s legendary nose is the subject of a short nonsense poem, “Il naso di Pinocchio” (Pinocchio’s nose), in a collection of nursery rhymes. In six short rhyming lines, the poet humorously presents the “surprising case” of “a nose that can hear,” Pinocchio’s “spy-nose” that begins to grow as soon as it hears a lie (55). Rodari’s posthumous collection Il secondo libro delle filastrocche (The second book of nursery rhymes) also contains a poem about Pinocchio, as if a collection of Italian children’s poetry would be incomplete without at least one poem inspired by the nation’s most famous cultural icon. However, the eponymous hero of “L’altro Pinocchio” is, as the title suggests, “another” Pinocchio, who is even more of a liar than his relative (86). The poem takes a different slant on the motif of Pinocchio’s nose, comically turning it into a kind of natural resource. The “1 million lies” a day that the other Pinocchio tells are not enough because “his business is lies”: he constantly chops off his nose to sell the wood (86).

Rodari’s poems are examples of the strategy he calls the “privileging of a motif” in The Grammar of Fantasy (37), where he uses Pinocchio as an example:

If among all the motifs present in Pinocchio, we privilege the motif of the nose that grows longer with each lie, we can easily produce a new fairy tale in which Pinocchio intentionally lies in order to obtain heaps of wood to barter and sell. He becomes rich, and a monument is then erected in his honour during his lifetime. Made of wood, of course (37).

That is precisely the storyline Rodari would develop two years later in a short story titled “Pinocchio il furbo” (That clever Pinocchio). Like the protagonist of “L’altro Pinocchio”, whom he resembles strikingly, the eponymous hero of “Pinocchio il furbo” is not the Pinocchio readers know, but “another” (14). An element of the paratext, titled “directions for use”, clearly establishes that the author expects his readers to participate actively in the creative process. Like all the stories, “Pinocchio il furbo” proposes three epilogues from which readers are either to choose the one they prefer or to reject them all and invent their own. Tomi di Paola’s drawing illustrates the first ending, in which the townspeople acclaim the wealthy entrepreneur with cries of “Long live Pinocchio!” (24). The gentle social criticism that underlies the playful humour of Rodari’s retelling is indicated by the author’s own rejection of the first ending, which he pronounces “disappointing” and “unjust” because the shrewd protagonist doesn’t deserve to be “celebrated as a benefactor”. For this particular story, Rodari refuses to make a definitive choice, hesitating between the other two epilogues. In the “witty,” self-reflexive second epilogue (113), Pinocchio, who has never read a book in his life, thinks the statement: “Carlo Collodi is the author of the adventures of Pinocchio”, is just another of the lies his ill-treated advisor has invented for him, and for the first time in his life tells the truth, with the result that all the lie-produced wood turns to sawdust (18). The third epilogue is a “nasty” variation on the second (113). This retelling of Pinocchio prevents readers from being mere cultural consumers, inviting them to participate in the writer’s game.

One of the fairy-tale games Rodari develops in The Grammar of Fantasy is that of sequels, since fairy tales always leave “the possibility of an ‘after’.” He uses the many sequels of Pinocchio to justify his argument (36). As he often does, the author draws illustrations from his own work with children, in this case a sequel invented by a group of fifth-graders, based on the “fantastic binominal [...] ‘Pinocchio-hidden treasure’.”(37), in which Pinocchio sets out in search of the shark, because, the day he becomes a real boy, Geppetto suddenly remembers seeing a hidden treasure in its belly. The children’s introduction of the popular treasure-hunt archetype into their version of Pinocchio is not an arbitrary choice, according to Rodari, who explains it in light of the Field of Miracles episode: “it reinstates the hero after he failed to reap a treasure when he was still a puppet” (37).

