Pinocchio, Puppets, and Modernity: The Mechanical Body (Children's Literature and Culture) 2011016319, 9780415890960, 0415890969

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PINOCCHIO, PUPPETS AND MODERNITY

Children’s Literature and Culture Jack Zipes, Series Editor For a complete series list, please go to routledge.com Russell Hoban/Forty Years Essays on His Writing for Children Alida Allison Apartheid and Racism in South African Children’s Literature Donnarae MacCann and Amadu Maddy Empire’s Children Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Children’s Books M. Daphne Kutzer Constructing the Canon of Children’s Literature Beyond Library Walls and Ivory Towers Anne Lundin Youth of Darkest England Working Class Children at the Heart of Victorian Empire Troy Boone Ursula K. Leguin Beyond Genre Literature for Children and Adults Mike Cadden Twice-Told Children’s Tales Edited by Betty Greenway Diana Wynne Jones The Fantastic Tradition and Children’s Literature Farah Mendlesohn

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Enterprising Youth Social Values and Acculturation in NineteenthCentury American Children’s Literature Monika Elbert Constructing Adolescence in Fantastic Realism Alison Waller Crossover Fiction Global and Historical Perspectives Sandra L. Beckett The Crossover Novel Contemporary Children’s Fiction and Its Adult Readership Rachel Falconer Shakespeare in Children’s Literature Gender and Cultural Capital Erica Hateley Critical Approaches to Food in Children’s Literature Edited by Kara K. Keeling and Scott T. Pollard Neo-Imperialism in Children’s Literature About Africa A Study of Contemporary Fiction Yulisa Amadu Maddy and Donnarae MacCann Death, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Adolescent Literature Kathryn James Fundamental Concepts of Children’s Literature Research Literary and Sociological Approaches Hans-Heino Ewers Children’s Fiction about 9/11 Ethnic, Heroic and National Identities Jo Lampert The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children’s Literature Jan Susina Power, Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for Young Readers Maria Nikolajeva “Juvenile” Literature and British Society, 1850–1950 The Age of Adolescence Charles Ferrall and Anna Jackson

Picturing the Wolf in Children’s Literature Debra Mitts-Smith New Directions in Picturebook Research Edited by Teresa Colomer, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Cecilia Silva-Díaz The Role of Translators in Children’s Literature Invisible Storytellers Gillian Lathey The Children’s Book Business Lessons from the Long Eighteenth Century Lissa Paul Humor in Contemporary Junior Literature Julie Cross Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature Tison Pugh Reading the Adolescent Romance Sweet Valley and the Popular Young Adult Romance Novel Amy S. Pattee Irish Children’s Literature and Culture New Perspectives on Contemporary Writing Edited by Valerie Coghlan and Keith O’Sullivan Beyond Pippi Longstocking Intermedial and International Perspectives on Astrid Lindgren’s Work s Edited by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Astrid Surmatz Contemporary English-Language Indian Children’s Literature: Representations of Nation, Culture, and the New Indian Girl Michelle Superle Re-visioning Historical Fiction The Past through Modern Eyes Kim Wilson The Myth of Persephone in Girls’ Fantasy Literature Holly Virginia Blackford Pinocchio, Puppets and Modernity The Mechanical Body Edited by Katia Pizzi

PINOCCHIO, PUPPETS AND MODERNITY The Mechanical Body

E DI T E D BY K AT I A PI Z Z I

NEW YORK AND LONDON

First published 2012 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 Taylor & Francis The right of Katia Pizzi to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Typeset in Minion by IBT Global. Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper by IBT Global. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pinocchio, puppets and modernity : the mechanical body / edited by Katia Pizzi. p. cm. — (Children’s literature and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Pinocchio (Fictitious character) 2. Collodi, Carlo, 1826–1890. Avventure di Pinocchio. 3. Collodi, Carlo, 1826–1890—Influence. 4. Puppets in literature. 5. Mechanization in literature. 6. Civilization, Modern, in literature. 7. Literature and technology—History—19th century. 8. Literature and technology—History—20th century. I. Pizzi, Katia. PQ4712.L4A857 2011 809'.93356—dc23 2011016319 ISBN13: 978-0-415-89096-0 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-67978-4 (ebk)

Contents

List of Figures

ix

Series Editor’s Foreword

xi

Acknowledgements

xiii

Bibliographical Note

xv

Note on Translations

xvii

Introduction

1

KATIA PIZZI

Chapter 1

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body: Between Giuseppe Mazzini and George Sand

17

JEAN PERROT

Chapter 2

Puppets on a String: The Unnatural History of Human Reproduction

49

ANN LAWSON LUCAS

Chapter 3

Workshops of Creation, Filthy and Not: Collodi’s Pinocchio and Shelley’s Frankenstein

63

CHARLES KLOPP

Chapter 4

The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type: The Anatomy of Alfred Jarry’s Monsieur Ubu and its Significance JILL FELL

vii

75

viii • Contents Chapter 5

Man is Non-Man: Mannequins, Puppets and Marionettes in the Theatre of Dario Fo

93

CHRISTOPHER CAIRNS

Chapter 6

Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace

109

STEPHEN WILSON

Chapter 7

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body: Luciano Folgore’s Papers at the Getty Research Institute Library

135

KATIA PIZZI

Chapter 8

The Myth of Pinocchio: Metamorphosis of a Puppet from Collodi’s Pages to the Screen

163

SALVATORE CONSOLO

Chapter 9

The Watchful Mirror: Pinocchio’s Adventures Re-created by Roberto Benigni

175

SALVATORE CONSOLO

Chapter 10 Beyond the Mechanical Body: Digital Pinocchio

201

MASSIMO RIVA

List of Contributors

215

Index

219

Figures

The images in this book have been reproduced with kind permission of the copyright holders. While every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain permission, this has not been possible in all cases. Any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions.

1.1

1. 2

1. 3

1. 4

4.1 4.2

An entomological ball illustrated by J.J. Grandville, in J.J. Grandville, Un autre monde (Paris: Les Libraires Associés, 1963), 38; orig. J.J. Grandville, Un autre monde (Paris: H. Fournier, 1844).

22

Gentle Jack (Gribouille) transformed into a branch, illustration by Maurice Sand, from George Sand’s L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Gallimard Folio Junior, 1978), 68; orig. George Sand, L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Blanchard-Hetzel, 1850).

25

Gentle Jack lying in the meadow, illustration by Maurice Sand, from George Sand’s L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Gallimard Folio Junior, 1978), 70; orig. George Sand, L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Blanchard-Hetzel, 1850).

26

Gentle Jack and his Blue Fairy, illustration by Maurice Sand, from George Sand’s L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Gallimard Folio Junior, 1978), 123; orig. George Sand, L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Blanchard-Hetzel, 1850).

27

Charles Morin, Père Hébert (reconstitution of a schoolbook sketch c.1920). Patrick Fréchet Collection.

79

Schoolboy’s drawing of his favourite and most hated masters, in J.B. Delestre, La physiognomonie (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1866), 309.

79

ix

x • Figures 4.3 4.4

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Alfred Jarry, Profil de Monsieur Ubu, drawn for Catulle Mendès. Courtesy of the Collège de Pataphysique.

80

E. Couturier, “Alfred Jarry ‘conduisant’ Ubu-Roi”, La Critique, April 5, 1903; repr. L’Étoile-Absinthe 17–18 (1983): 22. Courtesy of the Société des Amis d’Alfred Jarry.

87

Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace—© Stephen Wilson (2005). Courtesy of the artist.

111

Show Donkey—© Stephen Wilson (2003). Courtesy of the artist.

119

Pre-Modern Pinocchio—© Stephen Wilson (2003). Courtesy of the artist.

123

Untitled—© Stephen Wilson (2005). Courtesy of the artist.

127

Series Editor’s Foreword

Dedicated to furthering original research in children’s literature and culture, the Children’s Literature and Culture series includes monographs on individual authors and illustrators, historical examinations of different periods, literary analyses of genres and comparative studies on literature and the mass media. The series is international in scope and is intended to encourage innovative research in children’s literature with a focus on interdisciplinary methodology. Children’s literature and culture are understood in the broadest sense of the term children to encompass the period of childhood up through adolescence. Owing to the fact that the notion of childhood has changed so much since the origination of children’s literature, this Routledge series is particularly concerned with transformations in children’s culture and how they have affected the representation and socialization of children. While the emphasis of the series is on children’s literature, all types of studies that deal with children’s radio, fi lm, television and art are included in an endeavor to grasp the aesthetics and values of children’s culture. Not only have there been momentous changes in children’s culture in the last fifty years, but there have been radical shifts in the scholarship that deals with these changes. In this regard, the goal of the Children’s Literature and Culture series is to enhance research in this field and, at the same time, point to new directions that bring together the best scholarly work throughout the world. Jack Zipes

xi

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Jack Zipes and Jean Perrot for their invaluable advice and feedback. I acknowledge generous support of the British Academy who funded my research visit to the Getty Research Institute Library in 2006. Thanks are also due to the staff of the Special Collections room of the Getty Research Institute Library for their competent and courteous assistance. Ben Thomas helped me reproduce images and clear permissions as well as graciously lending a hand with the copying process. Giuseppina Grenzi helped me with bibliographical searches. Anna Laura Lepschy’s comments on an earlier version of this manuscript were invaluable and pointed my work in the right direction. Liz Levine, Diana Castaldini, Stacy Noto and Michael Watters deserve hearty thanks for editorial assistance and production. I should like to thank my doctoral student Georgia Panteli for her lively contribution to our stimulating conversations on ‘post-Pinocchio’. Finally, I am indebted to Winshluss for graciously granting permission to reproduce the cover image.

xiii

Bibliographical Note

Original Italian quotations from Le avventure di Pinocchio (1883) are from the following editions, respectively: in Chapters 1, 8 and 9: Carlo Collodi. Le avventure di Pinocchio, in Carlo Collodi, Opere, ed. Daniela Marcheschi (Milan: Meridiani Mondadori, 1995), 359–526; in Chapter 3: Carlo Collodi. Le avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un burattino, ed. Fernando Tempesti (Milan: Mondadori, 1983). Other editions, in Chapter 9: Carlo Collodi. Le avventure di Pinocchio, crit. ed. Ornella Castellani Polidori (Pescia: Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi, 1983). English translations include, in Chapters 1, 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9: Carlo Collodi. The Adventures of Pinocchio, trans. Ann Lawson Lucas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); and, in Chapters 3, 6 and 10: Carlo Collodi. Le avventure di Pinocchio/The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet, trans., intro. and notes Nicolas Perella (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986). French translations include, in Chapter 1: Carlo Collodi. Les aventures de Pinocchio/Le avventure di Pinocchio, pres. Jean-Claude Zancarini, trans. Isabel Violante (Paris: GF Flammarion, 2001).

xv

Note on Translations

Please note that, unless otherwise stated, all translations are the author’s own.

xvii

Introduction Katia Pizzi

The machine, which acerbically denies the flesh, is offset by the flesh. (Lewis Mumford, 1934)

This collection stems from a vibrant symposium held at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies on February 25, 2006, which was followed by a screening of Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio in the premises kindly lent us by the ‘Istituto Italiano di Cultura’ in London. The superb quality of the papers presented on that day and the informed and vivacious discussion that followed, together with the encouragement of participants, led naturally to the idea of collecting the papers, with a small number of additional Chapters, in one edited volume. My intention is to recapture, to some extent at least, the enthusiastic reception of those who attended this stimulating day, and share it with students, colleagues and the general public alike. Though it is widespread in the nineteenth century, which witnessed the invention of the puppet Pinocchio, the idea of mechanized humans dates back at least to ancient Chinese, Egyptian and Greek myths. Before its concretion in the sixteenth to eighteenth century into musical androids, mechanical dolls and automata, in the Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci had explored the minute anatomy of animal bodies in relation to that of mechanized systems. Furthermore, in the rational eighteenth century, Julien Offray de La Mettrie conceived animals as machines and human beings as perfected forms of animal machines, hence his idea of an homme machine.1 Pinocchio, however, is a quintessentially nineteenth century creature. The creature, that is, of a century traversed by an eager and in-depth cultural interest in dummies, puppets and marionettes, a score of mechanical bodies bearing relation with contemporary technical advancements in transport, as well as with mechanical and electric industry, and leading to a sustained, if not always 1

2 • Katia Pizzi competent, enthusiasm for machines understood as mechanical facilitators of modernity. In the early twentieth century, the Futurists, in particular, embraced this enthusiasm, translating it into a series of mechanically informed projects that encompassed numerous disciplines, from theatre to the visual arts, music and literature. If the Futurists did not invent the idea of mechanized human beings, they however took it further. Through their conviction that humans should be symbiotically fused with machines, the Futurists became pioneers in understanding the importance that cybernetics was to play in a technological society, envisaging a reified, commodified and mechanized future.2 Pinocchio’s robotic, stiff and yet bendable body, his hybrid nature between mechanical and human, render him an ancestor of the Futurist cyborg, a ‘low density’ technological creature, as befits the century of the steam train and the power station, and yet no less forceful and influential an icon. Pinocchio’s standing as a symbol of modernity working across different spheres of influence, from politics to aesthetics, is testified, whether explicitly or implicitly, in recent studies, highlighting the puppet’s status of archetype, model and metaphor.3 A handful of decades after after Italy’s Unification, Luciano Folgore, the Futurist who pursued most energetically a Pinocchio theme in his work, was described as a man ‘attached to the machine as to a breast that will not stop giving’.4 Echoing premises laid out by the early Futurists, Fortunato Depero, one of the key figures of the postwar generation and similarly enthralled with the mechanical qualities of the Pinocchio figure, described modern industrial societies as sites populated with ‘metaphysical automata’, relishing speed and ‘comical transcendence’.5 It is precisely this conception of ‘metaphysical automaton’ informed with ‘comical transcendence’ that characterizes Pinocchio, making him such a ready icon of modernity.6 As a figure characterized by a ‘fluid identity’, informed with transition, difference, joie de vivre, ‘otherness’, displacement and metamorphosis, Pinocchio is a truly Futurist, indeed, a modern cultural icon. His latest metamorphosis yet, from a mechanical-biological into a virtual entity, re-embodied into strings of computer code and algorythms (Chapter 10), further imply Pinocchio’s suitability as postmodern, posthuman icon. A number of Chapters included in this collection engage with this crucial and, as yet, not fully explored, field. Others track down Pinocchio’s genealogy and progeny, illuminating the wider context or, indeed, the more specific genesis and manifestations of the mechanical-human interface in the related domains of theatre, the fine arts, literature, radio, fi lm, all the way up to virtual reality, where Pinocchio is remodelled from cultural fossil into avatar of a non-mechanical reality, coherently with the digital metamorphosis of our times. Beginning from these premises the discussion veers from nineteenthcentury Italian literature, mapping onto cognate areas to include nineteenthcentury French literature (particularly George Sand); Hoffmann, Offenbach and Hans Christian Andersen; Giacometti, Jarry and Surrealism; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster and Marinetti; Dario Fo, de Chirico and Tadeusz

Introduction • 3 Kantor; Stephen Wilson and the legacy of the Macchiaioli school; Futurist and post-Futurist poetry, theatre and radio broadcast; Antamoro, Benigni, Comencini and other fi lm-makers; Vico, Plato and Heidegger’s poetic rethinking of the essence of technology. The comparative nature of this discussion testifies to a legacy that is not merely enduring, but also multicultural. Indeed, Pinocchio’s legacy must be transcultural, in ways that Chapters included in this collection vividly illustrate. Chapter 1, “Carlo Collodi and the Rythmical Body: Between Giuseppe Mazzini and George Sand” by Jean Perrot, sheds light on the historical foundations and cultural genesis of Collodi’s Le avventure di Pinocchio (1883). Following an ‘enigmatic’ analysis, echoing modes of Collodi’s own narrative style, employing self-questioning, riddles, repetitions, rhetorical questions and ironical forms of address, this creative approach ‘tries to share, through play, the child’s lightness of mood and fantasy’. Drawing from comparative literature, children’s literary and intertextual criticism, Perrot explores the cultural fabric of French influences and references richly embedded in Collodi’s novel, a tradition that would have been both extremely familiar to Collodi and close to Carlo Lorenzini’s unitarian sentiments. In particular, while asserting Collodi’s own ‘essence of [ . . . ] “italianicity” at a given period of his country’s cultural and political development’, Perrot also exposes intertextual bonds between Collodi and George Sand, whose political, symbolic and cultural views were compatible, even though the relation between the two is earlier, indeed ‘archaeological’, with respect to Collodi’s conception of Pinocchio.7 Pinocchio’s body emerges here as both rhythmical and mechanical. Its erratic and yet geometrical aerial trajectories resemble those of butterflies. Further mechanical motifs identified by Perrot in Collodi’s story include the puppet’s conspicuous nose, a feature that will re-emerge most prominently in Jarry’s Ubu, Folgore’s Pinocchio and digital Pinocchio (see Chapters 4, 7 and 10), the rhythmical drumming and rattling of the puppet’s wooden body when hung and the disquieting, metallic and robotic presence of a colossal serpent with fuming tail. The rumbles accompanied by clouds of steam emitted by this mechanical snake echo Collodi’s own novel, Un romanzo in vapore (1856), featuring a locomotive and steam engine emerging as symbols of mechanical modernity. Locomotive understood as ‘mechanical man’ and steam lie at the core of nineteenth-century mechanization, joining a long and rich literary and visual tradition, from Huysmans to Walt Whitman, Zola, Carducci and De Amicis, Monet to Pizarro and many others.8 Collodi’s stance towards industrialization is, however, ambiguous. In fact, the mechanical fi xation of Collodi’s time is mocked and turned into comedy: ‘the puppet’s emphatic deportment’, argues Perrot, ‘comes as a denunciation of the mask imposed upon people by industrial constraints.’ Perrot suggests, in conclusion, that Collodi appears to have forestalled Baudrillard’s three symbols for the representation of self, by way of ‘creating a wooden Subject whose lively corporeal gesticulations were inspired by the

4 • Katia Pizzi puppet-master, operante or novelist trying to recapture the truth of human nature.’ Covertly, though no less vigorously, Collodi is voicing here his growing dissatisfaction with the progressive industrialization of Italy, a development he previously upheld, if ambivalently, in Un romanzo in vapore. This allows him to transpose secretly ‘the moral issues implied by the social relationships of the Labour world into the field of children’s literature.’ In Chapter 2, entitled “Puppets on a String: The Unnatural History of Human Reproduction”, Ann Lawson Lucas moves from an analysis of the marionette, an artificial and ‘inanimate artefact’ whose emphatic presence and cultural significance spans the long nineteenth century. Collodi’s mechanically reproduced Pinocchio is one of the most outstanding and iconic representatives of this tradition. Situated at the end of a long and distinguished line of automata, toys and monsters, Pinocchio’s sight and perception make him a man-made puppet who reworks, parodies even, this whole tradition, particularly in the light of its proprietary relation between creator and creature, a psychological trait betraying a parental, pseudoparental, and even, we might add, Oedipal investment between ‘artificer’ and ‘artefact’, an elusive bond redolent with psychoanalytic undertones. Lawson Lucas examines E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Der Sandmann” (1816) from an automaton perspective, comparing and contrasting it in minute detail with Collodi’s puppet. Her suggestion that shared concerns of sight and perception exist between Hoffmann’s Olympia, Delibes’s Coppelia and Collodi’s Fata Turchina, drawing, in turn, from the earlier model set by H. C. Andersen’s tin soldier in “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” (1838), a story probably unknown to Collodi, points to further original and dynamic cross-overs between the texts in question, as well as carrying echoes of contemporary advancements in the optic sciences. As highlighted in Chapter 1, Collodi’s text betrays a late Romantic angst directed at contemporary scientific and industrial advancements, in manners that closely echo Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (see Chapter 3). However, there are differences too: ‘puppet and monster both rebuke the hubris of their creators, rebelling against them and fleeing into the wilderness; but, unlike the monster, Pinocchio nurtures a warm-hearted, albeit forgetful, devotion to the man who made him, his pseudo-father.’ In Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, which is contemporary to the serialized “Storia di un burattino” that served as the basis of Collodi’s novel, the opera-loving and theatre critic Collodi may well have witnessed the disabling of Olympia’s mechanical body on the Florentine stage, a trick that is likely to prefigure Pinocchio’s final metamorphosis from puppet into boy. Lawson Lucas concludes persuasively that Collodi remoulded here the ancient myth of Pygmalion into a tragic legend, fraught with contemporary fears and disturbing unconscious urges. Despite Collodi’s ultimately optimistic rational and nationbuilding aspirations, proprietary and power relationships are both reasserted and powerfully challenged by the child-puppet’s rebellion against societal conventions via his unflinching assertion of his own insubordinate identity.

Introduction • 5 Chapter 3, “Workshops of Creation, Filthy and Not: Collodi’s Pinocchio and Shelley’s Frankenstein” by Charles Klopp, draws an original and detailed comparative analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Carlo Collodi’s Le avventure di Pinocchio. ‘When Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein, the “dark satanic mills” famously described by William Blake in lines written the same year Frankenstein was published were already in operation’. By contrast, in Collodi’s tale Italy emerges as rural, even bucolic. The leisurely existence, the commodities of early industrialization afforded Shelley’s characters is entirely alien to Collodi’s universe, a largely hostile landscape coloured by hunger and poverty and populated by creatures struggling to eke out a living. Their encounters with authority, be it legal, military, fi nancial or even medical, and consistently ‘lacking in human sympathy and thus not worthy of much respect’, are equally tainted by the social inadequacy and rebellious stance suggestive of Collodi’s own class background and liberal politics. Klopp underlines that ‘unlike Frankenstein, Pinocchio is a supremely social book.’ A collective human experience, defined by hard labour, deprivation and toil, ultimately enables the puppet to identify and eventually fi nd a place in the social sphere. Deeply unfit for human exchange and interaction, Frankenstein’s monster is, on the other hand, condemned to loneliness, sterility and lovelessness. Klopp further emphasizes the Fairy’s authority over the puppet, whose prepubescent phase of development prevents him from perceiving the only female character in the novel as a potential sexual partner. While Pinocchio’s behaviour is, in fact, that of a child driven by primordial hunger, Shelley’s creature, on the other hand, has loneliness fuel his sexual desire. The milk with which Pinocchio nurtures his father at the end of the tale emerges in striking contrast with the gloomy and overwhelming sense of death pervading the conclusion of Shelley’s tale. In conclusion, Pinocchio and Frankenstein’s monster develop in opposite directions: created as a wooden, stiff and mechanical puppet, Pinocchio becomes increasingly un-mechanized and humanised. At the other extreme, the monster, assembled at the time of physical and sexual maturity, is increasingly stripped of human traits and becomes reified. It is significant that both Collodi and Shelley, whether moving towards or away from mechanization, exclude the reproductive female body from the narrative. This artificial, inorganic and mechanical generation chimes in with Futurist cyborg inventions and appropriations of Pinocchio’s mechanical body shortly to come (see Chapter 7). In particular, they resonate with the figure of Gazurmah, the automaton son of Mafarka, generated mechanically without female intervention at the end of Marinetti’s novel Mafarka il futurista. Klopp convincingly emphasizes that ‘the workshops of artificial creation in both Pinocchio and Frankenstein are exclusively male spaces, the mechanical bodies assembled there the offspring of men, not of women.’ In Chapter 4, “The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type: The Anatomy of Alfred Jarry’s Monsieur Ubu and its Significance”, Jill Fell situates Alfred Jarry’s

6 • Katia Pizzi Ubu firmly in a Dada and, more generally, European avant-garde context, as opposed to the fin-de-siècle puppet repertoire and the perfected complexity of the mechanic toy prevailing in the late nineteenth century. The discussion centres on the two surviving Ubu puppets seen in a modernist light. In particular, Fell tracks and highlights the history and development of the first puppet. Moving from a domestic and amusing mask, this original artefact eventually took on the traits of a modern and terrifying fetish. ‘The arena in which Père and Mère Ubu operate is not the domestic one of Punch and Judy but the political one’: the Ubu mask is, in short, characterized by a timeless propensity to exemplify tyranny and oppression in the wider social realm. Ubu’s anatomy, or rather body architecture, relies on three salient parts: the nose, the head and the belly. Ubu’s nose and its semiotics are of particular relevance here. Though aesthetically closer to Klee’s family of puppets and Giacometti’s sculpture Le Nez, Fell also skilfully considers its significance with reference to Pinocchio’s nose, an integral part of the puppet’s identity, so much so that it tends to obscure and even replace the puppet metonymically in later adaptations (see, for instance, the Futurist radio broadcasts examined in Chapter 7). As a caricature of the inquisitive and investigative nature attributed to Père Hébert, its original model, Ubu’s nose carries the primitive, almost feral, connotations of a vestigial beak or reptilian snout. Ubu’s reference to the cult of death, relying on Jarry’s research on medieval and mystical illustrations between 1894 and 1896, could also stand as a latent point of contact with Collodi’s Pinocchio. Similarly to Giacometti’s sculpture, this chief organ of breathing seems to disappear when one contemplates the Ubu puppet frontally and, as such, could not be further removed from Pinocchio’s emphatically mechanical feature, attesting to the ultimately technological nature of the puppet. At the same time, ‘the growing importance of the world of the child as a model for avant-garde artists and writers’ situates Jarry’s puppet closer to the authority modernism increasingly attributed to Collodi’s puppet. Riding the wake of the marionette aesthetics that was sweeping avant-garde theatre, Jarry staged his Ubu Roi as a play performed by human actors who moved in jerky spasms, in the manner of puppets, prefiguring later European avant-garde theatre and fi lm, from Schlemmer’s Triadisches Ballet (1922) to Pannaggi and Paladini’s Ballo Meccanico Futurista (1922), Foregger’s Dance of the Machine (1923) and Léger’s Ballet Mécanique (1924). Wedded to the world of magic, as emphasized by its gidouille (= spiral emblazoned stomach), the Ubu puppet breaches the confines of the mechanical puppet, heralding ‘a new era of destruction’, as foreseen by W. B. Yeats and Henry Bauer, attesting to its continued political significance. Fell skilfully unearths the roots of Jarry’s dotted spiral in the double ellipse or UrForm found in the seventeenth-century mystic Jacob Boehme, whose Gothic script works would have been known to Parisian Symbolist circles via William Law and Dionysius Freher. ‘Jarry went to great efforts to absorb the figure of

Introduction • 7 Ubu into the Symbolist canon’: Ubu’s fetish, magical and golem-like qualities, providing him with frightening rather than comic charisma, remain paramount, forcefully capturing the imagination of Surrealist artists such as Miró and Ernst. Ultimately, Jarry’s monster ‘continues to reflect the contemporary political scene as an image of Power and as a modern mass killer’. Marionettes, dummies and mannequins in the theatre of Dario Fo (b. 1926) are contextualized in Chapter 5, “Man is Non-Man: Mannequins, Puppets and Marionettes in the Theatre of Dario Fo” by Christopher Cairns, within ‘a much longer story of “marionettisation” of the theatre in the twentieth century’. ‘Masquerading into an actor’, the puppet or marionette is an exquisitely unsettling device, providing a faceless and disquieting reality to the actor’s image. ‘In the theatre of Dario Fo’, argues Cairns, ‘the mannequin marries the identity question to the surreal in the classic substitution and resubstitution device’, a point exemplified below with reference to Molière’s Le médecin volant (1645) and Fo’s 1990 adaptation. Dario Fo shares a background in the fine arts with all three major precursors and exponents of the mannequin in theatre: Tadeusz Kantor, Oskar Schlemmer and Peter Schumann. He is also acquainted with the metaphysical painting and dummies of Giorgio de Chirico, who may, in turn, have been in contact with Gordon Craig in Florence in or around 1911. De Chirico’s work had significant impact on Fo, as is further elucidated by a little-known text first published by de Chirico under a pseudonym in 1940. An artefact objectifying our inner psyche (as in Kantor) or conveying ideology without actors (as in Schumann), the marionette and the ‘false reality’ it encapsulates points to its exquisitely theatrical nature. Furthermore, in his attention to the mechanical, artificial body in theatre, Fo may ultimately be a grandchild of the Futurists. Cairns provides a taxonomy of functions and modes of employment of the puppet or dummy, first and foremost political satire and irony, that inform Fo’s Grande pantomima and its giant puppets and echo Majakovski and the Russian Futurists, as well as Schlemmer’s Two Solemn Tragedians and Schumann’s Bread and Puppet. In Le médecin volant, the surreal double substitution of actor with mannequin and the dummy crashing onto the stage introduce a ‘momentary frisson of death’. Manipulated and controlled by the power base, a widely employed device, Cairn argues that the mannequin of the State in Storia di un soldato is one of a series of objects providing foundation for an ‘abstract theatrical language of images’. As is the case with Futurist mechanical theatre, Fo systematically crosses ‘the boundaries between actor / marionette / half mannequin (if masked) / symbolic actor’. Marionettes can easily take on political meaning, becoming symbolic of manipulation and control by an authority and echoing both Collodi’s Pinocchio and Jarry’s Ubu. Pope and the Witch (1989) forcefully questions identity, introducing various marionette techniques in rapid sequence and using the puppet as doubling device. The dummy acting as bodyguard to the Pope, the so-called papa-pupo (= Pope-