As Rodari points out, many authors have written sequels to Pinocchio. If Collodi himself had not continued “The Story of a Puppet,” Pinocchio would most certainly not have survived to inspire so many authors. Collodi ended the serialized version tragically at chapter 15, with the hanging of the puppet by the thieving murderers. The letter to his editor that accompanied the original story indicates that he had contemplated continuing it right from the beginning: “if you print it, pay me well to make me want to write a sequel” (qtd. in Lucas xxii, n. 17). Many sequels have transplanted Pinocchio to other parts of the world, one of the earliest being Eugenio Cherubini’s colonialist and racist retelling, Pinocchio in Africa, in which the puppet is hailed by black Africans as “Pinocchio the First, Emperor and King of all the African kings” (102). Pinocchio continues his incessant globetrotting in more recent children’s works, such as Pinocchio au Nouveau Monde (Pinocchio in the New World), Pinocchio au Pôle Nord (Pinocchio at the North Pole), and “Pinocchio va in Svezia” (Pinocchio goes to Sweden). Many sequels in picture-book format place the puppet in a context that will be familiar to young readers, as in the case of Pinocchio au cirque (Pinocchio at the circus), Pinocchio nel paese dei balocchi (Pinocchio in the land of toys), and Pinocchio va a scuola (Pinocchio goes to school). Lane Smith’s zany, post-modern retelling Pinocchio the Boy begins with a comical summary of the main events of Collodi’s novel on a double spread titled “Last week in a nutshell”, that takes readers up to the point where the Blue Fairy arrives to grant Pinocchio’s wish. However, Smith’s story actually begins with the transformation of the puppet into a real boy and the joke that underpins the hilarious adventures of this Pinocchio is the fact that he is unaware of his transformation because a “nutty fairy” had changed him while he was asleep.

Luigi Malerba uses the “fairy-tale salad” or bricolage strategy to write a highly unique continuation, whose title, Pinocchio con gli stivali (Pinocchio with boots), is immediately reminiscent of “Puss in Boots.” Malerba’s humorous retelling demonstrates how effective intertextual and metafictive play can be in works for young children. The metadiscourse is even more prominent in a second version adapted for the stage, since theatre is a literary genre that lends itself particularly well to the exposure of the fictional status of texts. Aware that he is playing a role based on a well-known script and discontent with the ending Collodi gave his story, Malerba’s post-modern protagonist sets about to change it. Pinocchio con gli stivali begins at the end of chapter thirty-five, when the protagonist decides he doesn’t want to enter the final chapter because the thought of being transformed into a good little boy is intolerable to a mischievous puppet. In an attempt to find a role in a different story, Pinocchio intervenes in “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Cinderella”, and “Puss in Boots”, whose characters are also aware of the roles they are playing and have no intention of relinquishing them to a wooden puppet, even one that seems to know their lines by heart. Contrary to the rebellious puppet, the characters from the classic fairy tales have a deep respect for the established literary conventions of their genre. Like a disciple of Propp, the wolf tells Pinocchio that each character has his own “function” and that it is not possible to change either “the characters or their functions” (14). Only older readers will appreciate the underlying political meaning and social satire when Cinderella’s Prince defends tradition and treats Pinocchio, a relative newcomer to the world of fairy tales, with the same disdain the aristocracy had for the nouveau riche. Pinocchio finally gets a chance to star in another tale, thanks to the greed of the miller’s naive youngest son. In one of the funniest scenes of the play, Pinocchio tells His Majesty nervously that his sack contains “the famous Puss in Boots”, but apologetically changes the line to the “famous Puss without boots” (my italics) when the King points out that the puppet is wearing the boots. Initially, the appropriate attributes seem to define the character: since Pinocchio arrives at the King’s palace with the characteristic boots and sack, he is admitted and the other characters, after some hesitation and discussion, continue to play their roles and follow the script. However, when the sack contains an angry, scratching cat instead of the rabbit that is his favourite dish, the King is furious because “that’s not the way it’s written in the story” (25).

Colloid himself intervenes in his fictive world when the Blue Fairy desperately solicits his aid with the runaway puppet. The protagonist’s escape threatens to ruin the book Collodi was just about to finish, and the author is concerned only with what he will tell his readers and his editor. A humorous twist at the end of Malerba’s story turns the sequel into a kind of unedited in media res episode. Malerba suggests tongue-in-cheek that Collodi has excised this embarrassing adventure from his version of Pinocchio. On the King’s orders, Pinocchio is put into the sack to be hauled back to the exact spot in chapter thirty-six from which he had escaped and the theatrical version ends with the puppet’s muffled protest that he doesn’t want to become “a good little boy” (60).

During his exile in Argentina, Alejandro Casona wrote two sequels in the form of children’s plays. Pinocho y Blancaflor was staged in Buenos Aires in 1940, but, like the sequel El hijo de Pinocho (Pinocchio’s son), it remained unpublished in Spain until 1983. Although the protagonist of Pinocho y Blancaflor is the famous wooden puppet, that is about the extent of its indebtedness to Collodi. Pinocchio’s adventure is no longer an apprentissage in the Bildungsroman tradition, but a kind of heroic quest, in which the protagonist sets off to rescue the Infanta Blancaflor (whose name evokes the heroine of the famous medieval romance Flores y Blancaflor) from pirates. The play has the conventional happy ending in which Pinocchio marries the Princess and inherits half the kingdom.

When Pinocchio is appropriated by the science fiction genre, he is generally cast in the role of a robot in a futuristic world. P3K: Pinocchio 3000 is a very recent film about a super-robot with a P3K processor, who is tricked into becoming involved in a devious scheme to turn all children into robots, but eventually becomes a real boy thanks to the holographic fairy Cyberina. In the foreword of the 1980s comic Pinocchio Super-Robot, Max Bunker explains that a close re-reading of Collodi’s work as an adult showed him that what he had been brought up to believe was a story for youth could be “transcribed in modern language” for a more mature audience, resulting in this “fairy tale for grown-ups” that nonetheless appeals to a cross-audience. This Italian sci-fi re-version is rendered in a comic-book style that transforms the protagonist into a superhero. The comic begins with the ritualistic incipit: “Once upon a time...” but immediately disorients the reader by continuing: “there was an abandoned piece of sheet metal among a pile of garbage in the suburbs of a metropolis”. An entrepreneurial modern Geppetto turns the sheet metal into a little robot in the hope of patenting and selling it to a big company.

Daniel Mativat’s novel Ram, le robot (Ram the Robot) has been categorized in the science-fiction subgenre of “the technological fairy tale” (Le Brun 70). Although the author sets his “fantastical version” of Collodi’s masterpiece (7) in a futuristic world on the star Sirius, he is quite faithful to the general plot of the original. Électro/Geppetto is the repairman who keeps the planet’s robots functioning. Mativat’s use of technology is limited and his robot is not very sophisticated. Because of his limited program, Ram, unlike most children on Sirius, has to go to school. School is to be the civilizing influence that will turn him into “the finest copy” of a little boy (14). However, school has the same aversion for the Siriusian robot as for the Tuscan puppet. In spite of the wise resolutions with which the robot programs himself, such as “Ram will become a good little boy!” (26), he deliberately deletes the programs of his school diskettes and replaces them with video games. Like Ram and Électro, the other characters undergo a fitting transformation, for example, the Good Fairy is replaced by Ram’s “lucky star” Stella (38) and the Talking Cricket by a computer chip. Astrophysics provide Mativat with a poetic substitution for the gigantic shark: Ram and his father are sucked into a black hole. Episodes from Collodi’s work are cleverly adapted to the new setting. The episode of the puppet theatre is replaced by a scene in an antique store full of old-fashioned robots, including former film stars such as R2D2 and C3P0, as well as precious automats by Vaucanson. Like his predecessor, Ram is the victim of two villains, space pirates who leave him to be recycled with junk metal. Pinocchio’s peregrinations are turned into a “spаcial odyssey” (99). Just as Pinocchio lets himself be lured to the “Land of Toys” by his friend Candle-Wick, Ram ignores the chip’s warning and accompanies the cosmos-trotting hoodlum Asinus to Ludus, the aptly named “planet of play” (66). The chip’s warning that Asinus is, as his name suggests, an “ass” (65) falls on deaf ears. Rather than turning into donkeys, the delinquent children are recycled into road signs to remind others of the rules of the road along the interstellar highways. As in the pre-text, Ram courageously and selflessly saves his father, but the circumstances are quite different. In a makeshift rocket constructed from scrap pieces, some bearing the inscriptions “NASA” and “CCCP,” they escape from the black hole. The moral of Ram, le robot is essentially the same as that of Pinocchio: Ram becomes a real little boy because he proves he has a heart.