8 • Katia Pizzi puppet), highlights the interplay between public image and private identity, with Pirandellian overtones. Cairns further dwells at some length on fantoccio, a faceless rag doll satirizing the weeping or bleeding statues of popularized Catholicism conjured up in Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas (1992). In Fo’s 1994 production of Rossini’s opera L’italiana in Algeri, the mannequin-making process becomes mechanical in the dance of a faceless female mannequin made up of vegetables, where puppet and actress alternate in Fo’s surreal substitution, creating an entirely automatic process designed to satirize the war of the sexes. Marionettes are therefore often used as theatrical necessity to project human psychological states, as is further exemplified by the dance of the moving dummy on wheels by Lindoro in Fo’s adaptation of Rossini’s opera, thereby pushing the boundaries of the real. The mechanical, spasmatic movements of the mannequin signify possession of the actor by exterior forces. Mannequins, dummies, puppets and marionnettes are entirely ingrained in modernist theatre. Indeed, ‘the working of mannequins / puppets / marionettes constitute a language of theatre in itself’. In Chapter 6, “Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace”, visual artist Stephen Wilson unpacks the ‘unrepresentability’ of Pinocchio by removing the ‘illusory bandage’ applied over the tear between reality and representation inherent in the painted, illusory nature of the fireplace featured at the beginning of Le avventure di Pinocchio. Collodi intentionally misleads us, playfully seducing ‘his reader into a false setting by momentarily admitting that what is “really there” within the confines of the story is in fact at the same time a literary construction.’ Pinocchio’s ‘unrepresentable’ status is further hinted at by way of textual fragmentation and disjuncture of text and image, unsettling the reader’s acquired sense of familiarity with the narrative. Taken in a marionette shop in Florence, the image of an image of a painted fireplace, itself an illusion, Wilson’s photograph further problematizes the boundaries between real and represented: a fake boy (Pinocchio) is looking at a fake (painted) fireplace—the motif of fire and, specifically, the fireplace, are central to the binary ‘real’ / ‘not real’ explored by Wilson. Indeed, a dissociation process of this kind is constantly at work in the artist’s studio, when the movement of applying paint to the canvas alternates with standing back to glance at the work as a whole, a practice that was central to the work of the Macchiaioli, a school of contemporary painters who were familiar to Collodi. Further evidence suggests that, following his metamorphosis from puppet into boy, Pinocchio has confined his original wooden self to ‘the afterlife of the image’. As such, ‘Pinocchio as a visual figure is essentially ambiguous, always both doubled and divided between the visual representation of fantasy and reality’ (a theme resurfacing in Chapter 10). Relying on Bachelard’s dualistic reading of fire, Wilson focuses on the fireplace motif in Collodi’s text. Presenting ‘the reader with a succession of fireplaces through which the archetypal image is mediated’, Collodi uses the site

Introduction • 9 metaphorically, at important junctures in the text, reiterating and reinforcing the stiff, wooden and puppetlike nature of Pinocchio. This exploration leads to a broader reflection on the visual qualities of Collodi’s prose and imagined engagement with the fireplace in terms of painting rather than writing, exposing slippages between conventional painting tropes, such as painting from life and representational painting. In failing to be convincing, the fireplace succeeds in ‘creating the ontological uncertainty as to the reality of the fiction from the outset.’ In this light, the narrative arc underlying The Adventures of Pinocchio may be read as a metaphor of the creative process: the segmented nature of Collodi’s text lays bare the construction process, the gap between mental image and the final tale. Similarly, a painter may place higher importance on what cannot be seen, informing the very core of the process, through a series of unwanted or incorrect images. Subverting traditional aesthetic conventions, the real work exists in the gaps between the actual works produced. This fragmented tension between presence and absence, centre and periphery, and, we could add, between puppet and boy, mechanical and human, does not merely point to political arenas of the time, but is also integral to the Macchiaioli’s artwork, Collodi’s narrative and, ultimately, to Wilson’s own painting practice. Susan Lawson’s interview of Wilson throws the artist’s practice, as well as his reliance on and original re-elaboration of Collodi’s tale, into vivid relief. Wilson clarifies and expands here a number of aspects addressed in Chapter 6, including the problematic, ‘liminal’ and inanimate nature of Pinocchio; composition, representation and visual coherence; Pinocchio’s identity as vehicle, a cultural artefact working across a number of cultures and transmitting a particular set of strategies in both visual and literary cultures; the submergence and emergence of Pinocchio’s identity, including Disney’s ‘fleshy’ and unmechanical visualization, so strikingly alien to the fragility and humility Mazzanti’s illustrations afford Collodi’s original puppet. Furthermore, the part played by a pedagogic message, particularly in relation to the artist’s gaze, sheds useful light on the processes and habits embedded in Wilson’s work, releasing his imagination. The interview ends circularly, situating the artist’s successful encounter with Pinocchio within the broader context of his artistic history and practice. Seen in this light, Pinocchio’s relationship with his father Geppetto becomes a metaphor of the problematic relationship between the artist and his creation and, by default, between ‘fundamental issues of painting, with its story and its history’. Seen in the wider context of machine advocacy, the Futurists’ robust emphasis on Pinocchio is discussed by Pizzi in Chapter 7: “Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body: Luciano Folgore’s Papers at the John Paul Getty Research Library”. In particular, Luciano Folgore’s interest for the mechanical puppet’s body traverses his lengthy career as translator, adapter and, later, as scriptwriter and broadcaster for Italian radio and television. Pizzi sets out discussing Folgore’s early activities, including his friendship with the enormously popular comedian Ettore Petrolini (1884–1936), whose angular features were

10 • Katia Pizzi reminiscent of Pinocchio’s mechanical appearance, as well as Folgore’s own early poetry, where mechanical technology looms large. Folgore was “attached to the machine as to an unfailing breast”, as Libero De Libero has it. Thus enamoured with technology, Folgore was instrumental in the development of new media in Italy, especially radio broadcast, where he was a pioneer even by Futurist standards—while Marinetti and Masnata’s Futurist manifesto ‘The Radio’ dates to 1933, Folgore built his reputation as radio broadcaster from the earlier days of airing of Italian Radio (U.R.I.) in September 1924. He rapidly became a household name: his broadcast Il grammofono della verità. Un quarto d’ora di umorismo was to remain a staple of U.R.I.’s palimpsest for the following twelve years. Beginning from the mid-1940s, Folgore focused on scripting and airing children’s broadcasts, initially for radio alone and, from 1954, for television as well, giving special prominence to Pinocchio’s mechanical features, specifically, as in Ubu, his prominent nose (see Chapter 4). Indeed, a combination of Futurist macchinolatria (= technophilia), staunch loyalty to Collodi’s original tale and ironical disposition, lead to Folgore’s veritable obsession for the mechanical body of Pinocchio. In the main body of this Chapter Pizzi explores Folgore’s copious production, now archived in forty-five tightly packed boxes preserved and made accessible in the Special Collections department of the John Paul Getty Research Institute and Library in Los Angeles. The bulk of this comprehensive collection highlights Folgore’s sustained fascination with Pinocchio, whose story is faithfully retold, including the identitarian and anti-authoritarian emphasis transposed to the post-fascist society of the artist’s time. In particular, Folgore’s entire production reveals a serious engagement with the mechanical nature of the puppet, his metamorphosis from mechanical into human and vice versa, together with a veritable fi xation with Pinocchio’s robotic nose, as can be gleaned from all his work, from the pantomime L’ora del fantoccio (or L’eterno fantoccio), the short manuscript L’isola del Robot, the extensive 1948 and 1949 radio series Il segretario dei piccoli, his radio adaptation of Rembadi Mongiardini’s eponymous remake Il segreto di Pinocchio (1952), Il giornalino di Pinocchio (1953), Le storie di Pinocchio (1954), Il diario di Pinocchio (1954) as well as many other undated drafts and manuscripts. In particular, beginning from the 1950s, Pinocchio’s artificial nose becomes the most recurrent and emphatic marker of the puppet’s mechanical identity. Ultimately, Folgore equips Pinocchio with an empowering ‘mechanical otherness’ that disenfranchises the puppet from the backhanded promise of human metamorphosis holding Collodi’s puppet in thrall. In Chapter 8, Consolo’s “The Myth of Pinocchio: Metamorphosis of a Puppet from Collodi’s Pages to the Screen”, Pinocchio’s birth is treated as a veritable theophany, predating the mechanical incarnation of the puppet. Indeed, Pinocchio s life as a whole is the playground of metamorphosis: four metamorphoses concern him directly, while the novel is punctuated with no less than eleven encounters and seven near escapes with death. Consolo’s

Introduction • 11 Chapter delves into this mythic dimension through an examination of fi lm, understood as a Jakobsonian, intersemiotic translation where, in LéviStrauss’s words, ‘the mythical value of myth is preserved even through the worst translation’.9 In this respect, while the discourse will vary, the gist of Collodi’s novel remains the same in all subsequent adaptations. To prove this point, Consolo analyses five fi lms starring Pinocchio, dating from 1911 through to 2002, highlighting the invariables of the Pinocchio myth through the ages: Antamoro’s Pinocchio (1911), Disney’s Pinocchio (1940), Guardone’s Le avventure di Pinocchio (1947), Comencini’s Le avventure di Pinocchio (1972) and Benigni’s Pinocchio (2002). The clown-like talents of Polidor, as featured in Antamoro’s fi lm, preserve and even highlight Pinocchio’s heroic character, especially in the added adventures experienced by Pinocchio in the Far West and Canada, popularized in Italy in the early 1900s by Italian mass migration to the Americas and Buffalo Bill’s travelling circus. Despite the structural and psychological differences highlighted in 6, Disney’s Pinocchio is, as is the case with Collodi’s original, a resolutely comic hero: his birth is miraculous, he experiences trials and tribulations of near death, metamorphosis and quest for a father. Even the specific national and historical recontextualization does not fundamentally alter Pinocchio’s heroic and puppetlike original and essential configuration. In particular, Giannetto Guardone’s Le avventure di Pinocchio (1947), in a screenplay by Collodi’s nephew Paolo Lorenzini, focuses on the nonconformist, hyperactive and free spirited character of the original Pinocchio and is therefore to be regarded as the Italian response to Disney’s Americanized puppet. This fi lm, or, as it became known, filmastro (= bad fi lm), emphasizes at once the heroic and comic traits of the original Pinocchio, reinforcing his mythical status in Lévi-Strauss’s terms. At the same time, in Comencini’s 1972 version, Pinocchio’s metamorphoses, multiplied from four as per original to no fewer than ten, are closely related to the heroic status of the protagonist, acting as a structural narrative motif. The myth of Pinocchio clearly transcends the historic time when the fi lm was made. The most expensive Italian fi lm ever made, with a budget amounting to 45 million US dollars, Benigni’s Pinocchio is a thoroughly idiosyncratic product that could not but flop abroad, especially in the U.S., due to the cultural capital invested in Disney’s Pinocchio. In order to retain the structural traits of the Pinocchio myth, particularly his heroism and comic character, Benigni ignores Disney at his peril and ends up portraying Pinocchio as ‘a sort of heroclown’. These virtues warrant Pinocchio’s final metamorphosis from puppet to boy: Benigni’s personal touch turns Pinocchio into a symbol of superhuman freedom, framed by the divine beauty of the Tuscan landscape. In conclusion, the semantic and connotative value of Collodi’s Pinocchio, unalterable as they are, due to the puppet’s mythic status, are both grasped and repeated, through the cinematic medium, in all the fi lms analysed here. In a corpus layered with variations, and yet fundamentally staying the same,

12 • Katia Pizzi the archetypal essence of Pinocchio, or what Hjelmslev calls the purport, remains resolutely intact. In Chapter 9, “The Watchful Mirror: Pinocchio’s Adventures Re-created by Roberto Benigni”, Consolo follows on from Chapter 8 by addressing first and foremost the vexata quaestio of how to transpose literary narratives onto other genres or media, and fi lm in particular. Aware of the archetypal possibilities of Collodi’s text, even Federico Fellini, one of the most influential and revered fi lm-makers of our age, was on course to translating Collodi’s Le avventure di Pinocchio into fi lm material in 1993, the year he died. Benigni, who auditioned for the role of the protagonist, appears to have embraced Fellini’s legacy when devising his own fi lm. Characterized by a both intimate and paradoxical relationship with Collodi’s text, Benigni’s Pinocchio provides an intersemiotic adaptation that does not substantially alter the mythical structure and content of the original. Moving from these premises, Consolo provides a rigorous analysis of the signifying function of Benigni’s fi lm as compared with Collodi’s novel, with particular reference to narrative structure; characterization; time and space; soundtrack and perspective, with a view to assessing the extent to which Benigni’s fi lm can be considered to be a watchful mirror of Collodi’s mythical narrative. The narrative structure set in Collodi’s text is not significantly altered in Benigni’s fi lm. Characterization throws into relief the ‘otherness’ of fi lmic language as compared with the original textual narrative, particularly where characters’ first appearance on-screen precipitates a whole set of assumptions. Pinocchio is an exception to the functions outlined by Greimas’s ‘actantial’ typology: the puppet is played by Benigni, both an adult and a film director, who emphasizes Pinocchio’s hyperactivity and being constantly on the run. These childlike qualities become, ultimately, Benigni’s shorthand for the puppet’s intrinsic modernity. The expedient of the blue butterfly introduced by Benigni further hints at the awakening of life injected in the mechanical toy in order to animate it, a quintessentially modernist concern as highlighted in Chapters 1, 2 and 5 above. Consolo delves deeply into the principles of Benigni’s characterization, providing a circumstantial analysis of each single character appearing in the fi lm and highlighting its fundamental faithfulness to Collodi’s text. Though inherent to Pinocchio’s construction, time and space are indeterminate dimensions, both in Collodi’s text and Benigni’s fi lm. Interacting with images throughout, the fi lm’s soundtrack is pivotal, whether understood as dialogue, music or background sound. While dialogue is closely modelled on Collodi’s original text, Nicola Piovani’s specially composed music contributes emphatically and almost ‘synaestethically’ to a direct and harmonic understanding of the visual language, not only from an emotional but also a conceptual viewpoint: sound and images are as faithful as is feasible in the constraints posed by translating the source text into the fi lm medium. Finally, the predominant viewpoint is allocated to the Blue

Introduction • 13 Fairy here, even taking it to the extremes of explicitly showing her directorial control over the whole production. All these aspects attest to Benigni’s ‘inter-semiotic’ translation of Collodi’s text. Borrowing from Rebecca West, Consolo nonetheless contests that Benigni’s doomed ambition was to peddle the quintessential ‘Italiannes’ of the mechanical puppet in his home country and export it abroad. Dispossessed of Bourdieu’s ‘cultural capital’, audiences worldwide may well be unable, concludes Consolo, to appreciate the full extent to which Benigni’s fi lm constitutes a watchful mirror of Collodi’s original tale. Prompted by an experimental undergraduate course at Brown University, Massimo Riva begins his quest in search of Pinocchio’s identity by questioning the genre of Collodi’s original story in Chapter 10, “Beyond the Mechanical Body: Digital Pinocchio”. When writing Le avventure di Pinocchio, Collodi may not have had technology in mind. And yet, Pinocchio can easily be perceived through the prism of technological change and shifting conceptions of the human in modern times, two features that are powerfully subsumed under the coming-of-age theme underlying the story of the puppet. Presciently, ‘in the story of Pinocchio the theme of adolescence and its discontents is subtly intertwined with the age-old myth of an artificial man which can act as both a mirror, a caricature or the prototype of a new humanity’, with implications for the intertwining of technology and adolescence widespread in contemporary western techno-cultural societies. The appeal of Pinocchio’s tale relies on its being a counter-Bildungsroman, resting on the ambivalent identification it invites between an artificial-magical creature and young readers at the fleeting threshold between childhood and young adulthood. Pinocchio’s story exemplifies a bio-technological, nineteenth-century evolution to a superior life form, from quasi-mechanical being (Pinocchio as puppet = child) to organic human (Pinocchio as boy = young adult), where superiority of the biological over the mechanical, consistent with a humanist tradition stretching back to Pico della Mirandola, is powerfully reasserted. Pinocchio consitutes, as such, an evolutionary model whose originality lies ‘in its simultaneous, consciousunconscious ties with both premodern and contemporary (even futuristic) modes of thought and imagination.’ Indeed, Pinocchio is a myth concerning technology. As a puppet Pinocchio is neurospaston, that is ‘the technological prototype of all mythological, poetic characters, “animate substances, gods or heroes”’, as understood by Vico and Plato before him. Furthermore, in his capacity as both a technological being and a poetic character, Pinocchio invites us to rethink the essence of technology in poetic fashion, alongside Heidegger’s reflections. As an ‘interface’ between the natural and the artificial Pinocchio invites us to test the boundaries between organic and inorganic, the animate and the inanimate: to revisit the ambiguity of a body which is both mechanical and biological, including our own fundamental ambivalence towards this transformation, which is a crucial concern of our digital age.

14 • Katia Pizzi Riva’s pedagogical project tests these porous boundaries, Pinocchio’s uncanny technological ambivalence, his ‘liminal’ nature, visualizing the puppet as a hybrid, a body of information whose limbs are made of particular recombinations of text, image and code, a cultural ancestor manifesting a multifarious visual progeny consisting of new kinds of cultural encoding. As the algorithm holding together and animating the whole, Pinocchio’s nose proves to be, as highlighted elsewhere in this collection, the most crucial and yet most elusive body part of digital Pinocchio. In a digital metamorphosis that may well be his latest, but is unlikely to be his last, Pinocchio’s body becomes paradoxically un-mechanical: a wireless body made up of pure information and energy. A body transcending the unconscious mechanical body in order to be reborn as a thoroughly virtual (e.g., moral) being. A body that so uncannily imitates our own. Notes 1 2

3

4

5

6

See Julien Offray de La Mettrie, L’homme machine (Leyden: Elie Luzac, 1748). See, in particular, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, beginning from his “Futurist Founding and Manifesto” (1909). For sculpting his own son in the novel Mafarka il futurista (1910) Marinetti can be considered as a Futurist Geppetto. See also Nicolaj Diulgheroff, cit. Ingo Bartsch, “L’uomo meccanizzato nell’ideologia del futurismo”, in Futurismo 1909–1944. Arte, architettura, spettacolo, grafica, letteratura, ed. Enrico Crispolti (Milan: Mazzotta, 2001), 25–31 (30). To cite one of the most recent and authoritative studies: Suzanne StewartSteinberg, The Pinocchio Effect: On Making Italians (1860–1920) (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, c2007). Here, the puppet without strings works as a momentous symbol of the struggle between determinism and freedom informing the Italian post-Unification discourse. Cit. Claudia Salaris, Luciano Folgore e le avanguardie con lettere e inediti futuristi (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1997), 370–71: ‘Inserendo Folgore nell’olimpo marinettiano, lo dice “attaccato alla macchina come a una mammella inesauribile”, più dello stesso Marinetti’; orig. Libero De Libero, Antologia futurista (Turin: ILTE, 1954). Fortunato Depero, letter to Marinetti dated May 27, 1929, cit. Depero, Liriche radiofoniche (Milan: Morreale, 1934; repr. Florence: SPES, 1987), XIII: ‘l’uomo diventa un automa metafisico, vive e gode nella piú astratta velocità -e comica trascendenza.’ See also Michel Carrouges, Les machines célibataires (Paris: Chêne, 1976), 8: ‘La tragique solitude d’êtres mi-humains mi-artificiels en fait d’autentiques machines célibataires qui personnifient l’angoisse particulière de l’homme moderne.’

Introduction • 15 7

8

9

See also Jean Perrot, Le secret de Pinocchio. Georges Sand et Carlo Collodi ([Paris]: In Press, 2003), 9–10: Collodi ‘se trouve lié, littérairement, dans une relation complexe et principale avec Georges Sand. [ . . . ] cette alliance repose sur la communauté des points de vue, politique, symbolique et culturel, et correspond à l’engagement de deux partisans des idées libertaires, et même d’un certain anticléricalisme [ . . . ]. [ . . . ] la relation entre Sand et Collodi precede de plus de vingt-cinq ans la naissance de Pinocchio et que c’est sur les échanges effectués dans la décennie des annés cinquante que doit se fonder l’archéologie du savoir qui présida à la creation du pantin.’ Perrot, Secret de Pinocchio, 73: ‘La vapeur est “l’âme” d’un nouveau système dans lequel l’humanité mécanisée se barde de fer et a de plus en plus de peine à s’incarner: le simulacre est la forme que prend la dénonciation d’une exploitation de l’être humain [ . . . ] transformé en machine’. See also Joel Dinerstein, Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African American Culture between the World Wars (Amherst and Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 80: ‘The train was the first idealized mechanical man, a prominent cultural image’. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 210.

Chapter One Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body Between Giuseppe Mazzini and George Sand Jean Perrot

The purpose of this Chapter is to show the complex artistic, cultural and political relationships which prevailed in Florence when Carlo Collodi was preparing to write The Adventures of Pinocchio, and to point out the bonds that linked the author of one of the world masterpieces in children’s literature to two of the most eminent writers and moral ‘guides’ of the period. Our aim is to provide a few additional hints at what still remains ‘Pinocchio’s secret’, grounded in Carlo Collodi’s political vision of life. Special interest will be granted to the influence of the French caricaturists on the Florentine (and Italian?) conception of human personality. But our main concern will be to underline one feature which has been left out by critics at large: Collodi’s transposition of the moral issues implied by the social relationships of the labour world into the field of children’s literature.

Introduction. Criticism and Child’s Play: Riddles as Keys to the Writer’s Workshop The critic’s part always implies some measure of risk: that of being too close or too far from one’s object of study and of boring one’s audience through an overweening accumulation of scholarly information. Our partiality is for a kind of criticism that tries to share through play the child’s lightness of mood and fantasy, an issue particularly acute when dealing with one of the most appealingly national tall tales that still remains a children’s classic. 17

18 • Jean Perrot And so we will start by proposing three enigmas to our reader’s sagacity: is not the number three the golden key to fantasy in fairy tales? The fi rst enigma deals with the description which Giannettino gives of Florence in the fi rst part of Carlo Collodi’s Il viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino (Johnny’s Journey Through Italy). This educational book, addressed to the children of the young Italian State proclaimed in 1861, was published in 1880, one year before the fi rst version in fi fteen Chapters of The Adventures of Pinocchio entitled La storia di un burattino (The Story of a Puppet). In it, Giannettino, the main character who acts as a sort of Cicerone to the boy Pompilio who he met on a train to Bologna, speaks about the Uffi zi art gallery in Florence and acknowledges the greatness of this collection: ‘one of the most famous in the whole world for the wonderful harvest it provides of master-pieces in painting, sculpture, cast iron’.1 However, he does not mention any specific work to his young friend’s attention. As the visit goes on through the city, with the help of the guidebook provided by his mentor, Dottore Boccadoro, we come across different churches and well-known places and the same lack of precision seems to prevail for a while. Naturally, in the Convent of St Marco, Giannettino brings our attention to the name of ‘the celebrated painter called “Il Beato Angelico”, who painted in the convent marvellous frescoes of Saints and Madonnas’, 2 and to the portrait of Girolamo Savonarola by Della Porta. Similarly, in the Chapel of Annunziata, the painting La Madonna del sacco (Madonna with the Sack) by Andrea del Sarto calls up Pompilio’s questioning about the reason of this naming along with an enquiry about the painter’s pseudonym. But it is only in the Pitti gallery, ‘as famous in the whole world as that of the Uffi zi and even more’, 3 that the boy stresses the importance of being told about Madonna della seggiola: ‘Among the so many stupendous masterpieces of this Gallery, keep in mind to be shown Raphael’s Madonna of the Chair’.4 And to press the point, the boy adds a reference: ‘To come into possession of such a Madonna—a German Prince once said—I would give half of my states.’5 The importance of the painting in Collodi’s opinion seems utterly unquestionable to the watchful critic, remembering that Dottore Boccadoro, before meeting with Pompilio and Numa his preceptor, has submitted Giannettino to a cultural quiz to test his knowledge about the arts in Florence. His fi rst question was: ‘who was the architect of Florence Cathedral?’ and, quite surprisingly, the second one was the following: ‘is Raphael’s Madonna of the Chair in the Pitti or in the Uffi zi gallery?’6 And now comes our own questioning: to what secret concern can we ascribe the interest for this painting so insistently evinced by Collodi when he prepared to write the fi rst Chapters of The Adventures of Pinocchio? Was it due to a bachelor’s special fascination for a Christian, and specifically Roman Catholic, representation of a young mother, shown with the image

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 19 of two children that looked like brothers, and who could remind him of that of the young lady he is supposed to have been desperately in love with, even to the point, as Daniela Marcheschi noted, of letting himself go to alcoholism, when, in 1858, he realized that she would never love him? 7 Was this Madonna already a possible model for Pinocchio’s Blue Fairy? Was Collodi, a true Florentine, in love with the artistic heritage of his town, initiated to its beauty by a painter, his uncle Giuseppe Orzali, who spent hours in the great galleries making copies of the best Italian masterpieces for tourists? Or is there another secret fascination that would fi nally come out and point to some major factor in the writer’s literary achievement? These considerations are not mere idle child’s play and are of the highest importance in our demonstration, as one will see, as our second enigma is curiously related to this fi rst one. And it will take less time to formulate it: how can we explain the fact that it was only in 1883 that Collodi disclosed Geppetto’s real profession on the last page of the fi nal version of The Adventures of Pinocchio, begun three years earlier? Indeed, it is only in the end of his adventures that Pinocchio fi nds his father back at work, as the old man: ‘having immediately resumed his profession as a wood-carver . . . was now designing a beautiful picture-frame embellished with foliage, flowers, and the heads of various animals’.8 Did the profession of wood-carver (‘intagliatore in legno’) mean something special for Collodi? Was there some hidden competition behind the quarrel between Maestro Ciliegia, a simple joiner, and Geppetto, a wood-carver? Our readers will think: is this last remark pointless, or again does this kind of resurrection refer to a particular artistic model that would have served the writer to build the plot of his story? As one may guess, we have an answer in store for this, and it will come out in the course of this Chapter. But, as the Snail (‘Lumaca’) 9 that keeps Pinocchio waiting at the door of the Fairy’s house implies, there is no need to hurry. More precisely, the answers to the two riddles will coalesce into one major evidence, which is decisive to our argument. But it will be our privilege as critics to provoke our readers’ curiosity a little more. Our last enigma will then be set in even fewer words, and it relates to the very substance of the hero of our story. We know that Pinocchio, a wooden puppet, is rather obdurate, harum-scarum, in a word ‘hare-brained’ in comparison to the anthropomorphized animals, the wily Cat and Fox, he meets. Could we not also suppose that he is sharing the nature of the butterfl ies he is chasing, as is astutely suggested by Roberto Benigni’s fi lm? That is to say, that he is the very opposite of the Snail: a fantastic being, just like his quicksilver master, Collodi himself, who, as a puppet-shower, has been clever enough to tease his critics and set them wondering about his real artistic aims? It seems that we have been piling up enigma upon enigma and the task of unraveling our skein of literary intertextual relationships has come. And so to our point with the consideration of this last enigma.

20 • Jean Perrot Images, Rhythm and Ideology: The Snail, the Cricket and the Butterfly At the beginning of Collodi’s story, Chapter IV, Pinocchio confides to the Talking Cricket that he hasn’t the slightest desire to study and that, he says, ‘I have more fun chasing after butterflies’.10 In fact, he will spend a part of his adventures chasing the illusory gratifications of gold and wealth, like the ‘big flightless butterflies’ of the town Sillybillytrap (‘Acchiappa-citrulli’) which ‘could no longer fly, because they had sold their lovely colourful wings’.11 On the other hand, in Chapter XXIX, after knocking at the Fairy’s door, Pinocchio has to wait for the Lumaca, a go-between or screen, to fetch his beautiful blue-haired Godmother, who is sleeping and later supposed to have stayed long in hospital. It takes the slow animal nine hours to get down from the fourth floor to the street. Quite a strenuous job for the young hero, when we learn that for him waiting one hour in the rain means one year! And it is admirable that she had rushed, as the narrator maliciously underlines that she comes down in a sweat.12 Education, no doubt, means taming and damping the irrational and wild impulses of the natural child. This is a lesson that had been made popular in fables. More specifically, the picturing of animals as anthropomorphically characterized in the very first part of the nineteenth century received new impulse from Honoré de Balzac’s Scènes de la vie publique et privée des animaux (1840– 1842) issued by the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, and illustrated with drawings by the French caricaturist J.J. Grandville.13 This book was popular and, in 1877, was adapted in English by James Thomson under the title Public and Private Life of Animals. The story “Voyage d’un moineau de Paris à la recherche du meilleur gouvernement” (The Flight of a Parisian Bird in Search of Better Government) included in this volume carried George Sand’s signature: ‘le moineau de Paris’ is a familiar metaphor for the pert and wild Parisian urchin of Montmartre, a character who shares the forwardness and daring of the Florentine ‘birichini’ presented by Collodi in the article “Il ragazzo di strada” (street urchin), reissued in Occhi e nasi (1881; Eyes and Noses). Another story illustrated by Grandville, Les aventures d’un papillon (The Adventures of a Butterfly), was written by J.-P. Stahl, a pseudonym of Hetzel when he wrote for children. In 1862 Hetzel edited a famous reissue of Charles Perrault’s tales with illustrations by Gustave Doré, which Collodi translated in Racconti delle fate (Fairy Tales) in 1876, along with four tales by Mme d’Aulnoy and two by Mme Leprince de Beaumont. In 1850, Hetzel had also been the editor of George Sand’s children’s story Histoire du véritable Gribouille (translated into English only in 1988 under the title The Mysterious Tale of Gentle Jack and Lord Bumblebee) which we are going to analyse in a moment, for, as we have shown in our book Le secret de Pinocchio (2003; Pinocchio’s Secret), this story stands as a main source for The Adventures of Pinocchio and was illustrated by George Sand’s son Maurice with images clearly inspired by Grandville. Did the French publisher show his Adventures of a Butterfly to the brothers Paggi

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 21 when they were discussing with him the translation of Perrault’s tales? We will leave this question unanswered for the moment, for no archives are left of the contract between the two publishers.14 But Collodi, who read and spoke French fluently, must have been introduced to J.J. Grandville’s work through the use Enrico Mazzanti, first illustrator of Pinocchio, made of it; he may have seen them before in Florence at the Piatti bookshop, a Republican and anticlerical cultural centre, where he was working in the early 1840s, reviewing the new books. In Italy, the influence of the French caricaturist was acknowledged in an article from L’Italia musicale (Musical Italy) as early as January 5, 1848, just a few days after Collodi published his first article “L’arpa” (The harp) in this periodical on December 29, 1847. Curiously enough, the name of Grandville was linked with that of Arlecchino as one could read: ‘Harlequin is crying under his mask and Grandville, searching in the brutes traces of human physiognomy and in human physiognomy the indices of ferocious forms and instincts, feels that the soul is being obscured by an incurable misanthropy’.15 Obviously there was a strong kinship between the Commedia dell’Arte and the animal comedy: both were under the influence of Lavater’s physiognomy theory. Among the amusing illustrations provided for The Adventures of a Butterfly let us mention one which shows the merry contest set between the carriages of guests going to the feast organized for the butterfly’s marriage to a fair dragonfly: on the occasion, not only hares and tortoises run as in Jean de La Fontaine’s fable, but crayfish too, reminding us of Lewis Carroll’s lobsters.16 On a small vignette, in particular, one can see the dragonfly bride’s carriage actually drawn by two slugs. A substitute for the fairy, who sleeps and does not want to be disturbed, the Snail appears to be the perfect symbol of a peaceful and composed mind: the sensible antithesis to the butterfly. But what looks more interesting in these illustrations is a picture showing a Grasshopper who ‘displayed wonderful dexterity in dancing with and without a pole on a horizontal stem of grass’ while ‘a showman Cricket was blowing a blast of music through the corolla of a tricoloured convolvulus’.17 The Cricket as an introducer to the feast of life heralds Collodi’s Talking Cricket who, as the representative of a confirmed bachelor, will reverse the scheme and try to initiate Pinocchio to the severity of the moral law. Obviously, the tale here springs from a literary transposition of ‘entomological balls’, which were the rage in the first half of the century, and during which dancers were disguised as insects, as George Sand’s story, The Private Secretary (1834) shows. Hetzel’s tale here stages the staff of characters which will all take part in Collodi’s novel through a very special transformation mediated by George Sand, as we are going to show soon. But what the structural pairing of ‘butterfly’ and ‘Snail’ in The Adventures of Pinocchio hints at for the present moment is a semiotic prospect implying the correlated codes marking the oppositions between ‘fast’ and ‘slow’, ‘dry’ and ‘wet’ (‘dry air’ and ‘wet land’), ‘irresponsible’ and ‘reasonable’, ‘gay’ and

22 • Jean Perrot

Figure 1.1 An entomological ball illustrated by J.J. Grandville, in J.J. Grandville, Un autre monde (Paris: Les Libraires Associés, 1963), 38; orig. J.J. Grandville, Un autre monde (Paris: H. Fournier, 1844).

‘dull’, ‘feverish’ and ‘composed’, etc. This set of contraries leads to the central contrast between the ‘pleasure principle’ and the ‘reality principle’, and to the core of Collodi’s use of metaphors. It points to the morals he wants to inspire: in the town of Sillybillytrap, Nature is debased by an excessive craving for money, and those who yield to the seduction of the bargain, and trade their bodies, are victims of their own delusion, which is what the Snail is fighting against when she brings to Pinocchio a fake meal, with bread made of plaster, chicken of cardboard and apricots of alabaster. This counterfeit belongs to the baroque ‘unifying power’ of the stucco described as ‘a simulacrum of

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 23 Nature’ expressing the new power of the rising bourgeoisie in Jean Baudrillard’s L’échange symbolique et la mort (Symbolic Exchange and Death): ‘Stucco is the triumphant democracy of all artificial signs, the apotheosis of the theatre and fashion, revealing the unlimited potential of the new class’.18 It is here introduced in a dramatic way by Collodi, the devotee of Florentine theatres, as a means of curbing the child’s wild impulses. The eel the doorknocker is metamorphosed into reinforces, by its quick escape, the ephemeral power of a petrifying social order on the street urchin—a way of being in literature. Such structural dualism also hints at Collodi’s way of dealing with literary matters: it is a well-known fact that the writer was ‘involved in the strenuous enterprise of an intense journalistic activity conducted with a convulsive professionalism’, as Carlo Madrignani observed.19 He was also very slow and lazy in his writing and needed some special urge, namely his young readers’ insistence, to come to the end of The Adventures of Pinocchio. There were noteworthy breaks in the writing of this book as well as with the story of Pipì, o lo scimmiottino color di rosa (Pip, or the Little Rose-Coloured Monkey), a story in fourteen Chapters serially published between 1883 and 1885 in Il giornale per i bambini (The Children’s Magazine), then later reissued in Storie allegre (Merry Tales) in 1887. It seems that periods of happy writing alternated with others of slough and despondency. And The Adventures of Pinocchio shares both the impulse, fantasy, humour, whim and speed of Collodi’s fully Sternian ‘Historic and humorous guide’ Un romanzo in vapore (1856; A Novel from a Steam Train) and the secret winding references to contemporary history or social issues more explicitly mentioned in I misteri di Firenze (The Mysteries of Florence), a novel composed slowly, between October 1857 and April 1858, and painfully left unfinished.20 Pinocchio’s life is a succession of mad rushes, fond enthusiasms, wild actions without any direct purpose, and of periods of regret, moaning and idle pondering. Fast and slow, this was the typical contradiction of Collodi’s way of being in literature, although no one will doubt that he finally did achieve a masterpiece. Another important feature in Collodi’s personality should not be neglected in this respect: his perfect knowledge of the contemporary world of music and of opera. As a chronicler of L’Italia musicale, and also in other reviews, Collodi proved that he had a fine sense of rhythm and of styles in the field. One single example drawn from I misteri di Firenze will show that he was expertly making use of this talent as a caricaturist in his own writing. The passage we are alluding to is in Chapter VII and is entitled: “A concert at Lady Clara’s”. It describes how ‘the Attila of the piano’ performs an extraordinary piece and gives an amusing illustration of the different tempos of a variation in what we will call a fantastic carving of the musical body. As it is quite a long passage, we will translate only some parts of it. The scene starts with a slow approach of the artist to the piano: ‘Liszt’s rival, after mopping his brow with a white handkerchief quite phlegmatically, and wiping the sweat from his moist hands, threw an inquisitive gaze at the hall as though he was searching among the crowd the lady of his heart, the Muse inspiring his melodies.’21

24 • Jean Perrot As one may notice, the words ‘flemma’ and ‘sudore’ are used to describe the pianist’s action, just as Collodi did with reference to the Snail! Then comes the overture and ‘an adagio lentissimo e stentato’, and then the reader is attending the most surprising musical membering–dismembering ever achieved: This done, he took up his innocent tune by the hair; severed out one arm, cut up a leg, warped the face, stretched the head, reduced it to a pin, to an ecce homo. Then he twisted it, kneaded it and disfigured it so strangely under his ferocious fingers that he reduced it to a 6–8 from a simple two-time tempo, as it had always been from its birth and origin.22 Geppetto, of course, would be more considerate when carving the body of his puppet—and would smart from its kicking—but we cannot help thinking that Collodi in 1858 was already projecting a rhythmical wood-carver’s phantasm on his literary production. This leads us to focus our analysis on the rhythmical representations of the body in The Adventures of Pinocchio, which means investigating the projections and imprints of the author’s phantasmal self on the linguistic codes that constitute the essence of his ‘italianicity’ at a given period of his country’s cultural and political development.

Carlo Collodi, George Sand and the Secret Bond of Intertextuality Internal Evidences Concurrently our aim is to show that, when writing the Chapters of his book for the Roman children’s magazine Il giornale per i bambini in 1881–1883, Collodi was faithful to his younger days’ involvement in literature, not only as a humorist-journalist producing a ‘stenterellata’ for children as Fernando Tempesti showed,23 but as a fully fledged writer who was not merely preoccupied with raising laughter from his audience, but, who, as an engaged young fighter for liberty, was concerned by the political issues of his writing. We will even assume that The Adventures of Pinocchio is a hidden allegorical autobiography, transferring a dual relationship to life and society on the metaphorical associations of the hero with animals. This shows that Collodi did not only take part physically in Mazzini’ military fight for ‘Young Italy’, but was also to the very end of his literary career fighting on the moral front, even evolving the cultural codes of behaviour that he deemed necessary to the rapid transformation of society. The ‘secret’ for this, and we are now using the term that sets the goal of our last book on this writer (Le secret de Pinocchio), is that Collodi has always

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 25 been writing under the literary spell and influence of George Sand’s novels and socialist views, and these as mediated by Giuseppe Mazzini’s reading of them. This is a relationship passionately conceived and kept undisclosed for specific reasons we are not to develop now. For we would not simply like to repeat what we wrote in our book, but, going further in our investigation, discuss new documents that strengthen our plea. These items were not in our possession when we published our book in 2003, 24 and we will bring out some parts of them in the course of this Chapter. They will take us back again to 1840 in the history of Italian culture. A brief reminder of the contents of Le secret de Pinocchio seems necessary now to clarify our position. In our reading of Collodi’s work, we concluded that The Adventures of Pinocchio was a story partly evolved as an original transformation of George Sand’s The Mysterious Tale of Gentle Jack and Lord Bumblebee. 25 This children’s tale deals with a young character, Gribouille, supposed to be a ‘simpleton’ (Gribouille is the traditional ‘Ninny’ or harum-scarum of countryside culture. Like a donkey, ‘somaro’, he does exactly the contrary of what is expected from sane people). The tale is built on an antithesis. The fi rst part is entitled: “How Gentle Jack jumped into a river for fear of getting wet”, and the second one: “How Gentle Jack jumped into the fi re for fear of being burnt”. A young boy from a poor family, Gribouille is sent by his covetous parents in the forest to Lord Bumblebee’s oak tree, with the purpose of appropriating the gold treasure stored there. Lord Bumblebee, a spendthrift, is a fantastically evil character, both insect and human, and wants the boy to submit to his evil influence. When he realizes that Gentle Jack is resisting his will, he pursues him and wants to sting him to death with his dart. But the boy jumps into the nearby river to save his life and is helped by a fairy, a marvelous ‘Godmother’ who has taken the shape of a blue dragonfly, and who transforms him into an oak wood branch.

Figure 1.2 Gentle Jack (Gribouille) transformed into a branch, illustration by Maurice Sand, from George Sand’s L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Gallimard Folio Junior, 1978), 68; orig. George Sand, L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Blanchard-Hetzel, 1850).

26 • Jean Perrot

Figure 1.3 Gentle Jack lying in the meadow, illustration by Maurice Sand, from George Sand’s L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Gallimard Folio Junior, 1978), 70; orig. George Sand, L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: BlanchardHetzel, 1850).

We can now perceive the analogy with Pinocchio’s own metamorphosis. Thus Gentle Jack will not be devoured by the fish and is able to swim away to the open sea. He is then picked up by an eagle (in truth, his fairy), who carries him to the island of the Queen of Meadows and Flowers where he experiences perfect happiness. Here again his shape, as he is lying on the grass, looks like Pinocchio’s (see fig. 1.3). There he finds a shelter, but only to defend the Kingdom of his ‘Godmother’, who is attacked by Lord Bumblebee’s allies, the Queen of the ‘Industrious bees’ (they will also be mentioned in Collodi’ story) and armies of wasps and of hornets. A terrible battle ensues between these armies and those of the Queen of the Meadows and Flowers helped by Birds. Horrifying scenes of violence are displayed in Maurice Sand’s pictures, such as one showing a man hanging from the gallows, and people who revolted hanging head downwards and being burned on pyres. Gentle Jack will take part in the battle, but, when he sees that their opponents are going to win, he sacrifices his life and dies, burned in the fire into which he has jumped. The whole passage together with the images seems to

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 27 have suggested the denouement of Pinocchio’s first ordeal when, after having his feet burnt to bits on the brazier, he is hanged on a branch of the oak tree by the Fox and the Cat. And a global approach of both plots suggests that the fate of the heroes stands within the same dilemma: either die by water or perish by fire! Finally, in Gribouille’s story, a smile of the Queen of Meadows defeats the evil enemies, and Gentle Jack is miraculously brought back to life: he will live eternally with his Godmother, alternating the shape of a little flower, ‘The Forget Me Not’, and that of a beautiful Sylph endowed in the picture with significant butterfly’s wings by George Sand’s son, Maurice. Similarly Collodi’s story does bring forward the particular relationship of the boy to his redeeming Godmother. Indeed, The Adventures of Pinocchio appear to be a structural transformation of Sand’s tale through a change of codes and new distribution of its items. The ultimate reason for the auctorial coherence would also be the implicit recourse to what one may call, after Gilbert Durand, the anthropological structures of the imagination, that is, the mythical relationship to natural elements (fire, earth, air and water) that grounded Collodi’s conceptions of human growth, and which he shared with George Sand’s rural approach to contemporary culture. Another highlighting analogy is the theme of self-sacrifice and generosity, which are key words of Sand’s social creed.

Figure 1.4 Gentle Jack and his Blue Fairy, illustration by Maurice Sand, from George Sand’s L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Gallimard Folio Junior, 1978), 123; orig. George Sand, L’histoire du veritable Gribouille (Paris: Blanchard-Hetzel, 1850).

28 • Jean Perrot In our book, we also showed that The Adventures of Pinocchio included elements derived from another novel by the French writer: Lucrezia Floriani (1846).26 In this story, a man surprisingly called Mangiafoco, a fisherman who appears to be the father of Lucrezia, and the character of a beneficent Godmother, as helpful to the girl as the Fairy is to Pinocchio, are related to the heroine, whose life they help shape. In analogous fashion, Pinocchio’s adventures result from encounters with similar characters in Collodi’s story, yet through a different plot. A significant passage of Lucrezia Floriani also shows the grief of a lover of Lucrezia coming to a true ‘Inferno’ in front of the slab of what he thinks her tomb, thus recalling Pinocchio’s laments in front of the tomb of his Fairy. In George Sand’s The Castle of Désertes (1847), one can spot another link with Collodi’s literary world, as one has to deal with the character of Boccadoro, who prefigures the preceptor of Giannettino.27 Lastly, we must mention one of George Sand’s A Grandmother’s Tales entitled “The Castle of Pictures” (“Le château de pictordu”), which Collodi may have discovered when planning his translation of French fairy tales, as the story was issued in serial form in the newspaper Le Temps (Times) from March 5 to 23, 1873.28 The tale is about a beautiful and mysterious blue god fairy who at night pays visits to Diane, a young girl who will do better in life than her father, giving her confidence in her own powers in a way that is close to the one bringing Pinocchio and his own Fairy together.

External Evidences We also need to specify the way that led us to what will be deemed an accumulation of such evidences. The first step of our enquiry was to ascertain whether Collodi had an early knowledge of George Sand’s work, and we speculated that a significant meeting occurred in Florence where the French author, travelling incognito in Italy, stayed from April 28 to May 2, 1855, for it was after this date that Collodi published the major article “Il teatro drammatico di G. Sand” (G. Sand’s Dramatic Theatre) in Lo Scaramuccia (October 13, 1855). In this journalistic essay, he analysed the transposition of George Sand’s novel Teverino (1846) to the stage under the title Flaminio (1854), where a wood-carver gives a first example of creating a significant puppet that seems to be endowed with the gift of speech. At that time we had no real evidence of this meeting, and we built Le secret de Pinocchio on what we called a ‘fantastic hypothesis’— ‘fantastic’ in the sense that imagined reality may be truer than actual life and might lead to truth. But we are now glad to proclaim our Eureka and exhibit our evidence. For it was in the issue of May 5, 1855, of Lo Scaramuccia that one could read the following announcement: ‘One of the great literary personalities of France happened to be, last Sunday, in one of the boxes, third tier, of our theatre Cocomero. It was George Sand, who, in spite of her masculine name, will always be the most eminent woman of our century.’29

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 29 This first-rate appreciation, as one may note, was extremely laudatory, but the stress put on the fact that George Sand was in a third-tier box corroborates the idea that she was hiding and did not want much publicity. Her letters during the journey show that she was preoccupied with the possible inquisitive search prompted by political censorship. The article further mentioned that one of her plays, Le mariage de Victorine (Victorine’s Marriage) had been staged two nights before, but that the audience who expected to see the author in one of the boxes had been much disappointed and frustratingly kept waiting when calling her to the stage by their applause: ‘il pubblico rimase con tanto di naso, e con le tasche piene di applausi e di chiamate al proscenio’ (the audience was disappointed, their pockets fi lled with clapping and curtain calls).30 The nose is already making its appearance. As Collodi had the command of his magazine, he could not be left out of George Sand’s secret ways and doings, and conversely she seemed to have a fair knowledge of his own secrets and of passion for Commedia dell’Arte. She travelled with her son, who was preparing a book on Italian puppets and on the different characters of the Italian popular theatre. An interest that shines explicitly through Sand’s novel, The Snow Man (L’homme de neige; 1858), whose main character, a puppet-player, follows the same itinerary she had followed from Assisi to Perugia and Florence, then to Leghorn and Marseilles, and who, like Collodi, changes his real name for a pseudonym suggested by ‘some place he had known in his childhood.’31 One must remember that this was written only two years after Lorenzini changed his surname into Collodi, the name of the village where his mother was born. Was this secret imparted to Sand during her stay in Florence? Maurice Sand’s book, which was published two years later, Masques et bouffons (1860; The History of the Harlequinade), matches the Italian writer’s passion manifested through the very title of his magazine Lo Scaramuccia. One has also to remember that Collodi was perfectly acquainted with other stories by George Sand, such as André and Horace, and used this material in his Mysteries of Florence, as was the point of one Chapter in my book. But first let us go back to the main issue of The Adventures of Pinocchio: the conception of Pinocchio as a puppet looking up to a Fairy.

The Carnival Fever in Florence: Masks and ‘A Superadded False Nose’ What is striking for the foreign observer of Italian life, at least of the nineteenth century, is the importance of entertainments and feasts, and among these, of masks. Collodi was especially interested in the Florentine Carnival, of which he wrote a pasquinade in 1855 and a satire of provincial Florence,32 as well as a more interesting account in L’Italia musicale on February 16, 1856, just after signing with his pseudonym in La Lente (The Lens) in January of that same year. In his article entitled “Corrispondenza di Firenze” (Correspondence

30 • Jean Perrot from Florence), he reported about the ‘balli pubblici e veglioni’ (masked balls) that took place on the occasion and gave special attention to the opera given at the Pagliano theatre, Il saltimbanco (The Acrobat) by Emilio Cianchi, an adaptation of the drama of Adolphe d’Ennery (1819–1899), Paillasse (1849; The Clown). The description of the fever he perceived in the city, and which no doubt he expressed in changing his name, is significant: Florence, the city of flowers and of flower pageants seemed to have been transformed into a madmen’s asylum. Howls, shouts, pandemonium, wild dances, music and shrill or hoarse voices were deafening the sky and the earth. The progeny in direct line of Farinata and of Dante of Castiglione were taken by a kind of delirium furens for the pleasure of disguises. All could not help the fever of the masquerade (it is a fever as any other). All were frantically competing for the national costume of Harlequin and of Pulcinella.33 One should note how the accumulation of nouns suggesting parataxis in the second sentence tries to recapture the frenzy of the people (‘la febbre della maschera’). A kind of wild exaggeration is also felt in the extension of this frenzy to the sky and to the land, which seem to be mythically mediated and fused in the baroque process. All the pleasures of the feast lie in the wearing of a mask: ‘And what is a carnival without masks?’ (‘E cos’è mai un carnovale senza maschere?’), Collodi asks further down, stressing the fact that the Florentine ‘popolo’ cannot do without ‘nasi di cartapesta’ (cardboard noses), because ‘they have been persuaded not to be sufficiently ridiculous, so long as they haven’t set a superadded false nose on the one that they have been endowed with by mother nature!’34 Pinocchio’s future lays hidden behind this sentence, which shows how the choice of a long nose for a puppet meant disguising the human nature that would pop up eventually: a cardboard nose, a prophetic harbinger of D.W. Winnicott’s modern ‘false Self’, as will be established in Playing and Reality. A similar recalling of the carnival fever will animate the young audience ‘of every age’ that comes to the circus to see Pinocchio dance, after he has been transformed into a donkey,35 and also the children when they reach ‘The Land of Toys’, where some disguise as ‘pagliacci’ (clowns) or wear paper helmets and wield papier-mâché sabers.36 And one will notice that what may be called an ethnological ‘illness’ fi nally infects Lucignolo (Candle-Wick), when he sees donkey’s ears growing on his head, and he is supposed to have ‘the ass’s fever’.37 Though he may condemn play as an idle activity for children who are suffering from hunger and who have to think about their own future, Collodi’s description of such scenes assumes the function of the ‘transitional space’ necessary to win the reader’s attention. Pinocchio and Lucignolo will literally become ‘pagliacci’ and live on ‘paglia’ (straw), sleeping on it and eating it. They will, in fact, be punished by eating their false self. A delight for

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 31 recalcitrant readers! Jacques Lacan’s joke was not really different when, in his analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter, he concluded that the Minister, who wanted to confound the Queen, had come to his own end ‘eating his Dasein’, like King Thyestes who had eaten his children, when wanting to make his enemy Atreus eat his own. Such is the power of literary Nemesis here.38 Finally, the metamorphosis of the boy and the puppet into donkeys is but a fairy-tale substitute for the wearing of a mask. One understands why Pinocchio, at the end of the story calls the Fox and the Cat ‘masqueraders’.39 They have become ugly, but are also considered for what they were when they spoke, i.e., mere phantasms for human beings wearing masks. And these masks have stuck to their faces so that they can no longer get rid of them. A symmetrical transformation occurred in the last paragraph of Collodi’s “Corrispondenza di Firenze”, where one could read about the Pagliano theatre becoming: ‘il teatro di moda’ (fashionable theatre): ‘and fashion is the most playful symbol which these feathered birds of the great family of Reasonable Animals can possess’.40 Similarly, Collodi’s children’s story exploits a feature which is but a social convention in the entertainment of adults and uses it as a means of shaping the child’s fantasy. The carnivalesque mood tends to transform any possible character into its animal double.

Laughter Saving the Human Body from the ‘Fever of Gain’ and the Mechanical Self This may also be read as a consequence of the caricature practiced by artists at that time in the wake of J.J. Grandville’s drawings, which Collodi discovered in the humorist’s Un autre monde (1844; Another World), as well as in the illustrations of Public and Private Life of Animals, as Un romanzo in vapore testifies.41 With the help of her son Maurice, George Sand applied the same satirical devices to her Gribouille children’s tale. The symbolical function of the animals met in Pinocchio’s adventures takes now a new coherence, when one remembers that the Fox, when he hears the sound of the gold coins, seems to be overcome by a mechanical instinct and makes ‘an involuntary movement, stretching out the leg that appeared to be paralysed’.42 The puppet, on his own part, will ‘run and romp around the room, as sprightly and chirpy as a spring chicken’, ‘frolic like a kid’ or will be ‘waggling about like an eel’.43 Every animal seems to have been chosen from the stock of popular expressions with the purpose of conveying the feeling of excess in the regulation of corporal expression. This tendency to overdo, which characterizes caricature, but also a baroque vision of life, is particularly obvious when Pinocchio is ill, seized by ‘an indescribably high fever’ and when he has ‘a sort of convulsive shudder, that made the whole bed shake.’44 More significantly, the last Chapter of what was the conclusion of the first version La storia di un burattino shows what extraordinary energy the puppet keeps in his body when he is facing death: ‘the puppet was overcome by such a severe bout of trembling that the joints

32 • Jean Perrot in his wooden legs rattled’.45 To make the scene more impressive, the novelist even calls up ‘a strong north wind [ . . . ] howling and roaring violently, it buffeted the poor hanging puppet hither and thither, making him swing about furiously like the clapper of a celebratory bell.’46 The whole rhythm of the sentence and the choice of words suggest a kind of brutal military attack from nature itself uniting its forces to destroy the poor thing who suffers ‘severe pain’ from the noose around his neck.47 Yet the whole dramatization of these high-pitched tortures is all the more improbable, since the puppet is made of wood! Collodi is obviously playing with his young reader and writing with tongue in cheek: nature itself is a mask, acting as a violent delegate to help the novelist carry out his sad job. The recourse to such energy is however representative of the aesthetic register in which the novel is set. Throughout the scenes, the words ‘rabbia’ (rage) and ‘fretta e furia’ (wild hurry) suggest that a ‘fever of disguise’ is something equivalent or at least antithetic to ‘the fever of gain’ (‘febbre dei subiti guadagni’), which Collodi denounced in Un romanzo in vapore, where he lampooned the greediness of the contemporary mercantile society: ‘so many millions of people, who rush, with their bayonets set, to raise their capital and to conquer the Stock Exchange, the historical Golden Calf of the modern Argonauts’.48 Again, a military metaphor has been used by Collodi here. The writer used a similar treatment for the description of the industrial forces at work in society. For him it was the symbol of steam (‘vapore’) and the rhythm of the steam engine that concretized the energy of modern society. Here, again in the steps of the French caricaturist Grandville, who had represented in Un autre monde ‘a concert in vapour’ given by robots, Collodi let his fancy free. In the same humorous vein, Un romanzo in vapore, in which the reader also meets a character ‘as fantastic as George Sand’s Stenio’, was a gleeful ode to a growing magic: that of the train leaving a railway station with ‘such a rumble from the engine, such a monotonous beat of the rods and of the cast iron wheels, such blowing of clouds of steam furiously springing from the boiler’.49 The description ends with the evocation of ‘a rumbling pot pourri by the whole orchestra’.50 This is quite a spicy foretaste of the rather sober staging which comes up in The Adventures of Pinocchio through the episode with the serpent, whose tail looks like a chimney and emits a curling smoke. Here the repetition of a mechanical gesture is turned into a scene of comedy, when we see the serpent that seemed completely rigid and sleeping, ‘suddenly reared up like a released spring’ every time Pinocchio tries to step past him.51 The serpent with the fuming tail is a kind of robot representing danger and Evil. And it is the sight of the puppet with his nose stuck in the mud and his legs desperately kicking that makes the serpent die, when he is seized with such convulsive laughter that a blood vessel in his chest bursts. The verb ‘kicking about’ expressing the frantic energy of the puppet is matched by the rhythm of the sentence: ‘the Serpent was seized with such convulsive laughter—laugh, laugh, laugh, he went—that in the end, what with the strain of too much laughing, a blood vessel in his chest burst.’52

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 33 Laughter chases the rigidity of the false self, even to the point of dying, and the puppet’s emphatic deportment comes as a denunciation of the mask imposed upon people by industrial constraints. When one remembers that Jean Baudrillard, in his Symbolic Exchange and Death, distinguishes three kinds of symbols for the representation of the self within three defi nite structures for the ‘economy of the sign’—the automaton when identity is expressed through singularity of prestige as a form of economical value, the robot based on the bourgeois production of goods and values and the manikin of postmodern times, where values depend on the very shape imposed by fashion—one realizes that Collodi had forestalled this classification by creating a wooden subject whose lively corporeal gesticulations were inspired by the puppet-master, operante or novelist trying to recapture the truth of human nature. Through The Adventures of Pinocchio, Collodi had the possibility of voicing his distaste for the growing power of money in a progressively industrialized Italy, which he seemed to criticize and at the same time accept in Un romanzo in vapore, a book meant to describe the economical growth of the central part of Italy. He was also able to express the ideals he had been obliged to check, and even choke, when the Grand Duke was in power, and even later. Finally in this children’s novel, he would evince a complete adhesion to the phantasmal vision of the Italian countryside he had elected for his young hero.