Most retellings constitute a kind of homage to Collodi’s classic and an invitation to read the hypotext, but that is not the case with Der neue Pinocchio by the Austrian author, Christine Nöstlinger. Her retelling is one of the most faithful to the original: its thirty-five chapters closely match Collodi’s thirty-six. However, when the publisher first asked Nöstlinger to revise Collodi’s novel for contemporary readers, she was not even familiar with the classic. She claims to have tried very hard to like Pinocchio, but found she found the “reactionary” work obnoxious (Koppe 16). In order to offer today’s children a “new” Pinocchio, she set about reworking the story according to her personal views on education and upbringing, views strongly influenced by Alice Miller’s theories. She soon discovered that she could cast the moral of the story in a very different light without making major changes to the original plot.

The illustrator Nikolaus Heidelbach depicts the birth of Pinocchio in a series of six striking pictures at the bottom of a double spread: the puppet gradually emerges from the shrinking log until he stands staring down at the plump belly that gives his torso the comical shape of a peanut. From the cheerful figure that skips smilingly across the cover to the pitiful figure that hangs from the tree, the expressive wooden face of Heidelbach’s Pinocchio captures the wide gammit of emotions experienced by the little puppet. Nöstlinger considers her Pinocchio a “real child” whose feelings are clearly portrayed (Koppe 16). Although he still has a quick temper, the new Pinocchio is not mischievous. Like any child, Pinocchio makes mistakes because he is still learning the ways of the world. From the beginning, Pinocchio is portrayed as an innocent child who is misunderstood and mistreated by adults. The puppet can’t understand, for example, why his father creates a scandal by shouting at him in public when all he wanted to do was try out his new legs. Pinocchio only gradually loses patience with the Talking Cricket’s annoying, never-ending litany of “Woe betide...”; he doesn’t mean to kill him and doesn’t even seem to know he has. As the narrator explains, Pinocchio’s experience of death is even less than his experience with life. Horrified to learn from the Blue Fairy that a puppet can never grow up, Pinocchio indulges in a long diatribe about the difficulty of being a child: children are ordered about, preached at, scolded, and spanked, with no means of self-defence. Nöstlinger’s Pinocchio becomes a kind of spokesperson for children’s rights. The responsibility adults incur when they have children is clearly articulated by the starving puppet, abandoned by his imprisoned father: “If you carve yourself a child, you should know that that child will grow hungry!” (26).

Nöstlinger’s controversial Der neue Pinocchio sparked a great deal of discussion as to whether or not a classic should be tinkered with. However, the Austrian writer is certainly not the only author who has dared to rework Collodi’s classic. Since its publication, the popular tale has been reinterpreted according to the sociocultural and literary preoccupations of the time. Pinocchio’s story has been recycled in every literary genre, as well as in all areas of high and low culture, including all the mass media of our technological age. I would like to borrow my closing line from Rodari’s “Pinocchio il furbo”: “Long live Pinocchio!”

WORKS CITED

Ada 2002: Ada, Alma Flor and F. Isabel Campoy. ¡Feliz cumpleaños, Caperucita Roja! Miami, FL: Alfaguara, 2002. Published in English as Happy Birthday, Little Red Riding Hood. Miami, FL: Alfaguara, 2002.

Anno 1980: Anno, Mitsumasa. Tabi no ehon II. Tokyo: Fukuinkan, 1978. Published in English as Anno’s Italy. New York: Collins Publishers, 1980.

Bartolozzi 1926: Bartolozzi, Salvador. Pinocho se hace pelicano. Madrid: Editorial Sturnino Calleja, 1926.

Beckett 2002: Beckett, Sandra L. Recycling Red Riding Hood. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Bunker 1980-1981: Bunker, Max [Luciano Secchi]. Milan: Editorale Cornu, 1980-1981.

Calvino 1982: Calvino, Italo. “Pinocchio, the Evergreen Centenarian”. // Unesco Courier, № 6, 1982, pp. 11-14.

Casona 1983: Casona, Alejandro. Tres farsas infantiles. Gijón: Ediciones Noega, 1983.

Cherubini 1913: Cherubini, Eugenio. Pinocchio in Africa. Illus. GC Bruno, 6^th ed. Firenze: Bemporad, 1913 [1^st ed. 1904]. Trans. as Pinocchio in Africa by Angelo Patri. Illus. Charles Copeland. Boston-New York-Chicago-London-Atlanta-Columbus-San Francisco: Ginn and Company, 1911.

Collodi 1991: Collodi, Carlo. Pinocchio. Illus. Lorenzo Mattotti. Milan: Rizzoli, 1991.

Collodi 1994: The Adventures of Pinocchio: The Story of a Puppet. Illus. Iassen Ghíuselev. Turin: Ideogramma, 1994.

Collodi 1996: The Adventures of Pinocchio. Translation and Introduction by Ann Lawson Lucas. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1996.

Collodi 2002: Pinocchio. Illustrated by Gris Grimly. New York: Tor Books, 2002.

Fujita 1971: Fujita, Sakura, illus. Pinocchio. Text by Ann Herring. Tokyo: Gakken, 1971.

Galangau 1981: Galangau, Vassaoula. Pinocchio au Nouveau Monde. Illus. Anny Le Pollotec. Paris: Éditions GP, 1981.

Galangau 1982: Pinocchio au Pôle Nord. Illus. Anny Le Pollotec. Paris: Éditions GP, 1982.

Jandl 1997: Jandl, Ernst. Fünfter sein. Illus. Norman Junge. Weinheim and Basel: Beltz Verlag, 1997.

Koppe 1988: Koppe, Susanne. Darf man Pinocchio verändern? Antworten von Nöstlinger und Heidelbach. // Eselsohr, № 7, May 1988, p. 16.

Le Brun 1994: Le Brun, Claire. Il était/sera une fois: Le conte de fées technologique des années 80. // Canadian Children’s Literature, № 74, 1994, pp. 63-74.

Le Normand 1981: Le Normand, Véronique. Pinocchio au cirque. Illus. Michel Janvier. Paris: Deux coqs d’or, 1981. Based on Pinocchio: Folge 2, Episode 41: An den Zirkus verkauft. Munich: Apollo Film Wien, 1976.

Malerba 1977: Malerba, Luigi. Pinocchio con gli stivali. Roma: Cooperativa Scrittori, 1977. Published in Spanish as Pinocho con botas. Illus. Damián Ortega. Trans. Fabio Morádito. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992.

Mativat 1984: Mativat, Daniel. Ram, le robot. Montreal: Héritage, 1984.

Nöstlinger 1988: Nöstlinger, Christine. Der neue Pinocchio. Illus. Nikolaus Heidelbach. Weinheim: Belz & Gelberg, 1988.

P3K: Pinocchio 3000. CinéGroupe, 2004.

Pinocchio 1940: Pinocchio. Dir. Hamilton Luske and Ben Sharpsteen. Story by Aurelius Battaglia. Disney Productions, 1940. Re-released in 1984.

Pinocchio 1975: Pinocchio va in Svezia. Pinocchio 11. Roma: Spada, 1975.

Rodari 1971: Rodari, Gianni. “Pinocchio il furbo.” // Tante storie per giocare. Illus. Tomi di Paola. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1971.

Rodari 1973: Grammatica della fantasia. Torino: Einaudi, 1973. Translated by Jack Zipes under the title The Grammar of Fantasy. New York: Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1996.

Rodari 1981: Il naso di Pinocchio. // Filastrocche lunghe e corte. Illus. Emanuele Luzzati. Roma: Riuniti, 1981.

Rodari 1985: L’altro Pinocchio. // Il secondo libro delle filastrocche. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1985.

Rodari 1974: Rodari, Gianni and Verdini. La filastrocca di Pinocchio. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1974. First published in episodes in the children’s magazine Il Pioniere, 1954-1955. Slepian, Jan. Pinocchio’s Sister. New York: Philomel Books, 1995.

Smith 2002: Smith, Lane. Pinocchio the Boy: or Incognito in Collodi. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

Tarzia 2003a: Tarzia, Antonio and Elisa Possenti. Pinocchio nel paese dei balocchi. Jaca Book, 2003.

Tarzia 2003b: Pinocchio va a scuola. Jaca Book, 2003.

Tarzia 2003c: Pinocchio e la fata turchina. Jaca Book, 2003.