Laughter and Politics: A Utopian View of the People This vision was both realistic and utopian, when compared with that of the modern cities of the time, such as Milan, or, even closer to Florence, of Prato, as Collodi explained in the first part of Il viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino. It did not rely on the production of commercial values, but on the generosity of the child embodying the symbolic exchange to create a new category that would cover the whole social field. As early as 1848, a conception prevailed of the popolo as childlike and needing to be taught, as the program of Il Lampione (The Street Lamp) made it clear on the front page of its first issue on July 13 of that year: ‘People, people! You have instincts in you that can make you stand sublime and others that can bring you down to the gutter, and we know that kind words that come from the heart are more helpful to you than a thousand instances of rational thinking.’53 The journalists of Il Lampione pleaded for a rejection of social violence. An interesting article entitled “Barricatologia” (The Art of Making Barricades), published in this periodical on July 25, 1848, and signed Arlecchino, and in our opinion written by Collodi, as we will prove shortly, criticized the Parisian events of July 10. It read thus: In the political plot set in Paris on July 10, it was planned to start a new communistic revolution, and its first step was to invade all the monasteries

34 • Jean Perrot and schools, chase all the nuns, convent girls and children and tie them together into barricades. And you may note that I don’t hold this from Harlequin, but from History itself.54 The journalist also noted that different types of barricades had been built, either with ‘paper’ or ‘silk’or ‘wood and stone’, but that in Paris the fashion was then to have them made with ‘flesh’.55 And to conclude: ‘If the fashion happens to come here, I will go down into the street as a voluntary and will take the barricade, with my bayonet set.’56 Thus the same set phrase, a ‘baionetta in canna’, already used in Un romanzo in vapore, comes up under the journalist’s pen to counter both the danger of communism and that of the Stock Exchange. Grim humour is the best way of dealing with political issues. Bursting into laughter to alleviate the pressure of actual dangers is also almost a philosophy. In fact it was truly a political programme for the ‘Artisan journalists’ of the review Lo Scaramuccia. On the front page of issue 6 (1853), when Collodi joined this journal in November, one could read: ‘Scaramuccia makes us laugh / We applaud those who make us laugh / This is our programme and why oh why are you so against a paper that laughs? / Take an enema [sic] and stay healthy.’57 The “Coda al Programma della Lente” (Coda to the Lente’s Programme) signed by Collodi in the cover page of the first issue of that review in January 1856 was voicing the same desire of joy and laughter tuned in with derision. As in his “Corrispondenza di Firenze” for L’Italia Musicale, Collodi addressed his fellow countrymen facetiously. The ‘Young Italy’ was at low ebb at that time and Lo Scaramuccia was represented as a merry fellow holding a bottle of champagne in each hand in the front pages. But by 1881–1883 there would be yet other means of getting rid of one’s fever and coming to one’s true self in Collodi’s tale. One of them was through looking up to the face of one’s beautiful Fairy that would be a children’s lay version of the Italian cult of the Holy Virgin. A curious model for this can be found in Grandville’s Un autre monde (1844), where a puppet stands in the same romantic situation, in front of a fairy, an opera Venus who turns him into Zephyr in the end, as the Queen of Meadows does with Gribouille.58 A situation that could be illustrated in the Pagliano theatre in Florence, and of which the first scenes of I misteri di Firenze give an idea. But for Collodi contemplation was not enough: patience and work, eventually, are Pinocchio’s great masters and are repeatedly set for imitation to the puppet in his initiation ritual. The nostalgia for a rural and traditional life was paired with an alternative logic: that of the unconscious supporting strong political beliefs.

George Sand as Giuseppe Mazzini’s ‘Godmother’: Is Gribouille a Mazzinian Hero? George Sand was a great friend of Mazzini’s, who visited her in October 1847 and spent two days at her home in Nohant, deep in Berry, in the

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 35 central part of France. He then met her again in Paris on March 2, 1848, just a few days before he proclaimed, with Pietro Giannone and Filippo Canuti, the foundation of the Associazione Nazionale Italiana (National Italian Association) on March 5, 1848, and issued a manifesto on March 12. In this political pamphlet, the authors recalled the long, ‘at times open at times secret fight of the people [ . . . ] sanctified by the blood of many martyrs’, which ‘developed in many the conscience of their duties, rights and Power’, springing from a ‘brotherly love bond’. 59 The text was also pleading for a European federation of peoples united by equality and the bonds of free association. A little later Mazzini would send Sand issues of L’Italia del Popolo (The People’s Italy) founded in 1849. Addressing her as ‘sister’, he wrote to her on January 15, 1847: ‘Vous êtes notre drapeau’ (you are our flag),60 and discussed political matters in his correspondence. He had also promoted the publication of part of her novels in English, a series of six volumes translated and edited by Eliza A. Ashurst and Matilda M. Hays in London.61 As early as March 1847, The People’s Journal, a socialist review, also published a long presentation of Sand’s work by Mazzini who had then settled in England. The Italian leader had written an enthusiastic preface to the sixth volume of this collection, bringing out the Letters of a Traveller (orig. Lettres d’un voyageur, 1834–1837). The Companion of the Tour of France (orig. Le compagnon du tour de France; 1840) was in the fourth volume: in her Preface, Matilda M. Hays applauded the generosity of a literature which cultivated the ‘sentiment of human brotherhood’, seeing a source of literary revival: ‘it is there that the Muse of romance, a muse eminently revolutionary, might renew her exhausted forces. [ . . . ] Yes, it is in the strong race of the people that she will fi nd that intellectual youth, whence she hopes to gain strength and for her best and noblest fl ight.’62 These words were a direct transcription of a similar passage written by Sand in The Companion of the Tour of France, where she advocated the same literary muse and concluded her passionate plea with a pathetic outburst, which Hays translated thus: ‘O noble infancy of the Soul! Source of fatal errors, sublime illusions and heroic devotions. Shame to him who abuses it!’63 The translation sweetened Sand’s last sentence, which in the original ran as: ‘Shame on him who exploits thee’. In his Introduction to Sand’s Letters of a Traveller, not a political writing but a Romantic collection of letters he became acquainted with in 1836, when they were first published in French, Mazzini was more faithful to Sand’s political intentions, and stressed the importance of these letters for him. He remembered reading them at a time of doubt and despondency, when, a political exile, he was persecuted by ‘foreign cabinets’, and about to be chased from Switzerland. He wrote: My dearest friend had perished in the prisons of Charles Albert; others were condemned to drag out their lives there [ . . . ] others were still per-

36 • Jean Perrot ishing of the death of the soul. Plans formed with all the energies of mind and heart had been just annihilated on the very point of accomplishment [ . . . ]. I had no longer faith in man, no longer faith in myself.64 Countering this pernicious effect, ‘this book was to me a friend, a consolation’, he added.65 With his high rhetoric, Mazzini emphasized the healing properties of George Sand’s style: ‘This sisterly voice, its accents broken by suffering, yet finding strength to throw a word of encouragement to those who were yet wandering mid storm and darkness, was sweet to me as the cradle song to the weeping child.’66 It was, in truth, the motherly book of a life’s initiation for any child of the people and Mazzini acknowledged his debt to this reading.67 Grafting his own discourse on that of the actual traveller devised by George Sand, Mazzini’s Introduction developed a long allegory showing the difficulties one could meet on the path of life: it was not a new Pilgrim’s Progress, but, in the steps of Turgenev, in his opinion hero of the period, it conjoined specific contradictions: ‘The cause of the evils of to-day, so fatal to our youth, is, on one side, a foolish pride of individuality; on the other, the want of persistent energy of will. There is in us, children of the nineteenth century, something of the Titan and of Hamlet.’68 And then comes what sounds like inflated, but very interesting, piece of eloquence in the description of the young man launched on the path of his moral elevation: Proud and eager, the young man darts forward on his route, his pure heart throbbing with emotion, his brow frowning from the inner working of the thoughts of emancipation, peculiar to the age which has sent him forth [ . . . ]. He goes onward, and still onward, through impulse, not by energy of a reflective will; spurred on by hope, not by a sentiment of Duty imposed by Faith.69 What Mazzini regretted was the impossibility for a nineteenth-century young man to come up to the level of such ideal: ‘He had strength enough for the martyrdom of the body, not for the martyrdom of the soul.’70 And it seems that George Sand herself fulfi lled this wish, and provided this missing hero with the character of Gentle Jack created during the following year: Gribouille may be considered a true Mazzinian hero, but transferred to a fairy tale. The son of poor parents, he is initiated to the moral of love by his Godmother. Following her advice, he accepts to sacrifice himself and make the gift of his life, to stop a raging war and ‘to make people better’, in a denial of contemporary materialism and rejection of a liberalism dominated by intolerance and the cynical lust for gold and power. Naturally, this is not the case with Pinocchio, who is not inspired by any high ideal, but simply by the desire to enjoy life. We cannot say, as for Mazzini’s

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 37 modern young man, that he is facing the dilemma unfolded by Mazzini in the following way: And how many among them might not have been saved, if instead of saying to them ‘be happy’, their mother had said to them with the first development of their intelligence ‘be good and pure’, if instead of saying to them ‘be rich’, their father had repeated unceasingly to them ‘be strong’ [ . . . ], if at the acme of a crisis, a friendly hand had not touched their brow, and a faithful voice murmured to their ear ‘be faithful to the dream of your youth’.71 Collodi’s realistic approach appears to be a literary correction of George Sand’s idealistic and Romantic vision of life. Yet, the ‘faithful voice’ of Pinocchio’s Fairy will play a similar part to counter the treacherous invitations of the Fox and the Cat to the puppet, and remedy the absence of a responsible father. One should not wonder at finding that the physical ordeal imagined for his Titan by Mazzini partly foretells that of the puppet: You are yet in the midst of the ocean; struggle on bravely, the hand on the oar, and the eye raised to the Heavens; the very billow which affright you will forward you on your way, and you are strong enough to conquer it, as you would a fiery courser, but let your arm drop, your energy relax for a moment and you are thrown back to the point from which you departed or swallowed up in the depths.72 One of the sea episodes of Collodi’s book come to our mind, and one remembers that, at the end of Chapter XXIII, during the night storm on the sea, Geppetto has to face ‘a terrible great wave’,73 and his boat is swallowed by it, whereas the puppet fights on bravely and is finally carried safely to the sandy beach by another billow. Collodi is telling his story with his tongue in his cheek when he writes that ‘the waves, chasing each other and breaking over each other, bundled him about between them, as if he were a twig or a bit of straw.’74 One should not forget that Pinocchio here wins dubious merit from this feat of bravery as he is made of wood. And so Mazzini’s metaphor of the stormy ocean as an image of decisive life ordeal is deconstructed by the humour of the writer of children’s literature. This is taken up again and developed by the logic of the same rhetoric, when Geppetto and Pinocchio, having been swallowed up by the sea-monster, plan to escape and see ‘beyond that enormous wide-open mouth a lovely expanse of starry sky and the beautiful moonlight.’75 For Mazzini’s apology of George Sand’s moral achievement is concluded by the following remark: ‘She has displayed these internal crises to our eyes, pointing out to us, with a hand yet trembling with pain, the star of safety, towards which our life must tend increasingly.’76 Mazzini hailed Sand as the greatest moralist of his time and, in an article published in The People’s Journal, a socialist weekly devoted to the social

38 • Jean Perrot cause, on March 6, 1847, he did not hesitate to attribute to her ‘the all-powerfulness of genius’, claiming that ‘a powerful reality’ and ‘the individuality of George Sand is not only her own, it is that of her age’ and that she was setting a telling example to ‘every soul worthy of understanding’ by pointing to the fact that ‘our earthly life is not the Right to happiness, it is the Duty of development’.77 A letter written on November 5, 1847, also shows that Mazzini was in regular correspondence with Felice Le Monnier, the French publisher established in Florence through whom most of the new literature and subversive ideas came to Florence.78 Mazzini, an exile, was sending delegates to Italy to start the fight and liberate his country. Naturally, Collodi and the journalists of Il Lampione were fully acquainted with George Sand’s novel The Companion of the Tour of France and shared her beliefs about the ‘people’.

The True Sandian Model for Collodi’s ‘Intagliatore in Legno’: Designing a Beautiful Picture-Frame One may now think that we lost sight our Madonna della seggiola and of the two enigmas presented at the beginning of this Chapter. The first one will begin to clear up, when one remembers that it is precisely in The Companion of the Tour of France that the reader becomes acquainted with the wood-carver Amaury Nantais-the-Corinthian. The wood-carver is madly in love with a coquette, the Marquise des Frenays, compared here to a ‘papillon de nuit’ (a night moth).79 She is from a bourgeois family, but, now a widow of the aristocrat she married, she likes to be courted by young men, and she is attracted by the personality of Amaury, who is a clever and ambitious artist. In a great seduction scene, Amaury has the feeling of winning her, and confides later to a friend: ‘I was like a child, holding a butterfly in his hand and afraid of spoiling its wings’.80 He will eventually discover the lady’s character is fickle and abandon her for a more generous woman. This detail establishes a link, though a minor one, with George Sand’s story. However, running after his butterfly, Amaury has another stronger passion: like Teverino, he utters Correggio’s famous words: ‘Anch’io son pittore’ (I’m a painter too). In the story, his friend Pierre Huguenin, himself a joiner (and here are a couple of artisans calling to mind Maestro Ciliegia and Geppetto) invites Amaury to work at the home of a certain Count of Villepreux and restore the wainscot panels of his chapel. One day, seized by the fire of creation, Amaury sculpts a wonderful figure: the head of a woman which is a masterpiece and is admired by the Count’s daughter Yseult of Villepreux, with whom Pierre is piously in love. This second young lady is a typical Sandian character, abiding by the strongest principles of morality, love and true friendship. What is more important for our concern, she owns an engraving of Raffaello’s Madonna della seggiola by Morghen (and here at last comes the

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 39 Madonna I have been promising from the very beginning), which highly stirs Pierre’s Romantic imagination, so that he ‘pictured the young chatelaine to himself as possessing those features at once angelic and powerful.’81 As he falls deeper and deeper in love, Pierre will have dreams or visions in which the image of the girl and that of the figure sculpted by his friend mingle and fuse. A second draft of the process foretelling Pinocchio’s conception as a character in love with a fantastic being hanging between reality and the fantastic world seems to have emerged now. Is Yseult haunting Pierre’s dreams a nebulous double of Pinocchio’s Fairy? She is, at least, the dignified literary predecessor of Gribouille’s Godmother, with whom she shares all the virtues. Yet the famous portrait seems to have been haunting the novelist herself, for in a following scene, La Savinienne, another young widow whom Amaury truly loves, is compared to a Madonna by Raffaello, ‘beautiful as one of Raphael’s Virgins, with the same regularity of features and the same expression of calm and noble sweetness.’82 This woman holds her second child in her arms, ‘undressed and already asleep, a fine boy with bright fair complexion and fresh as the morning.’83 The ‘amber’ colour again is that of the child’s dress in Raffaello’s Madonna della seggiola. Indeed a kind of rivalry seems to be established between Pierre and Amaury as to their legitimacy not only of artistic representation of the woman they love, but also of a true relationship to art. And it is Pierre himself who grants the palm of success to his friend, when he confesses to Yseult, who admired the ‘sculpted face’ and suggested that he might have done it: ‘I have not sufficient skill, he replied, I would not risk the attempt. I can carve foliage and borders, and perhaps also animals.’84 Which is almost exactly what Geppetto is doing at the end of The Adventures of Pinocchio: ‘he was now designing a beautiful picture-frame embellished with foliage, flowers and the heads of various animals.’85 My second enigma is now settled, and the relationship between Sand’s and Collodi’s works is definitely established. One will not wonder at hearing Amaury exclaim: ‘Damned puppets’ when carving some figures of angels that appear to resist and tire his genius! Pierre, for his own part, will marry his Madonna della seggiola and live happily ever after. This is a conclusion that could not satisfy the bachelor Collodi, nor the engaged novelist who expected higher morals for the Italian child and people, and who eventually found them in The Companion of The Tour of France, which appears to have been, as early as 1847 in England, a noteworthy bible promoting a certain type of worker’s solidarity, as George Sand had planned it as a ‘history of secret societies’.

Collodi and the Secret Society of Companions. The ‘Fox’ and the ‘Devorant’: A Quarrel between Two Old Friends Bringing all our indices together, a last, and most important, issue is raised in the wake of all these discoveries: the functional meaning for the plot

40 • Jean Perrot of the quarrel between Maestro Cherry and Old Joe. One is not surprised to learn that in the fi rst scenes of The Companion of the Tour of France, two elderly craftsmen are quarrelling, but for reasons differing from those opposing the two Italians, whose artistic treatment follows the pattern of Commedia dell’Arte. The fi rst workman is a joiner again. It is Pierre’s father, Father Huguenin, and, like Maestro Ciliegia, he is a grumpy and irascible character who grows more and more furious in the course of the conversation, banging the table with his fists. The second one is a locksmith called Lacrète (meaning ‘cockscomb’ or ‘tuft of hair’, which might have suggested Geppetto’s wig) who likes to tease his old friend, with whom he disagrees. The two men do not come to blows, but their disagreement is as quickly spent as that of Collodi’s cronies. In fact, they are discussing the opportunity of hiring new workmen for a job, which Father Huguenin is expected to do for the local gentleman farmer, the Count of Villepreux. Pierre’s father, who is rather conservative in his political thinking, is afraid he might inadvertently hire workers belonging to one of the societies of Companions: these were of ill repute in most villages then, and he considered them to be ‘sorcerers, libertines and the rabble of the highways.’86 George Sand had a thorough knowledge of this social issue, having documented Agricol Perdiguier, a joiner from Avignon she befriended in 1840, and his book Le livre du compagnonage (Book of Companions; 1839). In her own book she broaches a history of the working people and tells how Companions were organized in societies called Devoirs (Duties) and were bearing different names. Some, mainly joiners, were supposed to be more peaceful. Others, the carpenters, their ferocious rivals in the quest for jobs, were called Dévorants. An apprentice Dévorant was called a Renard (Fox), which explains why Father Huguenin is afraid that ‘the Dévorants must come into my house by my window’.87 He fears that they will cut his throat while he is in bed, ‘as they cut each other’s throats in the dark recesses of the woods and in cabarets.’88 And here one must notice that Hays’s English translation for ‘s’égorger’ was not ‘cut one’s throat’, but ‘strangle’, which is nearer to Pinocchio’s fi rst misadventure.89 Pierre is himself a Companion, and his Father Huguenin wonders whether he is ‘the father of a wolf, a fox, a he-goat, or a dog’.90 Pierre Huguenin, a joiner, will later meet a Dévorant on his way, thus running a great risk. One can now see what these details hint at: namely that the Fox and the Cat, these devouring highway rascals, are mere transpositions of characters drawn from the ‘Book of Companions’: they are Dévorants who will ‘strangle’ Pinocchio by hanging him from an oak tree. This fi rst ending suggests that Collodi had access to Sand’s novel through the English translation rather than the French one. Collodi’s Adventures of Pinocchio is an allegorical tale secretly transposing the moral issues implied by the social relationships of the labour world into the field of children’s literature.

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 41 The Novel of a ‘Society of Mutual Aid’? One of the main tenets of the philosophy inspired by the socialist Pierre Leroux to Sand was solidarity: as Lacrête tells Father Huguenin in their quarrel, companionship ‘is a means of understanding one another, knowing one another, supporting one another and helping one another, which is not so mad, nor so bad’.91 This rule of conduct, which is, for instance, betrayed by Melampo, the dog who cheats his master, will be gradually adopted by Pinocchio as he grows more responsible, as taught by experience. One keeps in mind the episode of Alidoro, another dog, whom he saves from drowning and who in turn draws him out of the fisherman’s grip and from sure death in the frying pan. One should also remember how Pinocchio is saved by Arlecchino and then saves the other puppets, which Mangiafuoco wants to burn in his fire. Pinocchio helps his father in the end, instead of thinking about his own good, and is approved by the Fairy, who gives a last lesson about ‘children who lovingly help their parents in their hardship and their infirmity’.92 Using the wording ‘society of mutual aid’ for this kind of agreement is not trespassing historical reality. In fact, we hold that Collodi always stood by such tenets, from the very beginning of his political career as a journalist. For when we go back to the first issues of Il Lampione in 1848, we realize that many articles were dealing with this subject. A series of five articles on the issue of ‘pauperism’ appeared from issue 36 of August 24 to issue 43 of September 1, and three articles on “Delle Società di Mutuo Soccorso” (Societies of Mutual Aid) appeared from issue 46 of September 5 to issue 48 of September 7. In issue 62 of September 20, 1848, the article “La libertà spiegata al popolo” (Liberty Exposed to the People) showed which values took precedence: ‘After proposing the defense of Independence, national Feeling, Fraternity and Equality, it has become indispensable to speak about Liberty.’93 It is a fact that the first society of mutual aid for the workers of any trade, an intermediary between the old corporation of papal times and the future trade unions, was created in Pinerolo on October 12, 1848, and the first national congress was held in Rome in 1871, announcing a larger impulse in 1880 when Collodi wrote his novel. It was on the same respect of ‘Duty’ expected for the welfare of the ‘People’ that Collodi founded his morals, and not on any bourgeois ideology. In the eighties, Collodi was not merely interested in the Florentine purity of the Italian language, for which he had been appointed in 1868 by the Minister of Education Emilio Broglio with the task of cataloguing French words for the compilation of a new dictionary. His care went also beyond that of a professional journalist dealing with the opera and Parisian life. Even though his name was quoted in Olindo Guerrini’s listing Bibliografia per ridere (Bibliography for Fun), Collodi was not a plain humorist and wrote articles for the periodical La Vedetta. Gazzetta del Popolo (The Sentry. People’s Gazette).94

42 • Jean Perrot He was an acute decipherer of the characteristics of the Florentine society, as his article “Gli ultimi Fiorentini” (1881; The Last Florentines) shows. Writing didactic books for children, such as Giannettino, he was a humanist concerned by the welfare of his fellow countrymen.

Conclusion. Reanimating a Piece of Wood When he decided to animate his ‘piece of wood’, Carlo Collodi, who acted with his reader as Boccadoro does with Giannettino, was taking the part of Amaury, the bachelor artist able to sculpt a beautiful woman’s head in George Sand’s novel Le compagnon du tour de France. Through his very humour, he was faithful to a life devoted to art, while Pierre in the novel married his Madonna della seggiola, but remained socially engaged in the fight for the political liberation of his working companions. Yet, bringing George Sand’s engaged vision to a more realistic level, Collodi succeeded in reconciling the two parts: he started his story as a mere exemplum, a warning tale showing the misadventures of a young boy, whose meeting with the Fox and the Cat parodied that of the members of rival societies in George Sand’s story, while the quarrel between Geppetto (‘intagliatore in legno’) and Master Cherry, the joiner, was a comic rehashing of the quarrel about social issues between the old cronies Father Huguenin and Lacrète in the same novel. Strangely, the Fairy Godmother was supposed to be dead at that moment, as though the power of Raphael’s Madonna had become extinct under some desperate influence, while it was mostly active in Il viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino written the same year. As Pinocchio’s sad ending was rejected by the young readers of Il giornale per i bambini, Collodi was obliged to bring the puppet back to life, and to reactivate the power of his Fairy. He was bound at the same time to build a possible way out of the child’s misery, and to qualify the puppet’s father, whose character had been slighted in the caricature provided by the humorous launching of the plot. Thus, looking for inspiration in material at hand, he went back to the theme of the puppet coming to life, which he had discovered in 1855 in George Sand’s play Flaminio, mentioned in his article “Il teatro drammatico di G. Sand”,95 and which was strengthened both by the use of narrative elements from Sand’s Histoire du veritable Gribouille and by the influence of J.J. Grandville’s pictures on Enrico Mazzanti’s work and on himself. Sand’s story, with its Mazzinian hero, was a mediator in this writing, as it provided a link to Collodi’s past political engagement and a key to a more realistic model for an interpretation of a child’s development in contemporary life. But it was to The Companion of the Tour of France that Collodi would fi nally revert to provide ‘the frame of foliage’, which would symbolically crown the wood-carver’s art, while his ‘son’ was on the way to formal respectability. The Madonna della seggiola, so present in Sand’s novel, had no room left in this scheme as she was eclipsed by a lay figure,

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 43 but she was in the background of the writer’s aesthetic contemplation that would temper his creative fever. Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9

10 11 12 13 14

15

Carlo Collodi, Il viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino, vol. 1 ‘L’Italia Superiore’ (1880) (Florence: Bemporad, 1895), 25: ‘una delle più rinomate in tutto il mondo, per la maravigliosa raccolta dei capolavori di pittura, di scultura, di bronzi’. Collodi, Giannettino, 35: ‘il famoso pittore detto il Beato Angelico, che dipinse nel convento affreschi maravigliosi di Santi e Madonne’. Collodi, Giannettino, 40: ‘rinomata in tutto il mondo quanto quella degli Uffizi, e forse anche più’. Ibid.: ‘Fra i tanti e stupendi capolavori di questa galleria, prendi ricordo di farti insegnare la celebre Madonna della Seggiola di Raffaello’. Collodi, Giannettino, 41: ‘Per aver quella Madonna—disse una volta un principe della Germania—darei la metà de’ miei stati.’ Collodi, Giannettino, 16. Daniela Marcheschi, “Cronologia”, in Carlo Collodi, Opere (Milan: Mondadori, 1995), I–CXXIV (LXXXIX). Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, trans. Ann Lawson Lucas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 168–69. See also Collodi, Les aventures de Pinocchio/Le avventure di Pinocchio, pres. Jean-Claude Zancarini, trans. Isabel Violante (Paris: GF Flammarion, 2001), 314: ‘avendo ripreso subito la sua professione d’intagliatore in legno, stava appunto disegnando una bellissima cornice ricca di fogliami, di fiori e di testine di diversi animali’. In her translation of ‘Lumaca’, Lawson Lucas has chosen the word ‘Snail’ rather than ‘Slug’, which sounds more appropriate to the tone of the story—see Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 166. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 12. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 61. Collodi, Pinocchio (2001), 228: ‘Bisogna proprio dire che avesse fatto una sudata!’ Honoré de Balzac, Scènes de la vie publique et privée des animaux (1840– 1842), ill. J.J. Grandville, 2 vols (Paris: Hetzel et Paulin, 1842). Collodi has been also using a first translation of these tales by Cesare Donati published by Jouhaud in 1867—see Roberto Maini and Piero Scapecchi, Collodi, giornalista e scrittore (Florence: Biblioteca Marucelliana, 1981), 56–57. According to Roberto Fedi, the work was somewhat ‘piratesque’—see Roberto Fedi, “Collodi e le fate”, Schedario 167 (1980): 1–6 (1): ‘operazione un pò piratesca’. Anon, “La caricatura”, L’Italia Musicale I (1848): 211: ‘Arlecchino piange sotto la sua maschera, e Grandville cercando ne’ bruti le tracce della