Zor 1997: Zor, Marion. La terrible bande à Charly P. Illus. Yan Thomas. Paris: Rue du monde, 1997.

ПРЕРАБОТВАЙКИ "ПИНОКИО" ЗА СЪВРЕМЕННА АУДИТОРИЯ

Сандра Бекет

Резюме

"Пинокио" на Карло Колоди е едно от големите произведения на класическата литература за деца. Макар че "Пинокио" чества стогодишнината от рождението си през 1981 г., той продължава да е "жив и здрав" и да просперира като текст в детската литература не само в Италия, но и в целия свят. И макар че за малко деца от различни възрасти романът на Колоди е част от техния литературен багаж, "Пинокио" има неоспоримо място в канона на западноевропейската детска литература и се счита за интегрална част на детското духовно наследство. В много голяма степен не куклата, създадена от Колоди, доминира колективното съзнание, а образите на "Дисни" от 1940 г., анимираната филмова адаптация, която, както и много други "Дисни" римейкове, се превръща в "оригиналната" версия за много млади хора. Много малко деца днес са в състояние да назоват името на автора на "Пинокио", който фактически се е превърнал в "анонимен" текст, придобивайки автономния статус на много от класическите приказки. Подобно на "Червената шапчица" или "Алиса", "Пинокио" продължава да инспирира неизброими приказни "преразкази" из целия свят. Интертекстуалните позовавания на "Пинокио" са много популярни в детската литература, защото детските автори могат спокойно да разчитат, че младата им аудитория е запозната с поне една от версиите на "Пинокио", дори това да не е оригиналният текст, и могат да възприемат новото произведение във връзка с познатата история. Този доклад изследва интертекстуалното позоваване на "Пинокио" на Колоди в широк спектър текстове от различни жанрове и различни национални литератури.

Интертекстуалните отпратки към "Пинокио" са разпознаваеми за читателите от всички възрасти както преки, така и непреки, и са широко разпространени в западноевропейската литература. Илюстрациите към "Пинокио" са обикнат похват в книжките с картинки, където се използва техниката на бриколажа, т.е. да се размесват наедно разни приказки, една стратегия, която Родари нарича "insalata di favole", както се е получило в "Алиса жадува завръщане", "Злополучната банда на Чарли П", "Честит рожден ден, малка Червена Шапчице" и "Вехтошарският магазин или чудесата на Алиса".

Джани Родари се е завръщал отново и отново към шедьовъра на Колоди - както в белетристиката си, така и в теоретичните си търсения. "La filastrocca di Pinocchio" разказва "историята" на Колоди в комичен дискурс с четириредни римувани текстчета. По-късните текстове на Родари, посветени на известната дървена кукла, са закачливо-шеговити и оригинални преработки на темата. Легендарният нос на главния герой е тема на кратко нонсенсово стихотворение, озаглавено "Носът на Пинокио". Колекцията от произведения на Родари, издадена след смъртта му, "Il secondo libro delle filastrocche" също съдържа и стихотворение за Пинокио, което би следвало да се тълкува като разбиране, че всяка колекция от детски поетически творения на италианската литература ще е недовършена, ако не съдържа поне едно стихотворение, вдъхновено от най-известното творение за деца, превърнало се в културна икона. В повестта "Този умен Пинокио" Родари представя три епилога, от които читателите могат или да си изберат онзи, който предпочитат, или пък да отхвърлят всички тях и да си сътворят собствена версия. Преразказването на "Пинокио" предпазва читателите от това, да се превърнат в обикновени консуматори, като ги приканва да вземат участие в заиграванията на авторите.

Както посочва Родари, много са авторите, които са написали "продължения" на "Пинокио". Много от тези продължения трансплантират "Пинокио" из разни части на света - един от първите такива "колониални" и "расови" преразкази е "Пинокио в Африка". Пинокио продължава безкрайните си околосветски пътешествия в много произведения на съвременната детска литература, сред които са "Пинокио в Новия свят", "Пинокио на Северния полюс", "Пинокио пътешества за Швеция". Много илюстрации в книжките с картинки ситуират куклата Пинокио в контекст, който ще бъде "разпознат" и близък до младите читатели, така както се е получило в "Пинокио в цирка", в "Пинокио в страната на играчките" или в "Пинокио тръгва на училище".

Клоунският постмодерен маниер на разказване на Лейн Смит в "Момчето Пинокио" започва с резюме от основните събития в романа на Колоди, но всъщност началото на историята е превръщането на дървената кукла в истинско момче и закачката, с която са пропити забавните авантюри на този истински Пинокио, който не е осведомен за превращението си, защото то се е случило, докато куклата е била заспала. Луиджи Малерба пък използва "приказната салата" или бриколажната стратегия, за да напише едно наистина неподражаемо продължение, чието заглавие "Пинокио с ботуши" непосредствено провокира реминисценции с "Котаракът в чизми". Хумористичната версия на Малерба показва колко ефективна може да бъде интертекстуалността или метафикционалната игра в литературните произведения за малки деца, които притежават необходими уменията за декодиране, за да се наслаждават на наратива, който се заиграва със себе си и разсъждава за себе си. "Pinocchio con gli stivali" започва с края на глава тридесет и пета, когато главният герой решава, че той не иска да "влиза" във финалната глава, защото мисълта, че е бил превъплътен в доброто момче, е непоносима идея за немирната кукла. Хумористичен обрат в края на историята на Малерба превръща продължението в един вид нередактиран "in media res" епизод. В пролога на театралната версия Пинокио информира читателите (зрителите), че е на път да им разкаже нещо, което не е описано и разказано в книгата (30). Малерба шеговито загатва, че Колоди е изрязал неудобните и неразбираеми авантюри от своята версия на "Пинокио". Алеандо Касона е написал две продължения на "Пинокио", разработени като детски пиески. Първата от тях не е вече "чиракуване" на основната романова традиция, а е дирене, в което главният герой тръгва да освободи Инфантата Бланкафлор от пиратите.

"Пинокио" не е инспирирал появата на много феминистични преразкази. Ан Камп е превърнала главния герой в героиня в романа си "Момичето Пинокио". Ситуиран в модерните времена, "Момичето Пинокио" се позовава на оригиналната версия, за да дискутира неправдите в съвременния свят с надеждата, че ще предизвика чувство на отговорност у младите читатели.

"Пинокио" е приспособяван и от научната фантастика, където му е дадена ролята да бъде робот в света на фантастичното. "Пинокио, супер-роботът" е италианска научно-фантастична версия, издържана в комичен стил, която превръща главния герой в супер-герой.

Повечето вариации отдават дължимото на класиката на Колоди и са покана да се прочете оригиналният текст; твърде различно обаче е постъпила Кристин Ньостлингер в амбициозния си роман "Der neue Pinocchio", който не крие стремежа си да измести оригинала за съвременните читатели. Някак си парадоксално, тази версия е най-близка до оригинала, с тридесет и петте си глави, снабдени с описателни заглавия, които съответстват на тридесет и шестте глави на Колоди. Дидактизмът на "Пинокио" ужасява Ньостлингер, но в края на краищата тя разбира, че може да предаде "поуката" на историята в изцяло различна светлина, без да прави основни промени в сюжетиката на Колоди. Пинокио е представен като невинно дете, което остава неразбрано от възрастните. Той става нещо като говорител за правата на децата.

Книгата на Ньостлингер предизвиква твърде противоречиви отзиви и нестихваща дискусия за това, доколко е допустимо такова превратно заиграване с класическите текстове. Всъщност, както този доклад показва, австрийската авторка не е единствената, която преработва класическата книга на Колоди. Известната "приказка" винаги е интерпретирана и преправяна според социокултурните и литературните доминанти на различните времена. Героите, мотивите и наративните стратегии на оригинала непрекъснато са реконструирани, модернизирани и преправяни, за да отправят нови послания и да адресират съвременни проблеми.

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© Sandra L. Beckett
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© Електронно издателство LiterNet, 09.11.2005
Адаптацията като стратегия на детската литература. / Adaptation as a Strategy of Children's Literature. Съст. и ред. Маргарита Славова. Варна: LiterNet, 2005.

This paper is based on some of the research done for a lengthier paper that is forthcoming in Approaches to Teaching Collodi’s Pinocchio and Its Adaptations, edited by Michael Sherberg (New York: MLA).