44 • Jean Perrot

16 17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29

fisionomia umana, e nella fisionomia umana l’indizio delle forme e degli istinti ferini, sente intenebrarsi l’anima per l’insanabile misantropia’. These pictures, as Marguerite Mespoulet showed in Creators of Wonderland (New York: Arrow, 1934), exerted a strong influence on John Tenniel. J. Thomson, trans. and adapt., Public and Private Life of Animals, ill. J.J. Grandville (London: Paddington Press, 1977), 196 (orig. J. Thomson, Public and Private Life of Animals. Adapted from The French of Balzac, Droz, Jules Janin, E. Lemoine, A. de Musset, Georges Sand &c. by J. Thomson. With illustrations [by “Grandville”] (London: Sampson Low, 1877 [1876]). Jean Baudrillard, L’échange symbolique et la mort (Paris: Gallimard, 1976); trans. Iain Hamilton Grant, Symbolic Exchange and Death (London: Sage, 1993), 51. Carlo A. Madrignani, “Collodi, il piccolo”, in Carlo Collodi, I ragazzi grandi (Palermo: Sellerio, 1989), 135–39; cit. by Zancarini in Collodi, Pinocchio (2001), 28. Carlo Collodi, Un romanzo in vapore. Da Firenze a Livorno. Guida storico-umoristica, intro. Daniela Marcheschi (Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1987). Carlo Collodi, I misteri di Firenze, ed. Fernando Tempesti (Milan: Salani, 1988). Collodi, Misteri, 87: ‘Il rivale di Liszt, dopo essersi passato con tutta flemma un fazzoletto bianco sulla fronte e dopo aver rasciugato il sudore dalle madite dita gettò una lunghissima occhiata intorno alla sala, quasi cercasse fra la folla la donna dei suoi pensieri, la musa ispiratrice delle sue melodie.’ Collodi, Misteri, 88: ‘Fatto ciò, egli riprese furiosamente il suo innocentissimo motivo per i capelli; gli staccò un braccio, gli tagliò una gamba, gli sformò la faccia, gli allungò la testa, lo ridusse un gomitolo, un ecceomo; poi lo attorcigliò, lo stritolò e lo sfigurò così stranamente sotto le sue dita feroci, che lo ridusse un sei-otto, da un semplice tempo-in-due, come era stato sempre, fino dalla sua nascita e dal suo principio.’ A ‘stenterellata’ is a comedy with characters such as Stenterello, a Florentine character in the Commedia dell’Arte, who is very poor and always hungry—see Fernando Tempesti, Chi era Collodi. Come è fatto Pinocchio (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1988); cit. in Mariella Colin, L’âge d’or de la literature d’enfance et de jeunesse italienne. Des origines au fascisme (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2005), 80. Jean Perrot, Le secret de Pinocchio (Paris: In Press, 2003). George Sand, The Mysterious Tale of Gentle Jack and Lord Bumblebee, ill. Gennady Spirin (New York: Penguin USA, 1988). George Sand, Lucrezia Floriani (Paris: C. Lévy, [1881]). George Sand, Les château des Désertes, in George Sand. Vie d’artistes, pres. Marie-Madeleine Fragonard (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1992). In George Sand, Contes d’une grand’mère (Paris: [n.p.], 1873). Carlo Collodi, “Cronaca 5 maggio”, Lo Scaramuccia, May 5, 1855: 2: ‘Una delle grandi individualità letterarie della Francia si trovava domenica sera,

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 45

30 31

32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49

50 51 52

in un palco di terz’ordine, al nostro teatro del Cocomero. Era Giorgio Sand—che a dispetto del suo nome mascolino, sarà sempre la donna più eminente del nostro secolo.’ Ibid. George Sand, L’homme de neige (Arles: Actes Sud (Babel), 2005), 269: ‘une reminiscence de quelque nom de localité qui m’aurait frappé dans mon enfance.’ See Marcheschi, “Cronologia”, LXXXIII. Carlo Collodi, “Corrispondenza di Firenze”, L’Italia Musicale, February 16, 1856: 53: ‘Firenze, la città dei fiori e delle fioraie, sembrava convertita in un manicomio. Urli, grida, baccani, ridde, musiche e voci alte e fioche assordavano il cielo e la terra. I discendenti in linea retta di Farinata e di Dante da Castiglione erano attaccati da una specie di delirium furens per i travestimenti. Tutti avevano addosso la febbre della maschera (è una febbre, come tutte l’altre): tutti rivelavano delle tendenze sfrenate per i costumi nazionali dell’Arlecchino e del Pulcinella.’ Ibid.: ‘sono persuasi di non essere abbastanza ridicoli, fino a tanto che hanno aggiunto un naso posticcio al naso che ebbero in dote da madrenatura!’ Collodi, Pinocchio (2001), 268: ‘di ragazzi di tutte le età, che avevano la febbre addosso per la smania di veder il famoso ciuchino Pinocchio.’ Collodi, Pinocchio (2001), 248. Collodi, Pinocchio (2001), 256: ‘la febbre del ciuchino’. Jacques Lacan, “Le séminaire sur La lettre volée”, in Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 40. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 161. Collodi, “Corrispondenza di Firenze”, L’Italia Musicale, February 16, 1856: 54: ‘e la moda è lo zimbello più lusinghiero, che possano avere questi uccellacci spennati della gran famiglia degli Animali ragionevoli.’ See Perrot, Secret, 69–99. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 35. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 56, 59 and 145. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 53 and 52. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 46. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 47–48. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 48. Collodi, Vapore, 7: ‘tanti milioni d’uomini, che corrono, baionetta in canna all’aumento del capitale e alla gran conquista della Borsa, lo storico Vello d’Oro degli Argonauti moderni!’ Collodi, Vapore, 50: ‘quel rumore sordo della macchina, quel monotono acciabattarsi degli ordigni e delle ruote di ferro, e quell’anelito celere e soffocato del vapore, che si sprigiona tremendo dalla caldaia’. Ibid. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 69. Ibid.

46 • Jean Perrot 53 Anon (but Carlo Collodi), untitled, Il Lampione, July 13, 1848: 1. 54 Arlecchino (pseud. Collodi), “Barricatologia”, Il Lampione, July 25, 1848: 43: ‘In una congiura scoperta a Parigi il giorno 10 di Luglio, si era stabilito di fare una nuova rivoluzione communistica, e la prima operazione doveva essere quella d’invadere tutti i monasteri e le scuole, e di trarne fuori monache educande e fanciulle e legatele insieme farne delle barricate, e notate bene che questo non lo dico da Arlecchino, ma da storico’. 55 Ibid.: ‘A Milano se ne fecero di carta e di seta, quelle di legno e di pietra sono già vecchie, ora Parigi il paese della moda le vuol fare di carne.’ 56 Arlecchino, “Barricatologia”: 43: ‘Se la moda vien anche qui, io scenderò in strada come volontario e prenderò la barricata a baionetta in canna.’ 57 Anon (but Carlo Collodi), untitled, Lo Scaramuccia 6 (1853): 1: ‘Scaramuccia ci fa rider / Bravo è assai chi rider fa / Questo è il nostro programma e perché vi arrabbiate tanto contro un giornale che ride? Perché? / Purgatevi e state sani.’ 58 See Perrot, Secret, 90–91 and 103–05. 59 Giuseppe Mazzini, Associazione nazionale italiana (Paris: Imprimerie de Lange-Lévy, 1848), 42: ‘La lotta, or segreta or aperta [ . . . ] e santificata del sangue di molti martiri’. ‘Ha fruttato alle moltitudini coscienza de’ loro doveri, de’ loro diritti e della loro Potenza’. ‘Patto d’amore fraterno’. 60 Cit. in Perrot, Secret, 110 and 115. 61 See George Sand, The Works of George Sand, 6 vols, ed. Matilda M. Hays and Eliza A. Ashurst (London: E. Churton, 1847). 62 Matilda M. Hays, “Preface”, in George Sand, The Companion of the Tour of France, vol. 4, in Works of George Sand, 1–6 (4). 63 Sand, Companion, 80. 64 Giuseppe Mazzini, “Introduction” to George Sand’s Letters of a Traveller, vol. 6, in Works of George Sand, 5–13 (12). 65 Mazzini, “Introduction”, 13. 66 Ibid. 67 Mazzini, “Introduction”, 11: ‘I thought of the sufferings of the child of the people martyred by misery, and deprived of the life of the soul’. 68 Mazzini, “Introduction”, 7. 69 Mazzini, “Introduction”, 8. 70 Ibid. 71 Mazzini, “Introduction”, 10. 72 Mazzini, “Introduction”, 11. 73 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 82. 74 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 84. 75 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 157. 76 Mazzini, “Introduction”, 12. 77 Joseph Mazzini, “George Sand”, in The People’s Journal, ed. John Saunders (London: People Journal’s Office, 1847), 131–34 (131, 132 and 134 respectively).

Carlo Collodi and the Rhythmical Body • 47 78 Giuseppe Mazzini, Epistolario, vol. 17, in Scritti (Imola: Galeati, 1921), 42. 79 George Sand, Le compagnon du tour de France (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2004), 484. 80 Sand, Compagnon, 339: ‘J’étais comme un enfant qui tient un papillon et qui craint de lui gâter les ailes’. 81 Sand, Companion, 36; orig. Sand, Compagnon, 91: ‘il se représentait la jeune châtelaine sous ces traits à la fois angéliques et puissants.’ 82 Sand, Companion, 88; orig. Sand, Compagnon, 166: ‘avec la même régularité de traits et la même expression de douceur calme et noble’. 83 Ibid: ‘à demi déshabillé et déjà endormi, un gros garcon blond comme l’ambre, frais comme le matin’. 84 Sand, Companion, 180–81; orig. Sand, Compagnon, 295: ‘Je n’ai pas tant d’adresse, répondit-il; je ne me risquerais pas à la tenter. Je pourrais faire des feuillages et des bordures, quelques animaux tout au plus.’ 85 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 168–69. 86 Sand, Companion, 41. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Cit. in Sand, Compagnon, 100: ‘cela sert à s’entendre, à se connaître, à se soutenir les uns les autres, à s’entr’aider, ce qui n’est pas si fou, si mauvais.’ 92 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 167. 93 Anon (but Carlo Collodi), “La libertà spiegata al popolo”, Il Lampione 62 (1848): [n.p.]. 94 See Olindo Guerrini, Bibliografia per ridere (Rome: Sommaruga, 1883), 51–52, cit. in Marcheschi, “ Cronologia”, CXVII. 95 See Carlo Collodi, “Il teatro drammatico di George Sand”, Lo Scaramuccia, October 18, 1855, cit. in Perrot, Secret, 49–51.

Chapter Two Puppets on a String The Unnatural History of Human Reproduction Ann Lawson Lucas

Puppets of the species to which Pinocchio belongs—marionettes—are made to imitate the human form, but they also have strings from which they are suspended and which allow the human puppeteer to guide and control the puppet’s movements. Collodi never gives any incontrovertible indication that there are strings attached to Pinocchio’s torso, head and limbs, but we do know that he belonged to this family of puppets. It can be inferred from Old Joe’s (Geppetto’s) early announcement that he has decided to make himself ‘a fine wooden puppet’ that will be able ‘to dance and fence and do somersaults’.1 The ability to do somersaults (‘fare salti mortali’) is not something that comes naturally to other types of puppet. Moreover, Pinocchio is recognized as next-of-kin by the performers in the puppet-theatre: ‘Come and embrace your wooden brothers and sisters!’ shouts Harlequin.2 As Arlecchino, Pulcinella and company belong to the ancient lineage of the Commedia dell’Arte, we know what they looked like and how they were operated.3 Although they run riot with apparent freedom for the benefit of Pinocchio, the total power over them of the puppeteer, Swallowfire (Mangiafuoco), and their utter subservience to him are illustrated repeatedly, and it is in this context that Collodi comes closest to mentioning that there are indeed strings attached: the semi-ogre wants to use Pinocchio as firewood for spit-roasting purposes and tells the others to bring him into the kitchen: ‘you’ll find him hanging on the hook’, he commands.4 This is obviously a reflection of the way in which marionettes are stored, hung up by their strings, while also being an illustration of power and powerlessness: this puppet, like any normal child, is dependent 49

50 • Ann Lawson Lucas on his elders. Thereafter Pinocchio will run wild, not to mention swim, climb trees and perform other activities incompatible with strings, but essential to the nature and meaning of his role. He is an inanimate artefact which rebels against its natural state and against its creator in a passionate search for freedom, identity and life. The artificial model of a person, invented by human beings for their own purposes, which instead provokes mayhem, is central to a cultural tradition which spans almost the whole of the nineteenth century. From E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Der Sandmann” of 1816 and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) down to Carlo Collodi’s Le avventure di Pinocchio (1883) there evolved a complex cultural phenomenon: an exploration in literature, ballet and opera of imaginary attempts by human beings—or, rather, by men—to reproduce their species by scientific or mechanical means, sometimes with the suggestion of alchemy or magic also being employed. Whether we interpret them as inspired by the contemporary white heat of technology or by an atavistic and misogynistic desire to survive without women, these fantastic experiments resulted in the creation of imaginary automata, monsters, toys and puppets, whose stories are frequently tragic and always raise questions of human morality, responsibility and even sanity. Pinocchio, created between 1881 and 1883, comes near the end of the tradition and, as Collodi was an irreverent cultural magpie, there is every possibility that he consciously gleaned from it and, in reworking the old ideas, sometimes parodied them.5 In the German setting of “Der Sandmann”, a famous university physicist, Spalanzani, who is Italian and looks like Cagliostro (suggesting unnatural philosophy), invents a mechanical life-size doll, an automaton, and calls her Olympia.6 When she is set in motion, she can play the piano, sing and dance— but as far as we know she does not turn somersaults: there are no literal strings governing her since her mechanisms are internal.7 Like Old Joe, Spalanzani wants to exhibit his creation and make use of her for his own professional profit.8 Nearly seventy years apart, one fundamental element in these two stories is essentially the same: the relationship between the artificer and the artefact is presented as that of father and child, which betokens a deep attachment and a powerful emotional investment by the creator in his creation.9 For both Spalanzani and Old Joe, that pride and expectation will be brutally shattered. The fate of Olympia is to be physically destroyed, while Pinocchio, like Dr Frankenstein’s monster, runs away. In both cases the proprietary pleasure of the creator is disappointed, and both situations illustrate the inequality of the ties between parent and child, as well as their strife and the ultimate loss of control by the progenitor over his progeny. While the puppet is the hyperactive protagonist of Le avventure di Pinocchio, this is not the role played by Olympia, one of whose most prominent characteristics is passivity—in her case, a trait no less unsettling than rebelliousness: ‘She seemed not to notice me, and her eyes had in general something fi xed and staring about them [ . . . ]. It made me feel quite uncanny, and

Puppets on a String • 51 I crept softly away’.10 Olympia is the object of the tale, not the subject, the focus of attention and of misapprehension by the subject. Because Hoffmann’s is a romantic love story, its central character has no parallel in Pinocchio. Nathaniel is Olympia’s admirer, and “Der Sandmann” is concerned principally with him and his mental and emotional state, but like Pinocchio this work is in part a psychological study of youth. As a child Nathaniel had been traumatized, which permits an exploration of childhood feelings, misunderstandings and impulses. On the evenings when his father’s strange old friend, Dr Coppelius, used to visit, to engage in scientific experimentation, their mother would usher the children to bed, saying that the sandman of the traditional tale was coming to close their eyes in sleep. From the outset, Hoffmann’s story insists on perturbing images of eyes: in folklore the sandman was reputed to take a sackful of (naughty) children’s eyes—‘all bloody’—to the moon where he fed them to his brood of owl-like offspring.11 Incidentally, this servant’s version is violently at odds with others, for example, the pretty children’s lullaby by Hermann Kletke, set to music by Robert Schumann in 1849: ‘I sprinkle on their little eyes / Two little grains of my sand, / Then they sleep all night long, / In the care of God and angels’.12 Indeed the mother laughs away Nathaniel’s fears at what is only a fiction: ‘There is no sandman, my dear child’,13 but Hoffmann may be interpolating an astute early comment on the possible effects on sensitive children of frightening tales collected from adult popular tradition: only a few years earlier the Brothers Grimm had begun to publish their masterwork.14 Nathaniel himself seems to confirm the connection: ‘I liked nothing more than to read or listen to gruesome tales of kobolds, witches, dwarfs, and so on; but over all of them towered the sandman’;15 the authorial voice makes a similar allusion in rejecting the ‘loveliest opening’ for a story, ‘Once upon a time’, as too ‘sober’ for the ‘degree of marvellousness’ inherent in Nathaniel’s sad life.16 Scared by the gory myth, the boy associates the sandman with Coppelius, resulting in a terror amply justified, it seems, when the two men’s science goes wrong, and an explosion kills his father; meanwhile, Nathaniel—whether waking or dreaming is uncertain—has perceived his elders as alchemists experimenting to create homunculi, albeit without eyes.17 This is the first stage in an argument, common to both Hoffmann and Mary Shelley, which expresses an intense new anxiety about the unexpected dangers and outcomes of science: even Clara, Nathaniel’s betrothed, who is the embodiment of wholesome common sense, doubts its value and writes that his father had been ‘altogether absorbed in the deceptive desire for higher truth’.18 Later, with painful irony, Clara’s restraint and conventionality cause Nathaniel to accuse her of being a ‘lifeless, accursed automaton!’19 As a university student, Nathaniel’s view of reality becomes even more distorted. He not only falls in love with a girl seen from afar, who is not alive, being indeed a mechanical automaton, but he is also irrationally terrified of a seller of barometers and optical aids, one Coppola.20 He believes this Italian is one and the same as Dr Coppelius, but nevertheless buys a pocket telescope

52 • Ann Lawson Lucas from him—an instrument intended to help him see Olympia better. At different stages of the story, the sandman, Coppelius and Coppola (in Nathaniel’s mind all interchangeable with each other) are observed as collecting, seeking, inventing and selling eyes or their equivalent. Presumably Hoffmann is again referring to recent research, this time resulting in scientific discovery: from the late eighteenth century the science of optics had been intensively investigated, and the English polymath Thomas Young had alarmingly experimented on his own eyes, discovering how the eye focuses.21 Hoffmann’s leitmotiv of eyes and optical instruments constitutes an enquiry into the idea of perception, both visual and intellectual, but Hoffmann is primarily concerned with the fallibility of both human sight and understanding—and their capacity for being deceived and confounded. Nathaniel looks at, listens to and dances with a mechanical doll, but sees and adores a young woman. Moreover, just as he had spied on his father and Coppelius, Nathaniel spies on Olympia, so that the emphasis on eyes, seeing and optical science ushers in also the suspicion of voyeurism or the misuse of vision. Later, from a high tower, he looks at the beauty of the landscape but, seeing his companion Clara distorted through the telescope lens, he turns against her and leaps to his death from the tower. It is Coppola who had supplied not only Nathaniel’s telescope, but also Olympia’s eyes. The young man’s thwarted hopes of seeing a non-girl, who is at first confined in an inaccessible building, may help to illuminate—perhaps even explain—Pinocchio’s encounter with a figure seen at the window of a cottage: ‘Then there appeared at the window a beautiful Little Girl, with indigo hair and a face as white as a wax image. Her eyes were closed and her hands were crossed over her breast.’22 Similarly, in Delibes’ ballet Coppélia (1870), based on “Der Sandmann”, the static, inanimate automaton is seen framed in a window, and in both Hoffmann and the ballet, the doll’s arms rest on a table, with the hands folded.23 The Little Girl will not admit Pinocchio although he desperately pleads for refuge, whereupon she explains that she is dead. Unlike Olympia, this girl resists Pinocchio’s desire for her to be alive and responsive to him. Like Nathaniel’s, Pinocchio’s perceptions of the world usually begin with a naïve trust and end in fear; he is often misled, and this little hero is surrounded, dogged and constantly menaced by death. Again, the eyes—and also the voice—have a special significance. They define, from the outset, the puppet’s relationship with the world and with human beings. Indeed, lacking Olympia’s disturbing stillness, Pinocchio springs to life before his body and features have been carved. Like Michelangelo’s sculpture, he already exists within the material to be shaped, and the log of wood emits a tiny voice, saying ‘Don’t hit me too hard!’24 The old carpenter and his friend are terrified by the mysterious voice, which causes a quarrel and fisticuffs between them. These two are the lowly working man’s equivalent of the learned creators of elegant Olympia, and, if indeed Collodi had “Der Sandmann” in mind, the presence of Master Cherry (Maestro Ciliegia), the first wood-carver, would be

Puppets on a String • 53 explained; otherwise he seems redundant in this usually masterly narrative. Spalanzani and Coppola, two Italians in a German story, similarly fall into an ugly slinging match and brawl over their doll;25 they destroy her in the process, and her eyes are left on the floor, dislodged and perturbingly bloody. On entering the house, Nathaniel perceived ‘all too clearly that Olympia’s deathly-white face possessed no eyes: where the eyes should have been, there were only pits of blackness—she was a lifeless doll! [ . . . ] At this point Nathaniel saw that a pair of blood-flecked eyes were lying on the floor and staring up at him’.26 By contrast, Collodi’s old carpenters only detach buttons and wigs from their own persons in the course of their slapstick battle (derived from Commedia dell’Arte convention).27 At home with his piece of wood after this less destructive fight, Old Joe carves the hair, the forehead and then the eyes of his intended marionette; immediately these eyes acquire an independent life and, to the old man’s consternation, alarmingly follow his movements.28 In both tales, then, the eyes have a significance beyond the already problematic one of perception and understanding: they signify life itself. As Nathaniel had peered through Coppola’s (distorting) pocket-telescope, Olympia’s ‘fi xed and dead’ eyes had seemed to come to life: ‘it was as if they were at that moment acquiring the power of sight, and their glance grew ever warmer and more lively.’29 But whereas Olympia had only seemed alive to Nathaniel because of his subjective misperception, Pinocchio is in fact alive and soon free of human agency or control. This is the immediate meaning of the next features to be carved: the nose which promptly grows, the mouth which laughs, teases and sticks out its tongue, the hands which grab and the feet which run.30 Olympia’s movements are programmed by her inventor’s masterly technology, so that she sings and plays the piano to perfection (an inhuman perfection); when she dances with Nathaniel her mechanized exactitude causes difficulty and is threatening to him, making him doubt a skill he thought he possessed: ‘the singular exactitude of rhythm with which Olympia danced, which frequently took him completely out of his stride, soon compelled him to recognize how defective his dancing was.’31 Evidently neither artefact can be fully and confidently controlled by mere human intervention. But, whereas in Hoffmann alchemy fails the doll as spectacularly as does science, destroying the hero as well as the pseudo-heroine, in Collodi it is magic—worked by the Fairy with Indigo Hair—which ultimately assists the puppet to convert himself into a real, responsible, self-controlled human being.32 An important, perhaps principal, theme of “Der Sandmann” is concerned with the use made by human beings of science. An inherent tension is expressed by the fight between the two inventors, the academic scientist Spalanzani and the technician—and possible alchemist—Coppola. Hoffmann’s story is pervaded by doubt, suspicion and fear, feelings which express the revolt of Romanticism against the certainties and confidence of Enlightenment rationalism, as well as the Romantic anxiety about the imponderable power generated by the Industrial Revolution. The arguments are identical

54 • Ann Lawson Lucas to those surrounding the twentieth-century development, for instance, of the atomic bomb—or indeed cloning (to use a contemporary example consistent with the concepts explored by Hoffmann); these arguments concern human responsibility and self-control in relation to the search for knowledge. They are also the preoccupations of Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, but she is anxious to distinguish true science from fake; in the early Chapters concerning Victor Frankenstein’s education and his obsession with Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus, the writer specifically opposes natural philosophy (science) and supernatural speculation (alchemy), the latter being roundly condemned by both Victor’s father and his Professor.33 Nevertheless, the words of a scientist bring about Victor’s ruin; at least he himself considers them ‘enounced to destroy me’.34 As in the case of Nathaniel, Victor’s fi xation causes him serious mental illness, a ‘nervous fever’ which confi nes him for several months.35 The monster devised by the young Frankenstein is the product, at least in part, of scientific endeavour, and yet possesses attributes and a power unforeseen by his creator: in him, the outcome of human experimentation is the creation of a reservoir of deep misery resulting in violence and death, horrors which Victor attributes to his own ‘unhallowed arts’.36 In his own small way, the puppet Pinocchio, a product of the era of late Romanticism, reiterates this earlier angst: intended as Geppetto’s inanimate, child-sized companion and the instrument for the old man’s survival as an entertainer, this creation also runs amuck, causing havoc everywhere, to the near destruction of both puppet and inventor (which is, indeed, the fate of both Dr Frankenstein and his huge fake human). Like the monster, Pinocchio has the power of thought and overwhelmingly strong human feelings; in this they are both different from Olympia, whose capacity for promoting difficulty and destruction lies precisely in the absence of humanity in her. Puppet and monster both rebuke the hubris of their creators, rebelling against them and fleeing into the wilderness; 37 but, unlike the monster, Pinocchio nurtures a warm-hearted, albeit forgetful, devotion to the man who made him, his pseudo-father. In “Der Sandmann” and the reinterpretations of its nexus of ideas throughout the century, the process of creation as well as the human agents of creation are prominent, as they are finally in Collodi’s tale in the 1880s, but this is not the case in mid-century in Hans Christian Andersen’s narrative, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” (1838), an early children’s story of dolls and toys—although a precedent existed in Hoffmann’s own Nussknacker und Mausekönig (Nutcracker and Mouse King) of 1816, to which Andersen, a fervent admirer of the German writer, was certainly indebted.38 In the Danish tale the imperfection of human creation is nonetheless implied in one small but important detail revealed at the climax of the first paragraph; this Tin Soldier is the odd one out from his boxed set: the metal must have been used up just before he was finished, for he has only one leg.39 He represents that favourite obsession of Andersen, the damaged human being, and in this he has a kinship with

Puppets on a String • 55 Hoffmann’s Nathaniel rather than with the coldly perfect Olympia. However, while Nathaniel illustrates irrational defeat, the toy soldier is heroically reliable: ‘he stood just as firm on his one leg as the others did on their two’.40 For the Tin Soldier the eyes and the attribute of sight again play a crucial role. Like Nathaniel, he falls in love from afar with a girl dancer, in this case a toy ballerina made of card and fabric: ‘his eyes didn’t leave her for one second’.41 This predates by over thirty years the re-creation of Olympia’s story as the ballet Coppélia, in which the image of the life-size doll necessarily becomes that of a ballet dancer. While Nathaniel’s expressions of love had fallen literally on deaf ears, so failing for physical reasons, the Tin Soldier instead obeys the human rules of military duty and decorum and is therefore—for psychological reasons—unable to attempt verbal communication with the ballerina: he ‘looked at her and she looked at him, but they said nothing’.42 Beyond the restraints of convention, even here the eyes are connected with a hint of the diabolical and irrational when, at midnight, a goblin jack-in-a-box intervenes, threatening the soldier and exclaiming: ‘Will you keep your eyes to yourself!’43 At the heart of all these tales of replica humans there is a metaphor for human life, and here, too, it represents the difficulty of human relations. The fate of the toy soldier and toy ballerina is as tragic as the outcome of Hoffmann’s fiction, for both are destroyed, burnt to cinders in the stove, and in Andersen no equivalent of the contented Clara remains.44 Over a period of at least eighty years “Der Sandmann” was reworked in other cultural forms.45 It was in 1870 that Delibes and his librettists presented their refashioning of the story in the form of a full-length ballet. The adaptations required for the dance, for a joyous theatrical experience and for a happy ending, brought about a major departure from the original. In place of urban bourgeoisie, the ballet concerns the rural (or even Ruritanian) peasantry. In Coppélia, the academic scientist, Spalanzani, has disappeared, and the magical element of the eccentric Dr Coppelius’s activities as the inventor of many automata is made explicit and factual; however his spell requiring a human soul to be stolen (from Franz, the ballet’s version of Nathaniel) and grafted into his doll is thwarted by the sound sense and courage of Swanilde, the prima ballerina equivalent of Clara. Though the ballet makes the theft of a soul a literal activity, it stems from the eventual insanity of Hoffmann’s Nathaniel and the power of Coppelius-Coppola over him; if the young man loses his mind, he also loses his soul, evident in the murderous revulsion turned against Clara. The stealing of souls—as distinct from the loss or selling of a soul—is a recurring theme in Hoffmann’s stories, and the ballet may indeed be indebted to more than one, possibly including the Venetian tale of Giulietta later retold, along with that of “Der Sandmann”, in Offenbach’s opera: there Dapertutto, a sorcerer and the evil genius of the story, thus equivalent to Coppelius in the ballet, persuades Giulietta to make her admirer look not through spectacles or a telescope but into a magic mirror, where his reflection—and thereby his soul—will remain entrapped.46

56 • Ann Lawson Lucas In Coppélia, with its cheerful and optimistic banishment of magic, what remains of “Der Sandmann’s” original significance concerns above all sexual roles and power-play: there is the same uneasy triangle of lover, sinister ‘father’ and automaton ‘daughter’, and there is the same sense of appearances deceiving the eye. But only the ballet’s subtitle—La fille aux yeux d’email (The Girl with Enamel Eyes)—suggests the original focus on eyes and perception. The switching of the whole musical narrative from sinister tragedy to light-hearted comedy de-natures the story and, indeed, makes the ballet less relevant for comparison with Pinocchio. This may seem surprising since Collodi’s book is both uproariously funny and subtly witty. But the ballet Coppélia is sentimental and exhibits almost none of the pathos, moral depth or constant encounters with danger and death which characterize The Adventures of Pinocchio and make it great. By contrast, when Offenbach worked with Barbier on his opera, Les Contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann), in 1880–1881, the incipient mood of the fin-de-siècle and of Decadentism restored to the story of “Der Sandmann” much of its meaning and power, with an even greater emphasis on the macabre.47 This tale provided the substance of Act 1, while two further tales were adapted for Acts 2 and 3, with Hoffmann himself as the linking central character, the everlastingly disappointed lover.48 Here the menace, the obsession and the erotic elements of the original story of Olympia are all intensified, and the significance for life—and death—of eyes, spectacles and the vagaries of perception is again in the foreground. Coppelius sells spectacles to Hoffmann, who sees Olympia as human, and he has already supplied the eyes for the doll Olympia: ‘J’ai des yeux’ (‘I have eyes’) he sings to the ‘blind’ lover in a major aria.49 It is even clearer here that Spalanzani intends to profit from his creation (he ‘mutters about the fortune he hopes to make from his invention’),50 while, in that same year, Geppetto would announce a similar intention for himself and his puppet.51 In the opera, unlike the ballet, the rivalry between scientists has been restored, along with a sense of their irresponsible competitiveness and of a diabolical dimension in the process of invention. The automaton again sings to guests and dances with her admirer, now Hoffmann himself, but this time she is far from passive: when he touches her shoulder while talking, she abruptly stands up and walks out, just as the impatient and self-willed Pinocchio might do. Moreover, Nathaniel’s discomfort and sense of inadequacy while dancing with Olympia are emphasized in the opera to the point of terror: now the vigour and speed of her dancing become overwhelming to her partner. Man cannot control woman, any more than he can control the product of his scientific experimentation. Here it is Olympia herself who causes her admirer’s collapse, whereas in “Der Sandmann” it is her destruction by the inventors which sends Nathaniel insane. In the opera, Olympia is destroyed by Coppelius alone, in savage revenge against his rival Spalanzani. The disabling of her mechanical body may perhaps have been witnessed—or certainly read of—by the opera-loving theatre critic, Carlo Collodi, and may indeed prefigure his

Puppets on a String • 57 own final Pinocchio episode, famously illustrated by Enrico Mazzanti in the first book edition of 1883, in which the marionette’s form is left collapsed and lifeless when Pinocchio is metamorphosed into a real boy.52 Not only did Collodi frequently attend the various flourishing theatres of Florence, but he had always been enthusiastically involved in theatrical journalism, in which news from abroad played a significant part. He was deeply committed to the renewal of the Italian stage and himself wrote plays, as well as incorporating theatrical episodes and allusions into other works, such as the novel I misteri di Firenze (1857; The Mysteries of Florence), while his last book for children featured the new form of home entertainment, the magic lantern.53 In his young days he had edited and written much of the Florentine theatrical weekly Lo Scaramuccia (1853–1855), with its avowed allegiance to the Commedia dell’Arte and, indeed, to French culture. While writing Pinocchio, its author and purveyor of theatrical gossip—in addition to the contemporaneous Contes d’Hoffmann— may even have called to mind an earlier opera comique (comic opera) also based on “Der Sandmann”, Adophe Adam’s La poupée de Nuremberg (The Nuremberg Doll) of 1852. Of course, the whole Olympia scenario derives ultimately from the Ancient Greek myth of the misogynist Pygmalion, who falls in love with his own perfect female sculpture; brought to life by the goddess Aphrodite, she becomes his wife: similarly, brought to human life by the Fairy, Pinocchio becomes his creator’s son. Often retold, it was the nineteenth century, with its problematic view of man’s works, which recast the ancient myth as fraught with difficulty, uncertainty and tragedy. Even W.S. Gilbert and George Bernard Shaw, in their comedies of 1871 (Pygmalion and Galatea) and 1912 (Pygmalion) respectively, insisted on the flawed and misguided aspects of man’s creative, experimental and self-reproductive urges. These attempts by men to create and enjoy perfection in women fail. Only Geppetto’s efforts with an invented child blossom eventually, after many near-tragedies, into a happy ending. Significantly there had been a change of viewpoint. In The Adventures of Pinocchio, the focus is on the puppet itself and his perspective on life, whereas the viewpoint in most versions was that of the male sculptor, scientist, student or Professor. Pessimism had yielded to optimism, for while Nathaniel’s story is of a descent into madness, Pinocchio’s, by contrast, is an ascent towards reason. The feminist critique—clearly intended by Hoffmann—concerning the male domination and exploitation of women, who are condemned by society to passivity, is not applicable because, in Collodi’s tale, the imitation human is male, not female. Nevertheless, something of that same reading remains as an examination of power in relations between adults and children: Olympia, always resistant, seems to assert herself briefly against men and becomes momentarily menacing to them; similarly, Pinocchio flamboyantly rejects the stereotyping of children by societal attitudes as good, obedient, sweet little angels—‘omini e donnine’—the little men and little women, or miniature adults, demanded by late-nineteenth-century Italian borghesia (bourgeoisie).

58 • Ann Lawson Lucas Moreover he repeatedly rebels against adult tutelage and instruction, even of the most well-meaning kind. The obsessions of humans regarding others have been converted into the self-obsession of the puppet, with his determination to assert himself, to engage in life and to find his own identity. It might be added that all this can justifiably be read also as a political allegory concerning the self-determination of Italy during the Risorgimento. Equally—and more importantly in the longer term—Collodi chose a puppet as his hero, not to make him malleable and subservient, or dependent on the strings that were supposedly attached, but, on the contrary, as a device which would allow the author to avoid the usual snobbish idealization of children and instead write some of the truth about real childhood, just as Olympia had allowed Hoffmann to tell some of the truth about real womanhood. Notes 1

2 3

4 5

6

Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, trans. and ed. Ann Lawson Lucas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, reissued 2000), 4. All Pinocchio quotations in English translation are taken from this edition. As this study makes comparisons between literary works originally in Italian, German, Danish and English, and refers to a ballet and an opera created in France, all quotations are given in English. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 27. Among the traditional ‘actors and actresses of that Wooden Drama Company’ specifically mentioned by Collodi at this stage are Harlequin (Arlecchino), Punchinello (Pulcinella) and Signora Rosalba; Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 26–27. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 29. Other instances of this process abound. Daniela Marcheschi’s admirable edition of selected works by Collodi identifies and illustrates in detail many of his literary sources and the ways in which he uses them with both serious and mocking intent. An example might be the monstrous Shark, probably derived ultimately from the True Histories of Lucian, himself a parodist, and maybe also from Ariosto’s untrustworthy whale (Orlando furioso, VI), but also from Raspe’s grotesque adventures of Baron Munchausen. (See Carlo Collodi, Opere, ed. Daniela Marcheschi (Milan: Mondadori, 1995), 1023–44, notes 198–99.) In addition, by contrast, a case can be made for the Shark as representing Hell in a reworking of Dante’s Inferno which carries equally earnest moral meaning. (See Ann Lawson Lucas, “Le clair et le noir: mort, damnation et réhabilitation dans les aventures dantesques d’une marionette”, in Pinocchio: Entre texte et image, ed. Jean Perrot (Bruxelles: P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2003), 35–43). E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Sandman”, in E.T.A. Hoffmann, Tales of Hoffmann (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982, reprinted 2004), 98–99. All quotations are taken from this edition.

Puppets on a String • 59 7

8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21

22

She plays the piano, sings an aria and dances with a partner in that order at her ‘coming-out’ party arranged by Spalanzani at his house; Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 113. The gymnastically inclined Pinocchio does not possess Olympia’s gift for musical expression. Hoffmann, a distinguished composer and conductor, fi lled his tales with music. Spalanzani keeps Olympia hidden until ready to display her at the grand party to which ‘half the university had been invited’; Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 112. Nathaniel, the tragic protagonist of “The Sandman”, having glimpsed Olympia, clarifies the relationship as he has understood it from others: ‘I afterwards learned that the figure I had seen was Spalanzani’s daughter’; Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 99. Old Joe early establishes his own feelings towards his new—and unfinished—creation: ‘I haven’t fi nished making you, and you are already showing little respect for your father! That’s bad, my lad, that’s bad!’; Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 8. Unlike the lifeless Olympia, Pinocchio finally gives Old Joe the satisfaction of contentedly returning his affection: ‘“Dear Papa, will you satisfy my curiosity? [ . . . ]” Pinocchio asked him, throwing his arms around his neck and covering him with kisses’; Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 169. Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 99. Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 87. Robert Schumann, Liederalbum für die Jugend, Opus 79, number 13. Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 87. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmärchen, vol. 1 (Berlin: G.A. Reimer, 1812). Vol. 2 was published in 1815. Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 88. Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 100. Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 91. Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 96. Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 106. It is not possible to be sure whether mere coincidence furnished Hoffmann with a surname redolent with appropriate connotations: among many other meanings, the Italian coppo is the term for the socket of the eye, while the now obsolete far coppino is ‘to peep’; coppolone in the Neapolitan version of the Commedia dell’Arte is the hat worn by Pulcinella. The details are provided by Andrew Robinson in his biography of Thomas Young (1773–1829), The Last Man who Knew Everything (New York: Pi Press, 2005; Oxford: Oneworld, 2007). Young, who had studied medicine at Göttingen (which may be the ‘G.’ of Hoffmann’s story) as well as in Britain, became Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution, establishing the theory of light-waves, as well as contributing to the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 46. This is the first incarnation of the Fairy with Indigo Hair, who will recur through the tale ultimately as Pinocchio’s saviour, but first as his tutor and sister-figure.

60 • Ann Lawson Lucas 23 Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 110. 24 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 1. Michelangelo’s sonnet LXXXIII describes the sculptural process of revealing the life form already contained within the raw material. 25 Hoffmann was fascinated by Italy and Italians, found in many of his stories. Though this is not always the case, in “Der Sandmann” they signify a combination of the exotic with intellectual sophistication, both benign and menacingly malign. 26 Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 119–20. 27 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 5–6. 28 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 7. 29 Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 110. 30 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 8–9. 31 Hoffmann, “Sandman”, 114. 32 This is the story of the long final Chapter XXXVI, Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 159–70. 33 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, in Three Gothic Novels, ed. Peter Fairclough and intro. Mario Praz (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 257–497 (298, 300, 305). 34 Shelley, Frankenstein, 307. 35 Shelley, Frankenstein, 323. 36 Shelley, Frankenstein, 352. 37 Pinocchio runs away from his maker’s abode as soon as he is fully formed in Chapter III, and sets off for distant parts in Chapter XII; Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 9 and 37. Similarly the monster vanishes from Victor’s room as soon as he can move; Shelley, Frankenstein, 322. He is observed at the beginning of Frankenstein, before the long flashback recalling the whole story, vanishing across the ice towards the North Pole; Shelley, Frankenstein, 279. That is his final destination when he disappears on an ice floe on the last page; Shelley, Frankenstein, 496–97. 38 A classic example of Andersen’s copious works which, unlike the Grimms’ collected tales, were usually invented stories, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” can be found in most Andersen anthologies. The edition used for the purposes of this essay is in Hans Christian Andersen, Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales: A Selection, trans. L.W. Kingsland and intro. Naomi Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 154–59. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Nussknacker und Mausekönig was published in his collection Kinder-Märchen (The Fairy Tales of Hoffmann) of 1816–1817. It was to be the inspiration for Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet and Christmas entertainment Cassenoisette (The Nutcracker) of 1892, the magic and mystery of the story as ever lending themselves to theatrical interpretation. 39 Andersen, “Tin Soldier”, 154. 40 Ibid. 41 Andersen, “Tin Soldier”, 156.

Puppets on a String • 61 42 Andersen, “Tin Soldier”, 159. 43 Andersen, “Tin Soldier”, 156. 44 It is unlikely that Collodi knew Andersen’s stories, yet in this instance they have a device in common: just as Pinocchio finds himself swallowed by the monstrous Shark, so too the Tin Soldier, washed away into a canal during a sequence of adventures, is swallowed by a big fish. 45 As late as the end of the century, indeed after Collodi’s death, a new French operatic version of the story was performed: Edmond Audran’s light-hearted operetta La Poupée (1896). 46 The original tale of Giulietta by E.T.A. Hoffmann is “Das verlorene Spiegelbild” (“The Lost Reflection in the Mirror”) from the group of stories entitled “Die Abenteuer der Sivester-Nacht” (“A New Year’s Eve Adventure”), published in 1815 in vol. 4 of Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier. With its setting in Venice and its grotesque elements, it evokes not only the Gothic but also the atmosphere and subterfuges of the Commedia dell’Arte. 47 For a full synopsis of the opera, see Gustav Kobbé, Kobbé’s Complete Opera Book, ed. and rev. the Earl of Harewood (London: Putnam, 1954), 782–87. 48 The Hoffmann stories used as the basis for the three acts of Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann were: “Der Sandmann”, “Rath Krespel”, and “Das verlorene Spiegelbild”. The Olympia story always appears as the first act, but the order of the Giulietta and Antonia acts has been varied. Strictly speaking, the story of Antonia, the daughter of Councillor Crespel, should provide the second act. 49 Kobbé, Opera, 784. 50 Kobbé, Opera, 783–84. 51 Les contes d’Hoffmann was first performed in Paris in February 1881. The original serial version of Le avventure di Pinocchio, entitled “La storia di un burattino”, was published in Il giornale per i bambini in Rome, starting in July 1881. 52 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 169–70. The original serial version of the story of Pinocchio was interrupted several times while awaiting new material from the author, so the final scene was not printed in Il giornale per i bambini until January 25, 1883. The first book edition was brought out a fortnight later, published in Florence by the press of the Paggi brothers in February 1883. 53 See Carlo Collodi, La lanterna magica di Giannettino (1890).

Chapter Three Workshops of Creation, Filthy and Not Collodi’s Pinocchio and Shelley’s Frankenstein Charles Klopp

By the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.1 (Mary Shelley, 1818) When the eyes were done, just imagine his astonishment when he realized that those eyes moved and that they were staring him straight in the face. Seeing himself looked at by those two eyes of wood, . . . [he] took a little offense and said in an irritated tone: ‘Spiteful wooden eyes, why are you looking at me?’2 (Carlo Collodi, 1883)

The Creature assembled by Victor Frankenstein in his ‘workshop of filthy creation’ (38) in Mary Shelley’s 1818 horror novel, and the puppet carved by Maestro Geppetto in his ‘stanzina terrena’3 in Carlo Collodi’s 1883 children’s story have by now achieved iconic status in the global imagination. As I have discussed elsewhere, this is partly because the merry woodenhead and the menacing charnel house pastiche are renegades who, despite the long list of wrongs that they commit, somehow manage to engage both our imaginations and our sympathies.4 The books that introduced these famous hominoids to the world, however, are very different pieces of writing. In addition to belonging to different genres and employing different tonal registers—somber and sometimes sententious in Shelley, often slyly ironic in Collodi—the two nar63

64 • Charles Klopp ratives are products of different historical periods and presuppose different class perspectives. When Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein, the ‘dark satanic mills’ famously described by William Blake in lines written the same year Frankenstein was published were already in operation; England’s cities during this time were being transformed into the bleak industrial landscapes so effectively described by Charles Dickens in his fiction of mid-century. When contrasted with the Britain of Shelley’s time, the Italy of Collodi’s Pinocchio appears bucolic: a pre-industrialized and primarily agricultural land, especially in the towns and countryside of rural Tuscany where the action of his book takes place. In addition to her importance as an author in her own right, Mary Shelley was married to one of the most famous of the English Romantic poets, and her Frankenstein is in many ways typical of the Romantic period that she and her husband helped define. Coming towards the end rather than the beginning of the nineteenth century when Shelley lived and wrote, Collodi was active during a period of disillusionment among Italian writers and intellectuals. The writers and activists of this later period were generally disappointed by the disappearance of the generosity and idealism of Italian political and cultural life before and after the Risorgimento, when the many problems faced by the nation in their own times had yet to appear.5 Not an anti-Romantic, exactly, as was his contemporary, the poet and literary scholar Giosuè Carducci, Collodi nonetheless belonged to an age when the grand ideals of an earlier period had given way to more pessimistic if not cynical views on the current condition and the future of Italian society in the newly united country. The social perspective from which Mary Shelley wrote, moreover, was that of an educated, privileged class whose intellectual horizons were as much international as local. Frankenstein, as she notes in her “Preface”, was begun not in her native England but in Switzerland, where Shelley was staying in temporary exile with her husband and other political radicals and intellectuals. The geographical settings for the book she wrote there extend across much of Europe: from England, where Walton’s sister receives the letters from her brother that constitute the principal frame of this frame-narrative, to Victor Frankenstein’s native Switzerland, to Germany, France, Italy, England, Scotland and Ireland, across which countries Frankenstein and his friend Clerval wander, to Russia and, at last, the North Pole, where Walton’s final confrontations with Frankenstein then with the Creature conclude his story and bring to an end the existences of both the Swiss scientist and his creation. The physical range of Pinocchio is much more circumspect. Set entirely in what is never identified as such but is clearly rural Tuscany, the Italian book’s settings constitute, as Antonio Baldini has pointed out, a selectively described Tuscany that is ‘sui generis, without artistic monuments, churches or the Arno, without railroad crossings, military barracks, priests’ houses, convents, factories, cafes, tax collectors, without hunters and without the sound of a

Workshops of Creation, Filthy and Not • 65 single shotgun—but nonetheless Tuscany, without the Archduke, but with the Archduke’s policemen.’6 Unlike Collodi, for most of their lives neither Shelley nor her husband had to work for a living. In Frankenstein, similarly, Victor Frankenstein and his friend Clerval are well enough off not to have to worry about expenses they might incur in their studies or their voyages. Though Clerval is a merchant and not a wealthy patrician like his friend, he has no trouble abandoning his commercial responsibilities in order to travel extensively throughout Europe with the troubled Victor. Walton too is wealthy, the possessor of a fortune (9) that enables this character from the novel’s frame narrative to devote his time and energies to a lengthy voyage of exploration towards magnetic north, where he hopes to locate an open water polar route from Europe to America.7 Even the minor characters who appear in this book seem free of economic worries. Elizabeth Lavenza, for example, a relative from Italy who is adopted into the Frankenstein family and later becomes Victor’s bride, has inherited ‘a fortune’ (21) from her mother. Those characters in the book who do work, including Caroline Beaufort who later becomes Victor Frankenstein’s mother (20), also lead a comfortable existence. The De Laceys, a model of wholesome family life as observed by the Creature (96 ff.), in an earlier period were respectable and economically comfortable citizens who have only recently and unfairly become impoverished and thus déclassé. Even so, they still manage to employ servants (106–07). All this is as foreign to the world of Pinocchio as it was to the life of its author. The son of servants, Collodi was obliged to work all his life at modest jobs, including police censor and writer and journalist for a variety of different publications.8 Often short of funds, Collodi was thus not unlike many of the characters who appear in his book, some of whom will stop at nothing to obtain money. The scalawags and accomplished con artists, the Fox and the Cat, are prime examples. In addition to these desperate types, the book contains still other portraits of such equivocal characters as the adult ragpicker who is quick to take advantage of Pinocchio’s inexperience and buy his schoolbook from him at a fraction of its worth, the dishonest innkeeper who charges the guileless puppet for what his ravenous companions have consumed at dinner, and—most sinister and disquieting of all—the unctuous little man who scours the country in search of small boys to sell to the circus. In the course of his travels through this difficult world, the frequently impecunious and unemployed Pinocchio is often hungry. In one episode he goes so far as to try to steal some grapes and is caught and coerced to work ‘like a dog’ guarding a farmer’s chicken coop. In another, he labors ‘like a donkey’ when he contracts (at very unfavorable terms!) with Giangio at the book’s conclusion to ‘turn the windlass’ at the latter’s truck farm and dairy.9 At several points in his story the puppet is reduced to begging, an activity, however, that is strongly disapproved of by the various creatures who serve as his moral counselors in the tale.

66 • Charles Klopp In Collodi’s book, even finding something to eat and a warm and dry place to sleep is often problematic, not just for the puppet but for other characters as well. Geppetto’s house is ‘a small room on the ground floor that got its light from the areaway under a staircase’ (97), heated only by the brazier in which the chilled puppet burns his feet, though the house has a merrily burning fire painted on the wall as the first of the ‘beffe’ or cruel jokes Pinocchio is subject to throughout the book.10 Other characters, like the Green Fisherman of Chapter 28, live in a cave or, like Mangiafuoco of Chapter 11, make do as best they can backstage at the puppet theater. The only character in Pinocchio who seems supplied with something more than minimal housing is the Fairy. But while her lodgings approach the palatial, they also have an aura of the unreal about them, with her canine footmen, snail house servant, doorknocker that turns into a snake and door itself that entraps a foot of the enraged Pinocchio when he kicks it in exasperation. The Fairy’s house aside, all the other dwellings in the book are both more modest and more realistically depicted. These humble lodgings include the boarding house where Pinocchio is staying when he catches the terminal case of ‘donkey fever’ that leads to his becoming that quadruped. Pinocchio shares this building with ‘a pretty little Marmot, who lived on the floor above’ (Chapter 32, 373). Although the Marmot calls the puppet her ‘dear fellow-lodger’ (375), she has little sympathy for his irresponsible habits. Seeing his donkey ears, Pinocchio’s fellow lodger treats the already alarmed puppet to a scolding on his laziness and truancy from school. This is another of the many scoldings on similar themes that Pinocchio has received in the course of this book in which the importance of school and, eventually, of work, is a major theme. The Marmot’s remarks on the importance of going to school should be understood as part of the contemporary debate about the nature of education in the newly united Italy. The country’s new educational system, in the view of some later scholars, took as one goal the transformation of the lower-class children now obliged to frequent it into docile and productive workers.11 Be that as it may, Pinocchio will have nothing do with either school or work. His goals, especially as defi ned at the beginning of his story, are not to study and then take on a productive job, but to embrace the occupation of ‘eating, drinking, sleeping, having fun, and living the life of a vagabond from morning to night’ (Chapter 4, 109). In this important respect Pinocchio is unlike the characters who appear in Frankenstein. In Mary Shelley’s book everyone is eager to work, and those who study, study assiduously. This is so not only for the science prodigy Victor Frankenstein but also for Henry Clerval, who masters Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin as well as the modern languages. Clerval acquires these linguistic abilities not because they will help him in his business ventures—which, in any case, play no part in the book’s action—but simply for the joy this intellectual labor brings (51). So too the adventurer Walton boasts of how he ‘worked harder than the common sailors during the day, and devoted . . . nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine,

Workshops of Creation, Filthy and Not • 67 and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical identity’ (9). Shelley’s characters—including the Creature who manages through sheer determination to learn to speak and then educates himself to the point that he can read Milton’s poetry—would have no need of the admonishment by Collodi’s Fairy when she tells the feckless puppet that ‘l’uomo, per tua regola, nasca ricco o povero, è obbligato in questo mondo a far qualcosa, a occuparsi, a lavorare. Guai a lasciarsi prendere dall’ozio!’ (Chapter 25, 286; ‘Let me tell you that whether one is born rich or poor, one has the duty to do something in this world, to keep busy, to work. Woe to those who yield to idleness!’; 287). For with the exception of ‘quelli che, per ragione d’età o di malattia, si trovano condannati a non potersi più guadagnare il pane col lavoro delle proprie mani’ (274; ‘those who by reason of age or infirmity are condemned to being unable to earn their bread with their own hands’; 275), in this book ‘tutti gli altri hanno l’obbligo di lavorare: e se non lavorano e patiscono la fame, tanto peggio per loro.’ (Ch. 24, 274; ‘Everyone else has the duty of working; and if they don’t work and go hungry, so much the worse for them’; 275).12 Difficult as it may sometimes be for them to make ends meet, the characters in Pinocchio are never lonely or even very much alone. In this way too they are unlike the principal characters in Frankenstein. In Mary Shelley’s novel, almost everyone suffers from loneliness. This is especially and most touchingly true for the Creature, who longs to have first a friend,13 and then, in desperation, if not a friend, a Mate, no matter how monstrous. When the lonely Creature understands that his desire for companionship will never be satisfied, he feels disappointed and betrayed and proceeds to wreak his homicidal rage on Victor Frankenstein, his family and Elizabeth. But the Creature is not the only character in this book who yearns for companionship. Walton, Clerval and Elizabeth all are seeking to find a friend. In Walton’s case this is evident from a letter to his sister in which he complains, ‘You may deem me romantic. [ . . . ] but I bitterly feel the want of a friend’. (10) When he then comes upon the wasted and desperate Victor Frankenstein wandering through the frozen North, the solitary Walton thinks he has found this friend and is delighted. (17) Unlike Frankenstein’s suffering and spiritually isolated Romantic characters, Pinocchio has friends everywhere, including the puppets of Mangiafuoco’s ‘compagnia drammatico-vegetale’ (144; ‘dramatico-vegetal company’; 145), who seem to know who he is and are eager to meet him even before they have met him physically. Although the puppet is occasionally alone and sometimes out in the cold, he is almost never without friends nearby, even if, like the Fox and the Cat, and then Lucignolo, they are false friends of the very sort that his counselors have warned him about. Unlike Frankenstein, Pinocchio is a supremely social book. In it human existence is depicted as an inherently collective activity. The task confronting the puppet in his adventures is to understand how this activity functions so that he can take his appropriate

68 • Charles Klopp place in the social nexus. Despite his initial reluctance to sacrifice even the least part of his personal independence, by the end of the book Pinocchio has learned to sublimate such desires and is thus able to take his place as the head of a thriving and affectionate social unit. His new family, as has often been observed, is an all male one in which the Fairy plays no part. And, reversing their roles at the beginning of the story, Geppetto is now Pinocchio’s dependent and not vice versa. Frankenstein too concludes with a reunion when Walton witnesses the tragic outcome of Victor Frankenstein’s story and then meets the Creature face to face on the frozen ice floes where his ship has taken him. While Walton now will presumably return to England, Frankenstein and his Creature, both of them unfit for human interaction, end their lives in the land of ice and snow: Victor from exhaustion, and the Creature after leaping into a funeral pyre, where he declares he ‘will exult in the agony of the torturing flames’. (186) Creator and Creature have now been eliminated, in Victor Frankenstein’s case with all the ties of affection to family and bride brutally severed, in the Creature’s, without his having established bonds of affection with any other being, human or monstrous. These culminations of the existences of the book’s principal characters occur in a setting of physical danger, sterility and lifelessness. At the end of Collodi’s book, by contrast, the puppet has taught himself to read, found a house and secured an occupation braiding baskets and at the dairy farm from which he brings Geppetto daily glasses of life-giving milk. If Shelley’s book concludes with images of sterility and death as Victor dies and the Creature is ‘borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance’ (186), Collodi’s final images are instead of fertility and the continuation of life through the milk that Pinocchio procures for Geppetto. His having appropriated the milk symbolic of the female body indicates that Pinocchio has taken over the Fairy’s maternal role as well as Geppetto’s paternal one. In fact, one of the puppet’s fi nal acts is to send money to the Fairy and thus save her from the humiliating death that apparently threatens her. Instead of needing the Fairy’s assistance in difficult moments, Pinocchio has been able to assist her instead. This is an important step towards his redemption and promotion in status from that of a puppet to a ‘good little boy’. Concerned as it is with society and the collective nature of existence, Pinocchio is more troubled with matters of authority than is Frankenstein.14 Certainly Pinocchio, in his early days especially, has little patience with authority of any sort. ‘Everybody scolds, everybody criticizes us, everybody gives us advice’ (175), he exclaims in exasperation at the beginning of Chapter 14. The animals that the puppet meets who occupy positions of authority—the gorilla judge of Chapter 19, reprised by Antonio Tabucchi in the surreal and politically indignant conclusion of his Il piccolo naviglio of 1978,15 the contradictory Raven, Owl and Talking Cricket doctors at the Fairy’s palace in Chapter 16—all depict authority at its most arbitrary and foolish, and it is no wonder that the puppet is impatient with them. Their appearances in this book sug-

Workshops of Creation, Filthy and Not • 69 gest that, for Collodi, the social institutions they represent in his newly united country—those of criminal justice and medicine—are lacking in human sympathy and thus not worthy of much respect. For the human authority figures in Pinocchio, however, the situation is more complicated. In the book’s very first Chapters Maestro Antonio and Maestro Geppetto, who soon come to blows over imagined insults, are dubious representatives of paternal or any other authority. The Carabiniere who seizes Pinocchio in Chapter 3 when he attempts to run away but then arrests Geppetto instead is a zealous but rather thick-headed representative of the State. The same can be said for the two Carabinieri of Chapter 27 who arrest the innocent Pinocchio after the book fight. Other humans in positions of authority, such as Mangiafuoco, the Innkeeper at the Gambero Rosso and the Green Fisherman, hold ascendancy over Pinocchio only because of their greater size. However, the Circus Director empowered to decide the fate of all the circus animals, including Pinocchio and Lucignolo, is clearly an evil force and a prime example of an authority that is not just indifferent but malicious. Such less important human characters as the charcoal hauler, the construction worker and the ‘another twenty persons’ (277) at the ‘Busy-Bee Town’ (275) who chide Pinocchio for his refusal to work, the peasant from whom Pinocchio tries to steal grapes, the other peasant who buys the ‘donkified’ puppet in order to make a drum from his skin and the farmer Giangio may be integrated members of society who understand its workings better than the puppet does, but they hold very little real moral authority in the world of the book. The most important authority figure in Pinocchio, and the character who tries the hardest to educate the recalcitrant puppet, is the Fairy. Her authority is enhanced in Chapter 24 when she reappears mysteriously grown up: no longer a ‘bambina’ (little girl) but now a ‘donna’ (woman) who celebrates her new status by subjecting Pinocchio to a thorough scolding. In addition to the maternal functions that she assumes towards the end of the book, the Fairy functions throughout Pinocchio as a female antagonist to the book’s otherwise entirely male characters.16 She is both human and, beginning with Chapter 24, sexually mature. Pinocchio, by contrast, is male but—and here he is very unlike the fully mature Creature—prepubescent. As such, Pinocchio, unlike the Creature, tends to see women as authorities rather than potential sexual partners. Though both the Creature and Pinocchio seem at once to have and to not have human desires and needs, for the Creature the most important of these is sexual desire exacerbated by his loneliness. Pinocchio, by contrast, is driven by the other primordial human need, that of hunger. As Giorgio Manganelli has pointed out,17 one of the first things that Pinocchio does is to try to find something to eat in a search that he thinks was successful when he finds an egg in the sweepings;18 one of the last is when he does manage to find some food for the ailing Geppetto in the form of the glasses of milk that he obtains from Giangio.19 Although Pinocchio consumes many other things in the course of his adventures, the egg and the milk derive from female repro-

70 • Charles Klopp ductive systems, and it is striking that these two comestibles should bracket Pinocchio’s eating experiences—indeed almost all of his experiences—in this book. By the end of Pinocchio the puppet has matured emotionally and morally. Even though he is unchanged physically, he is now ready for his transformation into a ‘little boy’ and then perhaps into an adult. The Creature’s development moves in the opposite direction. Born mature physically and sexually, in the course of his adventures he becomes increasingly more inhuman. While not born a ‘fiend’, he becomes such in the course of his story. Pinocchio’s experiential parabola is thus an ascending and triumphant one, while the Creature’s has been a descent into degradation and isolation. Pinocchio is the story of a voyage from childhood to puberty. In Collodi’s book, childhood is a time of irresponsibility, while puberty is dreaded since it entails assuming not only a new bodily form but also taking on new responsibilities. When Pinocchio agrees to be obedient and is ready for transformation into a sexually mature being—a condition that is the point of departure for the Creature, but a point of arrival for him—his story is over.20 When the Fairy explains to Pinocchio in Chapter 25 how she has been changed in her absence from the story—‘when you left me, I was a little girl, and now you find me a woman, such a grown-up woman that I could almost be your mother’ (283)—Pinocchio is perplexed by this admission.21 When he asks the Fairy how this mysterious change has taken place, she replies: ‘It’s a secret’. (283) The Fairy cannot reveal her secret to Pinocchio because he is a child who cannot be made aware of the secrets of sexual development. But beyond this, in both Mary Shelley’s and Collodi’s books, the reproductive female body can have no part in the narrative.22 In Frankenstein the reproductive female body is to be feared and is thus kept at the margins of the story. Elizabeth is murdered on her wedding night and thus will never be able to provide Victor Frankenstein with children. Victor, once he has fashioned a mate for the Creature, realizes with horror that, were these two offsprings of his scientific genius ever to meet the way the Creature hopes they will, the monstrous couple is likely to spawn ‘a race of devils [ . . . ] propagated upon the earth [that] might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror’. (135) Once he has realized this, the apprehensive scientist ‘tears to pieces’ (136) the mate he had been preparing for the Creature. While both Frankenstein and Pinocchio describe the production and birth of hominoid creatures by male creators, in neither book is reproduction, especially by means of the female body, looked on with favor. The destruction of the Creature’s potential mate leads to his declaration that: ‘I shall collect my funeral pile, and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch, who would create such another as I have been’. (185) In Pinocchio, similarly, the marginalisation of the Fairy is a necessary condition for Pinocchio’s new life as a productive— and, once he has become a ‘good little boy’ and further matured into a man—

Workshops of Creation, Filthy and Not • 71 maybe even a reproductive member of society. For the moment, however, the workshops of artificial creation in both Pinocchio and Frankenstein are exclusively male spaces, the mechanical bodies assembled there the offspring of men, not of women.

Notes 1

2

3

4

5

6

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (New York: Longman, 2003), 39. Future references to Frankenstein should be understood as to this edition and will be given directly in the text of this paper. Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio/The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet, trans., intro. and notes Nicolas J. Perella (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), Chapter 3, 96. Future references to Pinocchio should be understood, unless otherwise indicated, as to this edition and will be given directly in the text of this paper. To facilitate consultation of Collodi’s book, references will also contain a Chapter number. Perella translates the expression as ‘a small room on the ground floor’ (97). Fernando Tempesti points out that this modest and poorly lighted room must have served Geppetto as both his casa and his bottega. See the note to his annotated edition of Collodi’s work in Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un burattino, ed. F. Tempesti (Milan: Mondadori, 1983), 14, note 4. Though in the Creature’s case, only up to a certain point, and certainly only up to a certain point in his story. For how the heroes of these two stories succeed in engaging our sympathies, see Charles Klopp, “Frankenstein and Pinocchio, Nineteenth-Century Humanoids”, ed. Michael Sherberg, Approaches to Teaching Collodi’s Pinocchio and its Adaptations (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2006), 28–33. For this mood in the Italy of the period and comment on Pinocchio’s reception today, see Giovanni Spadolini, Il mondo frantumato. Bloc-Notes 1990–1992 (Milan: Longanesi, 1993), 385–89. Antonio Baldini, Fine Ottocento: Carducci, Pascoli, D’Annunzio, e minori (Florence: Le Monnier, 1947), 121: ‘sui generis, senza monumenti; senza chiese, senz’Arno, senza passaggi a livello, senza caserme, senza canoniche, senza conventi, senza stabilimenti, senza caffè, senza gabellotti, senza cacciatori e che mai vi si senta un colpo di fucile; ma pur Toscana. Senza Granduca ma coi giandarmi del Granduca.’ In both Frankenstein and Pinocchio, it might be noted, there are also references to America—the mondo, apparently, where Geppetto wants to take what he hopes will be a ‘burattino maraviglioso, che sappia ballare, tirare di scherma e fare i salti mortali’ (‘a wonderful puppet who can dance, and fence, and make daredevil leaps’; Chapter 2, 88–89) and in this way enable the poor woodcarver

72 • Charles Klopp

7

8 9

10

11

12

13 14

15

to ‘buscarmi un tozzo di pane e un bicchier di vino’ (‘so as to earn my crust of bread and a glass of wine’; ibid.). Frankenstein’s Creature also dreams of moving to South America and possibly founding an entire colony of beings like himself (118). For Collodi during this period of emigration from Italy to America, the new world is a land of opportunities while Shelley evokes instead the ‘deserts of the new world’ (135) where the Creature may found a monstrous dystopia. For all this, see Shelley, Frankenstein, 8. Earlier in this same part of the book Frankenstein says of Clerval that ‘he believed that a man might be a very good trader, and yet possess a cultivated understanding’ (29). For a recent account of this and other details regarding Collodi’s life, see Rossana Dedola, Pinocchio e Collodi (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2002). Collodi, Pinocchio, Chapters 21 and 36 respectively. Alberto Asor Rosa, in his Genus italicum. Saggi sull’identità letteraria italiana nel corso del tempo (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), 551–618, points out that living like a ‘dog on a leash’ or like a ‘mule at the windlass’ is exactly how the younger ‘Ntoni in Giovanni Verga’s I Malavoglia declares he will never spend his life. (602) As Asor Rosa also points out, Verga’s novel dates from the same years as Pinocchio. For the odd nature of Geppetto’s lodgings, see Giorgio Manganelli’s reflections in his Pinocchio: un libro parallelo (Turin: Einaudi, 1977). Many of the ‘beffe’ perpetrated on Pinocchio seem to have been organized by the Fairy, who twice (Chapter 15, 182 and Chapter 22, 256) deceives the puppet into thinking she is dead, and in another episode has the famished Pinocchio served a meal of fake food made out of chalk, plaster and alabaster (Chapter 29, 340). On this topic, see Marcella Bacigalupi and Piero Fossati, Da plebe a popolo. L’educazione popolare nei libri di scuola dall’Unità d’Italia alla Repubblica (Milan: Università Cattolica, 2000). For Collodi as educator, see Dedola, Pinocchio. This moralistic observation, however, does not take into account the many able-bodied Italian workers during this period who, though willing, were unable to find work. Klopp, “Frankenstein’ and Pinocchio”, 33, note 3. See his conversation with the elder De Lacey, 107–08. In Frankenstein, however, one important site of social authority, the Justice system, is not presented in a sympathetic light, as is clear from the episode of Justine’s unfair arrest and then conviction for the murder of William Frankenstein, and of Victor Frankenstein’s own imprisonment and near conviction for the murder of Clerval—crimes that in each case were committed by the Creature. In the final, sardonic Chapter of his novel, Il piccolo naviglio (Milan: Mondadori, 1978), the contemporary novelist Antonio Tabucchi depicts the judge at the trial of his novel’s protagonist, Capitano Sesto, as the same gorilla that appeared in Collodi’s book, an indication of how pervasive

Workshops of Creation, Filthy and Not • 73

16

17 18 19 20

21 22

Pinocchio has been in Italian culture and how unchanged are the views of the Italian justice system, at least as held by some novelists today. The book’s animals, some of which are grammatically feminine, are not really of one sex or the other. It is noteworthy that even in the ‘Paese dei Balocchi’, as Tempesti points out in his edition of the tale, the children captured by the persuasive coachmen are exclusively little boys with no girls present—see Collodi, Pinocchio (1983), 80, note 7. Manganelli, Pinocchio, 26–27. Collodi, Pinocchio (1986), Chapter 5, 114. Collodi, Pinocchio (1986), Chapter 36, 452. As Manganelli puts it in Pinocchio, 128: ‘ogni qual volta Pinocchio diventa “ubbidiente”, studia e si fa onore, non accade più nulla. [ . . . ] Dunque, l’ubbidienza, la saggezza di Pinocchio sono incompatibili con la sua storia, le sue avventure. In termini letterari, la storia è sempre la storia di una disubbidienza: presuppone un errore, una diserzione dalla norma, una condizione patologica.’ (‘Each time Pinocchio becomes “obedient”, studies and behaves properly, nothing else happens. [ . . . ] Pinocchio’s obedience and wisdom are incompatibile with his story, his adventures. In literary terms, the story is always one of disobedience: it presupposes errancy, an abandonment of the norm, a pathological condition.’) Collodi, Pinocchio (1986), 282: ‘mi lasciasti bambina e ora mi ritrovi donna: tanto donna, che potrei quasi farti da mamma’. In his often saucy commentary to Pinocchio Manganelli notes that the Pescecane can be considered an image of woman and of the frighteningly female—see Manganelli, Pinocchio, 156. In this reading, the devouring Shark ‘appare come una versione infinitamente fonda della madre, qualcosa di casualmente gravido, gestante degli abissi, bocca divorante navi e vegliardi e burattini, orifizio che, negli stessi singulti della decadenza, assonnatamente genera’ (‘appears an infi nitely deep version of the mother, something pregnant by accident, a gestating inhabitant of the abyss, a mouth that devours ships and old men and puppets, an orifice that in its very spasms of decadence, sleepily generates’).

Chapter Four The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type The Anatomy of Alfred Jarry’s Monsieur Ubu and its Significance Jill Fell

Collodi began writing Pinocchio as the nineteenth century was drawing to a close and as artistic restlessness in Europe was growing. The world of the child had become newly attractive to artists as a source of opposition and an antidote to the conservatism and traditionalism of bourgeois culture. So writes Harold Segel in his book, Pinocchio’s Progeny.1 The ground was thus fertile in the 1890s for Alfred Jarry to transplant his extraordinary Ubu puppet, generated within a provincial schoolboy culture, to the repertoire of an avant-garde Paris theatre and thence to mainstream literature. In its crudeness of manufacture the Ubu puppet represented a rejection of the delicate fin-de-siècle marionette aesthetic, at a moment when the clockwork toy too had reached a parallel apogee of intricate perfection. By favouring a deliberate crudeness of sculpting and costuming, Jarry marked his adherence to the avant-garde movement of the mid- to late 1890s, which rejected the prevailing perfectionist ideal and sought to cultivate the natural artistic impulses of children or uneducated natives. The Ubu puppet belongs to the realm of caricature with its ramifications into the macabre, and, when performed, to the realm of visual and verbal shock. The notorious opening word of the play Ubu Roi was ‘MERDRE’. The addition of the extra consonant to dilute the ungenteel word apparently appeased the censor. The plot is a simple one: egged on by Mère Ubu, Père Ubu assassinates Wenceslas, the Polish King, and takes his throne, mercilessly massacring nobles, bankers and 75

76 • Jill Fell judges, taxing the peasants and seizing the property of all, with the help of his three henchmen, the Palotins. Finally Wenceslas’s son, Bougrelas, returns with the Russian army to avenge his father. Père and Mère Ubu flee ignominiously back to France. Ubu the puppet was, however, modelled on a real person, a schoolmaster from the everyday environment of a fifteen-year-old boy; this is certainly an unusual provenance for an enduring puppet type. It is even less usual for the grown-up boy then to transpose his puppet creation to the theatrical world as a full-scale stage production with human actors. This is the case of Jarry, born in 1873, whose creation, Ubu, Père Ubu or Ubu Roi, launched in December 1896 by the same avant-garde theatre that had staged Oscar Wilde’s Salome, eclipsed his own fame. Unable to live on the meagre proceeds of journalism, Jarry became an extension of his own creation, strapped to a lifelong career of enacting Ubu. At a formal level the Pantins’ theatre was created for Jarry’s financial benefit by his Nabi artist friends; at an informal level, it seems that his drinks, if not his food, would often be paid for by fellow writers, in return for an impromptu café performance of Ubu.2 There are two surviving Ubu puppets that Jarry operated himself: a crude stringed marionette that dates from 1897 and a hand puppet with more clearly defined features. Drawings survive from the exercise books of Jarry and his schoolmates, the Morin brothers, that demonstrate how much Jarry subsequently adjusted the architecture of the Ubu profile to turn it into a classic apotropaic mask. He managed to change Ubu from an amusing nineteenthcentury domestic puppet to a modern monster of mythical stature, which still catches the imagination of theatre directors and artists today. A marionette made in the image of a living person can be regarded in terms of a fetish object, modelled with the intention, however frivolous, of mocking or wounding the object of that mockery at a distance. With this notion in mind, I shall focus on the three salient parts of the Ubu marionette’s anatomy, or rather the architecture of his body mask: the nose, the head and the belly. The person who was the butt of Jarry’s and his schoolmates’ humour was the ineffectual physics master of their high school at Rennes in Brittany. His name was Monsieur Hébert, distorted variously to P.H., Père Héb or Père Ébé, Ébon, Ébouille, Ébance.3 The monstrous character of Père Ubu grew from a series of irreverent playlets based on this unfortunate character. An early portrait of Monsieur Hébert, painted by Jarry and recently sold at auction, shows the real man in all his bowler-hatted authority and the distinctive hand-inpocket stance that even his most bestial caricatures would preserve. What does this bumbling, middle-aged teacher have in common with the appalling figure of Père Ubu, which in its final form displays a terrifying combination of ambition, greed, cruelty and cowardice? Jarry himself was noncommittal: ‘Vous serez libre de voir en M. Ubu les multiples allusions que vous voulez, ou un simple fantoche, la déformation par un potache d’un de ses professeurs qui représentait pour lui tout le grotesque qui fût au monde.’ (‘You

The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type • 77 are free to see in Monsieur Ubu as many allusions as you like, or just a simple puppet, the distortion by a schoolboy of one of his teachers who stood for all the grotesque things in the world.’)4 The arena in which Père and Mère Ubu operate is not the domestic one of Punch and Judy but the political one. In fact the twentieth century had more than its fair share of Ubus. The artist William Kentridge has transplanted Ubu into a macabre South African scenario, involving violent torture.5 Even now, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, President Mugabe and his insatiable wife seem to be rehearsing for a new extreme version of Jarry’s play. There seems to be no dwindling in the supply of modern tyrants, onto whom the contemporary imagination can hook the figure of Ubu. It was in 1888 that Jarry and his two school friends, the Morin brothers, gathered together their scripts and caricatures figuring Monsieur Hébert, and made it into a play. What made this unfortunate master the victim of these adolescent schoolboys was his complete inability to maintain discipline. An eyewitness account has recorded Jarry’s ability to reduce him to a trembling state of collapse through clever rapid-fire questioning, to which he had no recourse but to scrawl a note of complaint about his tormentor to the headmaster.6 Jarry’s small oil portrait on wood of Monsieur Hébert is of uncertain date.7 The main features of this figure can be broken down into the all-enveloping black coat, echoed by the smaller shape of the black hat, whose position indicates an unusual extension of the cranium. In fact the head is not at all pear-shaped as in the later drawings, but has the shape of a reversed U. The distinctive A-line slant of eyes and eyebrows, which Jarry would transpose to the later pear-shaped heads of Ubu, is already very evident, as is the typical pose of the left hand in the pocket. This portrait is an interesting antecedent to the 1897 ‘Véritable marionnette’ (Authentic marionette) of Monsieur Ubu, still in the possession of the private collector who bought it at auction many years ago. This marionette is by Jarry’s hand. It supersedes one apparently made by his elder sister Charlotte, which may have been the one he used for early private showings at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, his own flat and those of friends. The head is made of mastic or plaster, and the features are crudely squashed up into a frontal projection. The head is abnormally pointed, and, when cast in shadow, the projecting nose and the moustache underneath take on the form of a beak. Ubu’s facial features do not at all conform to the normal prerequisite for marionettes that the outline of the eyes and the pupils should be very distinctly drawn. The eyes are represented by blank hollows that, on stage, would fill with shadow, according to the direction of the light. In his article “De l’inutilité du théâtre au théâtre” (“Of the Futility of the ‘Theatrical’ in the Theater”), Jarry transposes the principles of his marionette theatre, based on Noh, to a formula for acting with masks on the main stage. Par de lents hochements de haut en bas et bas en haut et librations latérales,’ he writes, ‘l’acteur déplace les ombres sur toute la surface de son

78 • Jill Fell masque. Et l’expérience prouve que les six positions principales (et autant pour le profi l qui sont moins nettes) suffisent à toutes les expressions.8 (By slow nodding and lateral movements of his head the actor can displace the shadows over the whole surface of his mask. And experience has shown that the six main positions (and the same number in profile, though these are less clear) suffice for every position.) 9 The Noh actor, deprived of human face muscles, just as much as a marionette, must learn how to make the artificial stage lighting work on the surfaces of his mask to express emotion. As this Chapter is written in the context of Pinocchio’s progeny, it is appropriate to pay some extra attention to the semiotics of the nose and its significance in the manufacture of the two Ubu puppets. Jarry did not in fact describe the projection of Ubu’s nose in terms of a beak; he described it as the upper mandible of a crocodile, within the face of a pig.10 He can only have been referring to Ubu’s pig-like eyes, since a crocodile snout and pig snout cannot coexist. Ubu’s forward pointing nose is defi nitely not modelled on the downward pointing nose of the real Père Hébert. It is a questing nose that compensates for his tiny pig-like eyes. In his study of Giacometti’s famous sculpture, the French art critic, Jean Clair, has gone into particular detail on the significance of the nose in the architecture of masking. ‘“Allonger le nez”’, writes Clair, ‘disait-on en vieux français pour dire s’approcher pour voir, goûter, flairer, faire éventuellement la moue.’11 (To say ‘poke your nose out’ in old French meant to approach for a closer view, to taste, to have a sniff, even to the extent of pursing your lips.) Chiming in with Jarry’s comparison of Ubu’s nose to the mandible of a crocodile, he refers to the human nose as a relic of our early beginnings as lizards or dinosaurs: ‘Il y a dans le nez comme l’indice dans le corps du sens le plus primitif, le reste en nous du saurien, ce qui nous permet de nous repérer par l’odeur, la couche la plus archaïque de l’être, ou la plus ancienne du cerveau.’12 (It is as if the nose contains a clue to the most primitive of the body’s senses, a relic of what remains in us of our saurian ancestors, which allows us to locate the most archaic layer of our being or the most ancient part of the brain through our sense of smell.) The primitive purpose of the nose is of course to sniff out prey. Père Hébert was an authority figure and, as such, always on the prowl for misdemeanours which had to be sniffed out and punished. Thus the first thing that Jarry and his two collaborators Henry and Charles Morin did in order to exaggerate the teacher’s interfering character was to change the shape of his nose, sharpening it to a point. In the course of his art classes, a text that would definitely have been put in Jarry’s way was J.B. Delestre’s classic work of 1866, De la physiognomonie (On Physiognomy). In his Chapter on caricature the author confesses to his enjoyment of street graffiti, musing on children’s instant recognition of the ridiculous and the fact that their attention is hardly ever engaged by the purely normal. In following up on this observation, he relates how he questioned a

The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type • 79

Figure 4.1 Charles Morin, Père Hébert (reconstitution of a schoolbook sketch c.1920). Patrick Fréchet Collection.

Figure 4.2 Schoolboy’s drawing of his favourite and most hated masters, in J.B. Delestre, La physiognomonie (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1866), 309.

80 • Jill Fell young rogue, as he calls him, on his studies and his relations with his masters. The boy gives a vivid account of the masters he likes and the ones he hates. Delestre then gives him a piece of paper and asks the boy to sketch both his favourite master and the one most detested by all the pupils. For the latter, the boy chooses a profi le outline demonstrating a sharp pointed nose. Delestre gives a description which could just as well apply to Hébert, as drawn by the three Rennes schoolboys: ‘ses lèvres pincées, poussées en dehors par la colère à l’état de permanence.’13 (His lips pursed in a permanent angry pout). The result is a conjunction of nose and lips projecting forward as one, to the detriment of the chin. In Jarry’s later version of Ubu, the questing nose

Figure 4.3 Alfred Jarry, Profil de Monsieur Ubu, drawn for Catulle Mendès. Courtesy of the Collège de Pataphysique.

The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type • 81 has been sharpened to a dagger point and the pursed lips have been completely absorbed into it. Hébert/Ubu represents the despised persecutor, just as much as the one represented by Delestre’s anonymous schoolboy. What is significant here is Delestre’s interest in the untutored testimony of a child as early as 1866, and his elevation of the child’s statement to a position of authority. It corroborates Segel’s point about the growing importance of the world of the child as a model for avant-garde artists and writers. Jarry may not have had much greater a personal attachment to the puppets of his school days than the Morin brothers did, but, once in Paris, recognized that the subversive power of the Rennes cycle of plays fitted precisely to the prevailing avant-garde aesthetics of Paris, and could be channeled to invent a new genre of play. In his written exposé of Ubu Roi, published a few days ahead of the theatre performance, he made a point of emphasizing that it had been written by a child: ‘Cette pièce ayant été écrite par un enfant, il convient de signaler, si quelques-uns y prêtent attention, le principe de synthèse que trouve l’enfant créateur en ses professeurs.’14 (As this play was written by a child, in case anyone cares to take note of it, it is worth drawing attention to the principle of synthesis that a creative child can find in his teachers.) Jarry is here making the ironic point that teachers provide raw material for the imaginations of their pupils through the oddities of their behaviour, which, in his case, proved to be more valuable than their pedagogical skills. Jarry was moreover fortunate that the marionette aesthetic was a tenet of the avant-garde theatre group, Le Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, and that, with the help of influential literary friends, he was able to persuade its director, Aurélien Lugné-Poe, to stage Ubu Roi as a play to be performed with human actors, moving jerkily in the manner of puppets. Without the two scandalous fullsize performances at the Théâtre Nouveau on December 10 and 11, 1896, Ubu would not have come to such prominence. I have undertaken to focus on the physical characteristics of Jarry’s creature, a new puppet type, which has stood the test of time. What I have noted so far, thanks to J.B. Delestre’s curiosity, is a child’s spontaneous perception that a long pointed nose denotes an unpleasant, meddling and punitive authority figure. If a maker of puppet heads wanted to create the caricatural mask of the Hated School Teacher, this then might be the salient feature, in terms of a stock type. In consulting Delestre’s general work on physiognomy, Jarry’s satirical intentions would have naturally drawn him to the peripheral Chapter on caricature. His early use of the word cubiste can be traced to a small section on erotic dance by acrobats at private banquets, within a well-known work on Ancient Greek dance. When consulting general works it was his habit to focus on the most extreme or marginal manifestations of their subject matter.15 Beyond the domain of the classroom Jarry began to look for ways of nudging his creature towards a more macabre, monstrous status, through ever-stranger illustrations. During the period of 1894–1896 Jarry was looking for mystical and mediaeval illustrations to include in his magazine

82 • Jill Fell L’Ymagier. The modelling of Ubu’s nose needs to be considered not only in terms of caricature, but also in terms of the cult of death. The marionette is an almost magical creature, poised between life and death, an object that can be brought to life by human intervention. Jarry represented the eyes of his fi rst Ubu marionette in terms of blank hollows, as in a skull. The head is an extraordinarily distorted shape for a human being and indeed might recall that of a shrunken mummy. Christine van Schoonbeek, in her book Les portraits d’Ubu (Ubu’s Portraits), has analysed the iconography of all the Ubu drawings in detail. She points out the morbid characteristics of Jarry’s well-known 1896 woodcut, the so-called Véritable portrait de M. Ubu (Authentic Portrait of Mr. Ubu), in that the nose is depicted in triangular format, both in this and the other full front portraits. It is represented as a cavity rather than a projection, as if it were an empty skull. She also fi nds that, when looking at the puppet full face, rather than in profi le, the nose seems to disappear: ‘l’extraordinaire est que, si l’on regarde le guignol de face, on retrouve exactement le faciès du Véritable portrait: le nez perd toute existence, et les moustaches triangulaires se développent tout en largeur.’16 (The extraordinary thing is, if you look at the puppet from the front, you encounter precisely the features of the Véritable portrait: the nose completely disappears, and the triangular moustache expands outwards.) It is useful to ally van Schoonbeek’s observation to Clair’s, in his analysis of Giacometti’s sculpture Le Nez (The Nose), that one of the ways of giving the appearance of life to a skull is to supply it with a nose, as if the existence of a nose was also an indicator of life. The nose is, after all, the organ that we use for breathing. As a bodily part, Clair places the nose in a similar category to the sexual organs, in that it only attains its ultimate shape, he says, after puberty. In Clair’s view, Giacometti’s inspiration was to weld a grotesquely long nose onto a skull, thus creating the contradictory feature that gives the sculpture its uniquely uncanny effect. As far as the Ubu puppet is concerned, we also experience a similar uncanny effect as the puppet turns from profi le (giving the appearance of life) to full face (giving the appearance of death). Jarry’s radical recommendations to Lugné-Poe for shabby costumes and cardboard heads to mask the actors would later be followed by the Dada group and specifically by its Zurich-based initiators at the Cabaret Voltaire, whose aesthetic decision to use low-grade materials to create high art derived from occult ideas. Jarry’s Ubu could fit easily into the family of over a hundred puppets that Paul Klee made for his son’s theatre between 1919 and 1922.17 Some of these were also modelled on a real people, himself included, but mainly dressed in shapeless, ragged gowns like that of Jarry’s 1897 puppet. Jarry’s radical vision, based on a modern aesthetic of the sordid, as explained in his recommendations to Lugné-Poe, was certainly at the opposite pole to the Symbolist aesthetics of his contemporary, Henri Signoret, whose Petit Théâtre des Marionnettes, with its elegant rod puppets, was founded on exotic Javanese precepts.18 Jarry himself points up the difference between the two types

The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type • 83 of wooden puppet in his play, Ubu sur la butte (Ubu on the Hill), a shorter version of Ubu Roi, with the following jingle: Il existe deux sortes d’hommes en bois, Les têtes précieusement travaillées, Réceptacles de doctrines admirables, Et les brutes, j’entends non façonnées, Eh! si, les brutes et les bûches.19 (Two sorts of wooden men exist, Those with heads exquisitely fashioned, Receptacles of admirable doctrines, And brutes, by which I mean not carved, Ah! Yes indeed, the brutes and the logs.) His implication here is that the closer the puppet is to its primitive state of a log of wood, the more it is likely to retain the life, if not the spirit, that resides in that wood, whilst the more the wood is worked, the more that vital spirit is likely to be destroyed. If we put Ubu in a Dada context, remembering that there was a reading from Ubu Roi at the very first performance of the Cabaret Voltaire, the crudeness of the Jarry puppets fits in very well. One of the performers wore a mask by the Hungarian artist Marcel Janco; its rectangular shape and single fierce eye is strikingly similar to the grimacing, one-eyed King of an 1894 untitled woodcut that Jarry used as an illustration in both of his first two volumes.20 Jarry’s puppets stood well outside the puppetry tradition of detailed painted faces, and elaborate, glittering costumes, which suggest an alternative reality. In fact they certainly suggest an alternative reality, but one which has more in common with African voodoo than the Celtic fairy legends current in his homeland of Brittany. In Jarry’s lifetime, Picasso was waiting in the wings, ready to shock the art world with his Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon), based on African masks. A little later, Antonin Artaud, another of Jarry’s admirers, stated his belief that a marionette should be placed in the same category as an African voodoo doll, in that it speaks to the buried emotions within the psyche of the spectator. Artaud described the marionette as ‘L’apparition d’un Être inventé, fait de bois et d’étoffe, crée de toutes pièces, ne répondant à rien, et cependant inquiétant par nature, capable de réintroduire sur la scène un petit soufflé de cette grande peur métaphysique qui est la base de tout le théâtre ancien.’21 (The manifestation of an invented Being, made of wood and cloth, created out of nothing, answerable to nothing and yet disquieting by its very nature, capable of reintroducing on the stage a small breath of that great metaphysical fear that is the basis of the entire ancient theatre.) In the context of Artaud’s words it is interesting that, in 1916, when the members of Zurich Dada first tried on Janco’s crude cardboard masks,

84 • Jill Fell they felt impelled to go round collecting bits and pieces with which to festoon themselves, before they embarked on their improvised dances, as if this were an important preparation for a magical rite.22 The very rough modelling of the Ubu puppet’s face clearly places it within the same aesthetic framework as Klee’s and Giacometti’s. Jarry’s preference for crude handiwork makes it easy to understand why Zurich Dada and the Surrealists hailed him as one of their main antecedents. It may not be irrelevant that the private flat of Alain Weill, the Paris-based collector who owns the ‘Véritable Marionnette,’ was, at the time that this writer saw it, crammed with African fetishes. In a genre of its own and unique in its significance for the development of twentieth-century culture, the Ubu marionette had pride of place in a glass case on his desk, where it very likely stands today. In 1902 Jarry was persuaded to give a rare lecture on marionettes in Brussels. During this he insisted on the importance of the animator also being the manufacturer of his puppets. Only then, said Jarry, could one maintain full control of them and guarantee that they would obediently carry out the physical expression of the puppeteer’s thoughts and emotions.23 This idea probably derives from the ancient belief in the power of a fetishistic image. In his classic work on dolls and puppets, Max von Böhn explains that the representation of a god or a demon or a man confers on the person who has made the image and who calls it by its name, the power to make use of its strength or to influence it. With the image are associated ideas of a magic dwelling within it, powerful enough to be controlled. The doll has therefore always played an important part in magical practice. According to von Böhn the image is generally used for the purpose of doing harm to someone. The belief is that whatever one desires can be carried out in reality through pantomimic suggestion of the desired result.24 Two important members of the audience at the Ubu Roi dress rehearsal were struck with the sensation that Ubu, newly costumed as a giant puppet in a triangular cardboard mask, heralded a new era of destruction. The first was W.B. Yeats who foresaw the coming of what he called ‘the Savage God’, in the place of the subtle atmospherics of Mallarmé and Verlaine and the ‘faint, mixed tints’ of Charles Conder, Puvis de Chavannes and Gustave Moreau;25 the second was the critic Henry Bauer, who wrote these prophetic words: ‘De cette énorme figure d’Ubu, étrangement suggestive, souffle le vent de destruction, l’inspiration de la jeunesse contemporaine qui abat les traditionnels respects et les séculaires préjugés.’26 (From this enormous figure of Ubu, so strangely suggestive, blows the wind of destruction, inspiration of contemporary youth who are bringing down the traditional objects of respect and secular prejudices.) As a comic figure, a caricature of stupid, cruel and amoral authority, Ubu, writ large on stage, provided an impulse for destruction and change. Jarry himself, as he took on the Ubu mask to a greater and greater extent, would fulfi l the social role of bouc émissaire (scapegoat), which Artaud would later describe as ‘aimantant, attirant, faisant tomber sur ses épaules les colères

The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type • 85 errantes de l’époque pour la décharger de son mal-être psychologique’.27 (Magnetizing, attracting and shouldering the wandering angers of the era to discharge it of its psychological afflictions.) Julia Kristeva, citing this passage, used it to back her argument that literature can be ‘the very place where the social code is destroyed and renewed.’28 Indeed, with the production of Ubu Roi, Jarry unwittingly provided a focus for the simmering disquiet of the Parisian avant-garde, desiring to overthrow traditional artistic hierarchies and codes of social behaviour. As we have now entered the realm of magic and because the intention of this Chapter is to examine the physical attributes of the Ubu marionette, it is appropriate to analyse the most famous part of Ubu’s anatomy, his stomach. This is usually emblazoned with the ancient ornament of a spiral, often associated with mazes. The term used by Jarry for Ubu’s stomach was gidouille, which, according to the thesis of Michel Arrivé, may be a deformation of the old French word, guedoufle or guedouille, a sort of double oil pot with testicular connotations in Rabelais.29 Ubu’s silhouette was modelled on one of four stock male types listed by André Charles Gervais in his classic work Marionnettes et marionnettistes de France (Puppets and Puppetteers of France). He describes it as Le bourgeois bedonnant (paunchy bourgeois).30 This stock type had been incorporated into Honoré Daumier’s cartoon of Louis-Philippe in 1831, titled Gargantua, showing a long line of courtiers feeding him bribes while he defecates money and medals. Van Schoonbeek has rightly designated this caricature as a probable antecedent of Jarry’s Ubu.31 For caricaturists of that era the pear alone stood as a symbol for the monarch, leading the censors to ban the representation of any pear-like objects at all. The significance of the spiral drawn on to the black gown of the Ubu marionette as a series of multicoloured dots has given rise to debate. Because all the Ubu sketches drawn by Pierre Bonnard for the Almanach illustré du Père Ubu (Illustrated Almanach of Père Ubu) carry a dotted spiral, Alain Weill, owner of the ‘Véritable Marionnette’, speculates that Bonnard may have also painted the spiral on Ubu’s gown. This is not to say that Bonnard may have been following Jarry’s instructions. All Jarry’s drawings and woodcuts of Ubu show an unbroken spiral. Is the difference significant? There is a mystical source that may provide the answer. It is one that may also help to solve the linguistic oddities of Jarry’s dense poetry of 1893–1894. This was the period when he was looking into the origins of Symbolism at the Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library) and also searching for early engravings to reproduce in L’Ymagier, due to be launched in October 1894. For the budding Symbolist poet, the works of the seventeenth-century mystic, Jacob Boehme, with his dictum that the outward visible world is a signature or figure for the inward spiritual world, was required reading. This involved fourteen volumes of Gothic script. However there was a much shorter book available in William Law’s Clavis or ‘Key to the Works of Boehme’, a slim volume containing thirteen plates with a one-page explanation appended to

86 • Jill Fell each. These illustrations, which claim to encapsulate Boehme’s main principles into hieroglyphic emblems, are copied from the work of another Boehme specialist, Dionysius Freher.32 The first engraving in Law’s Clavis represents the double ellipse or Ur-Form, the underlying life form. Law’s explanation, which describes it as ‘The Unformed Word, The Alpha and the Omega—the eternal beginning and the eternal end’, is an appropriately mysterious source for the debated dotted spiral on the belly of the Ubu puppet. In this engraving, the spiraling dotted line runs alongside a continuous one, together with legends explaining their opposing meanings. The dotted spiral line represents what Law calls Lubet, a word that apparently corresponds in Boehme’s text to the German word Lust (Desire).33 Freher’s legends running alongside the two lines break off suddenly at a small aperture cut into the page. For the full story the reader must follow them through the window into the following plate and two more, circling vertiginously until the fourth plate, where both lines and legends reach their ends. The successive pages constitute a fascinating threedimensional engraving that eventually arrives at God at the end of an everreceding spiral and interlinked chambers. Assuming that Freher’s Hieroglyphica Sacra (Sacred Hieroglyphs) were known to Symbolist writers and theosophical circles in Paris, either through the 1781 re-edition of Law’s works, or a French translation of the Clavis, it is worth hazarding that the dotted spiral on the True Marionette’s gown may allude to Boehme’s Urgrund (primary principle) and to Freher’s drawings. It would be a suitably esoteric pataphysical allusion.34 Jarry went to great efforts to absorb the figure of Ubu into the Symbolist canon,35 but even in its earliest form as Les Polonais (The Poles), his play had not been targeted at children. A study by the American scholar Kimberly Jannarone has linked Jarry’s exposure to rural puppetry in northern France to the primitive design of his puppets, so different from the sophisticated puppets of Signoret.36 A rare photograph of Ubu, Bougrelas and the Tzar, from the former collection of Tristan Tzara, shows how crude they were.37 Ubu’s belly protuberance has shifted up to his chest, denoting puffed up pomposity rather than greed. A sketch of Jarry operating Ubu also exists, still as a stringed marionette but with his belly in place. Gervais’s classic manual on French puppetry instructs us how the hand of the puppeteer can alter the figure of a glove puppet, doing service as the belly of the Paunchy Bourgeois: ‘Le bourgeois bedonnant: Déplacer les doigts en arrière en mettant la paume presqu’horizontalement. La partie inférieure de la paume simulera le ventre proéminant du personnage. L’index pourra faire tomber une tête lourde sur l’estomac.’38 (Paunchy bourgeois: Stretch the fingers backwards putting the palm in a near horizontal position. The bottom part of the palm will thus imitate the prominent belly of the character. The index finger will be able to make the heavy head fall down over the stomach.) The very point of marionettes is their shape-changing nature, with or without the help of the hand. Manual dexterity and sleight of hand are so vital to the

The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type • 87 successful operation of puppets that conjurers often doubled up as puppeteers. Heads can also be shifted onto other bodies, while the constant need for repainting and repairing leads to small alterations. This quality prevents us making

Figure 4.4 E. Couturier, “Alfred Jarry ‘conduisant’ Ubu-Roi”, La Critique, April 5, 1903; repr. L’Étoile-Absinthe 17–18 (1983): 22. Courtesy of the Société des Amis d’Alfred Jarry.

88 • Jill Fell fixed judgments about them. Although the profile of the Paunchy Bourgeois resembles the general outline of Jarry’s Ubu, Ubu represents the embodiment of punitive authority at its most extreme. This is the characteristic that must have caught the imagination of the Surrealist artist Max Ernst when he dreamt of his father turning into Ubu. Jarry refers to Ubu’s hard outer shell as a caparaçonnage de carton (cardboard armour-plating).39 Ernst, in his painting, depicts this outer carapace as an impregnable barrel, spinning on a murderous spike. I have now covered the main physical attributes of the original Ubu marionette, but the physical attributes of a marionette are only half of its identity. It is important to re-emphasize the notion of the marionette as a semi-magical creature and the power of Ubu as a fetish object possessing a charisma more frightening than comic. This is what caught the imagination of Surrealist artists, such as Ernst, Joan Miró and Dora Maar. Whether the marionette is a thing of white or black magic, there can be no doubt of its relationship to the dolls of voodoo. Moving as of its own volition, it awakes an atavistic fear in its human counterpart that it could break free from its strings, having sucked a spark of living spirit from its animator and become golem.40 As a caricatural figure transposed to the stage, Ubu, in his first incarnation as Ébé, or Père Eb, came into being in 1888, only five years after Collodi’s creation of Pinocchio, the wooden figure of a boy granted life. Pinocchio and Ubu entered the literary world within a very short time of each other, and each quickly attained mythical status. Jarry’s masterly transformation of Père Eb, from a small puppet manufactured for private performances in front of friends, to a marionettised, masked live actor performing on the Paris stage in front of the critics and a paying audience brought the terrifying prospect of an amoral tyrant, governed by stupidity and greed, home to the public imagination. Jarry’s Ubu had no moral constraints placed on him by his creator, such as the inconvenience of an uncontrollable nose that reacted to untruths. Truth for Ubu was equal to untruth, and although the nose was indeed one of the three main physical attributes of the Ubu silhouette, its projecting shape was not connected to lying, but denoted suspicion and interference. The English term ‘nosey’ is linked to this perception. Ubu’s shrunken, tapering cranium was his second identifying feature, denoting an abnormally small brain; and finally the huge armoured belly denoted greed on the one hand and fear of attack on the other. Fear was the only inhibitor that would deter Ubu from immoral actions, which can in any way be likened to the embarrassment caused to Pinocchio by the conspicuous lengthening of his nose. The stupid hybrid monster that Jarry created still continues to reflect the contemporary political scene as an image of Power and as a modern mass killer. Notes 1

Harold B. Segel, Pinocchio’s Progeny (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 37.

The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type • 89 2 3 4

5

6 7 8 9

10

11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18

19

Lucien Aressy, La Dernière Bohème. Verlaine et son milieu (Paris: Jouve et Cie, 1923), 181. Henri Béhar, Les cultures de Jarry (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), 81. Jarry’s speech was given at the première of Ubu Roi. See Alfred Jarry, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Michel Arrivé, Henri Bordillon, Patrick Besnier and Bernard Le Doze, 3 vols (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1972–1988), vol. 1, 399. Jane Taylor and William Kentridge, Ubu and the Truth Commission, The Handspring Puppet Company, first showcased at The Laboratory, The Market Theatre, Johannesburg, May 26, 1997. Henri Hertz, “Alfred Jarry, collégien et la naissance d’Ubu-Roi”, Écrits nouveaux 11 (1922): 213–15. Repr. L’Étoile-Absinthe 51–52 (1992): 5–7. Michel Arrivé, Peintures, gravures & dessins d’Alfred Jarry (Paris: Collège de Pataphysique and Le Cercle français du livre, 1968), plate 45. Alfred Jarry, “De l’inutilité du théâtre au théâtre”, in Oeuvres, vol. 1, 405–10 (408). Extract from Alfred Jarry, “Of the Futility of the ‘Theatrical’ in the Theater”, in Selected Works of Alfred Jarry, trans. Barbara Wright, ed. Roger Shattuck and Simon Watson-Taylor (London: Methuen, 1965), 73. Alfred Jarry, Paralipomènes d’Ubu, in Oeuvres, vol. 1, 466–74: ‘S’il ressemble à un animal, il a surtout la face porcine, le nez semblable à la mâchoire supérieure du crocodile.’ Jean Clair, Le nez de Giacometti. Faces de carême; figures de carnaval (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 47. Clair, Nez, 46–47. J.B. Delestre, De la physiognomonie (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1866), 308–09. Jarry, Paralipomènes, 467. Maurice Emmanuel, La danse grecque antique d’après les monuments figures (Paris: Hachette, 1895). Cf. Jill Fell, “Alfred Jarry’s Alternative Cubists”, French Cultural Studies 17 (June 1995): 249–69. Christine van Schoonbeek, Les portraits d’Ubu (Biarritz: Atlantica, 1997), 29–30. Cf. Brunella Eruli, Jarry. I mostri dell’immagine (Pisa: Pacini, 1982), plates 28 and 29. See a letter by Jarry to Lugné-Poe, January 8, 1896, in Jarry, Oeuvres, vol. 1, 1043: ‘Costumes aussi peu couleur locale ou chronologiques que possible [ . . . ] moderne de préférence, puisque la satire est moderne; et sordide, parce que le drame en paraît plus misérable et horrifique.’ (Costumes as little related to local colour or historical time as possible [ . . . ] preferably modern, since satire is modern; and sordid, because the play will appear all the more wretched and horrific.) Jarry, Ubu sur la butte, in Oeuvres, vol. 1, 635.

90 • Jill Fell 20 Jarry, Oeuvres, vol. 1, 278 and Arrivé, Peintures, plates 29 and 31. 21 Antonin Artaud, Le théâtre et son double (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 65. 22 Hugo Ball, Flight out of Time, ed. John Elderfield (Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 1995), 64. 23 Alfred Jarry, Conférence sur les pantins, in Oeuvres, vol. 1, 422–23 : ‘Les marionnettes seules, dont on est maître, souverain et Créateur, car il nous paraît indispensable de les avoir fabriquées soi-même, traduisent, passivement et rudimentairement, ce qui est le schéma de l’exactitude de nos pensées.’ (Only marionettes, of whom one is sovereign master and Creator, for it seems indispensable to us to have manufactured them oneself, will passively translate the rudimentary framework of one’s thoughts in their bare exactitude.) 24 Max von Böhn, Dolls and Puppets (London: Harrap, 1932), 56. 25 William Butler Yeats, Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1955), 349. 26 Henry Bauer, L’Écho de Paris, December 19, 1896, cit. in Noël Arnaud, Alfred Jarry, d’Ubu roi au docteur Faustroll (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1974), 318. 27 Antonin Artaud, “L’anarchie sociale de l’art”, in Oeuvres complètes, 26 vols (Paris: Gallimard, c1956–c1994), vol. 8, 287–89 (287). 28 Julia Kristeva, Polylogue (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1977), 158. 29 See Michel Arrivé, Les langages de Jarry. Essai de sémiotique littéraire (Paris: Klincksieck, 1972), 211. Quaresmeprenant had ‘les couilles comme une guedoufle’, in François Rabelais, Oeuvres complètes, 5 vols, ed. M. Guilbaud (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de France, 1957), vol. IV, 160. 30 André Charles Gervais, Marionnettes et marionnettistes de France (Paris: Bordas, 1947), 43. 31 Van Schoonbeek, Portraits, 51. 32 William Law, The Clavis or Key of Jakob Boehme, repr. 1981 and Dionysius Freher, Hieroglyphica Sacra or Divine Emblems 1717–1720 (Brit. Lib. Add. Ms. 5767). 33 This is the definition given by the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1878 edn.), which further specifies that Lust does not represent an accurate translation of Lubet. 34 Cf. Jill Fell, Alfred Jarry: An Imagination in Revolt (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005), 57. 35 Cf. Julien Schuh, “‘César-Antechrist’: un écrin occulte pour Ubu”, in Jarry, monstres et merveilles, ed. Patrick Besnier (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007), 13–45. 36 Kimberly Jannarone, “Puppetry and Pataphysics: Populism and the Ubu Cycle”, New Theatre Quarterly XVII/3 (August 2001): 239–53. 37 Photograph held by the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet. 38 Gervais, Marionnettes, 43. 39 Jarry, Oeuvres, vol. 1, 467. 40 Gervais is eloquent on the subject of the extreme emotional effort and permanent sacrifice of the self, without which the manipulator will not

The Manufacture of a Modern Puppet Type • 91 succeed in transferring his own interior fire to the puppet. The moment that this fails, he writes, the doll is extinguished, and you are left with nothing but a scrap of wood wrapped in a piece of cloth. The manipulator cannot let his concentration be diverted from the feelings that he is transmitting to the spectacle, without their instantly being eclipsed in his doll. To translate an emotion he cannot remain objective. He must experience within himself a vivid sensation of whatever the marionette has to express—see Gervais, Marionnettes, 52.

Chapter Five Man is Non-Man Mannequins, Puppets and Marionettes in the Theatre of Dario Fo Christopher Cairns

As part of a well-known interview, published in the Teatro dell’Occhio, 1984, and elsewhere, Dario Fo said: ‘For the first time we attributed great value to objects, masks and mannequins. From then on we employed a large amount of puppets. From Grande pantomima con pupazzi of 1968, Morte e resurrezione di un pupazzo, Il Fanfani rapito, puppets were always present on stage, at times enormous, despotic. It was almost a revolution for a certain type of theatre’.1 What was this revolution and where did it come from? The mannequin, dummy or marionette has indeed a long history in the twentieth century, and much has been written about the phenomenon, from the authoritative book by Luigi Allegri to the work of Franco Carmelo Greco more recently.2 Like the madman in a play, the mannequin on stage may stand for, replace or allude to, the actor; he needs no laws of realism; he can be critique, satire, a projection of the mind, dream or just a stage prop.3 Just as a painting or drawing may represent the actor in a flat plane, so the mannequin may sculpt the actor in three-dimensional space—often a generalised, fi xed and faceless reality—within the proscenium arch, as common in our experience as the tailor’s dummy in a shop window. Crucially, he may come face to face with the actor and give us cause for concern. He is always an alternative reality, however, representing a human being without ever being one, masquerading as an actor, so a double identity problem, fi xed and immutable, a timeless fantasy, a faceless dream. In the theatre of Dario Fo, mannequins (or puppets, dummies, marionettes and dolls) are everywhere and have multiple theatrical functions: 93

94 • Christopher Cairns from the monstrous mannequin of Grande pantomima con bandiere e pupazzi piccoli e medi (1968; Grand Pantomime with Flags and Small and Medium-Sized Puppets), where the giant dummy representing fascism gives birth to smaller ones portraying the institutions of the State, to the huge and skeletal puppet of the State, which is made to topple in the playwright’s imagination in the Storia di un soldato (1978; Story of a Soldier, based on Igor Stravinsky’s music for Histoire du soldat). Again, a giant puppet in Morte e resurrezione di un pupazzo (1971; Death and Resurrection of a Puppet), satirizes the former leader of the Italian Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti, by virtue of its sheer size. Similarly, elsewhere in the work of Fo, puppets can be half-human, or twice human, in the famous trick nano a quattro mani (a dwarf created by two actors) in Fanfani rapito (1975; Fanfani Kidnapped) and St George in La signora è da buttare (1967; The Lady is for the Scrapheap): the theatrical device undercuts the realism of the naturalistic actor by deforming his shape and magnifying or miniaturising his size. The same thing happens, to a greater or lesser extent, with the mask. The examples are everywhere. We recall the many substitution devices where the mannequin replaces the actor—to be replaced again by the puppet—jolting the spectator into an uneasy contemplation of his own identity. Most often, as we shall see, in the theatre of Dario Fo, the mannequin marries the identity question to the surreal in the classic substitution and resubstitution device. But where does all this come from? In the theatre, theoretical writing quotes the ideas on dummies and marionettes from the writing of von Kleist at the end of the eighteenth century, the obsessions of Edward Gordon Craig, the writings of Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus, the experiments of Meyerhold in Russia and so on. For Dario’s generation, the greatest exponents of the Mannequin in the theatre have been the Polish Tadeusz Kantor, Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet and the work of Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theatre. And it is no accident, I feel, that all three of these, along with Dario Fo, set out to be painters before coming to the theatre. There is a sense in which the mannequin is the artist’s ‘representational’ and three-dimensional artistic vision. Kantor worked extensively in Italy in the 1970s, and Wielopole Wielopole was created in Florence with Italian actors. Kantor’s debts are to Bruno Schulz and his Traité des mannequins (Treatise of Mannequins), to Dada and its emphasis on objects and to Duchamp above all, along with Edward Gordon Craig. Peter Schumann’s roots are also in Europe, although his work was produced in the U.S.4 But the father of the mannequin in Art for the twentieth century is unquestionably Giorgio de Chirico, whom Dario Fo met when he was about twenty, precisely at the time when he had no ambitions in the theatre, and wanted only to be a painter and an architect. Again, Carlo Carrà taught at the Accademia di Brera in Milan during all the time that Dario was a student there, and was a member of the original group of madcap Futurists in Paris before the

Man is Non-Man • 95 First World War. It seems highly likely that Dario Fo studied the metaphysical painting of de Chirico at this time, often set in classical Renaissance ‘stage sets’ and peopled by mannequins of every description.5 One wonders why theoretical writing about mannequins in the theatre acknowledges no debt to de Chirico in spite of the fact that the painter himself (along with his brother Savinio) was much involved as a designer in the theatre over many years. My point is that Dario Fo was probably much more concerned in the 1940s with the painting of the metaphysicians than the theatre of the grotteschi, although they undoubtedly share the same philosophical roots. Dario Fo’s mannequins probably come more from Giorgio de Chirico than from Rosso di San Secondo’s Marionette che passione (Marionettes, What Passion!)! A little-known source may shed some light on this, since de Chirico himself actually wrote about mannequins in the theatre, first under the pseudonym of Isabella Far in 1940, then admitting his own authorship in 1945. In 1940, he wrote: ‘The mannequin was both the starting point and foundation of all modernist inclinations in the theatre’6 and goes on: ‘The more a mannequin resembles a human, the colder and more unpleasant it is. The pathetic and lyrical side of de Chirico’s mannequins, particularly the seated ones, stems precisely from their alienation from humans. Outside de Chirico’s paintings, however, mannequins are always unpleasant, imperfect parodies of humans.’7 This hints at the unease, the nightmare quality always implicit in the mannequin’s presence, our sense of identity and fear of losing it, and the false reality that the dummy represents in its exquisitely theatrical nature. De Chirico goes on to complain that directors: Have no time to waste looking carefully at a statue or a mannequin and to observe that a mannequin is monstrous precisely because it aspires to be a man. Mannequins aspire to live and yet they are profoundly non-living. On the other hand, statues intend to be works of art. They do not aspire to live, if not in a spiritual sense and, thanks to this, they achieve immortal life, that is to say artistic life.8 Finally, de Chirico criticizes precisely those theatrical effects which Dario Fo and Tadeusz Kantor found theatrically viable, and seem to be a rejection of the Übermarionette of Edward Gordon Craig: Snobbish directors did not merely introduce a wooden mannequin on stage, they went further and made actors into mannequins or marionettes [ . . . ]. Mannequins are not fictional: they are a reality. Furthermore: they are a sad and monstrous reality. We will disappear but mannequins are here to stay. Mannequins are not vulnerable and ephemeral toys, easily destroyed by a child’s hand. Mannequins are not destined to specified functions: for painters, tailors, clothes shops windows, police dog trainers, thieving schools, etc. etc. We are not looking for a semblance of death or nonexistence on the stage.9

96 • Christopher Cairns It is a far cry from the mannequins we find in Kantor’s Dead Class, where puppets stand for repressed psychic dimensions rather than alternative representations of the real, speaking of our contradictory loyalty to both the living and the dead.10 And it was to Craig and Schulz that Kantor acknowledged substantial debts. On Schulz: What terrifies in a mannequin is that it has the fi xity of a corpse, while providing a convincing figuration of life. For Schulz it is symbolic of a being collapsing into a monomania, a spirit degraded by eroticism, the resident of a masochist inferno. Only men are disapproved in such fashion. On the other hand, women, who are both more carnal and true to themselves, are mannequins by their very nature.11 Returning to the theatre of Dario Fo, where we shall find at least two female mannequins, it is appropriate to consider the theatrical functions of mannequins and marionettes in his theatre. The monstrous mannequin from Grande pantomima representing fascism,12 gives birth to other State institutions indicating its malevolent function in the repression of the proletariat by the power base.

The Size of the Puppet: The First Flight from Realism (Political Use) Richard Sogliuzzo summarised his experience of the show in these terms: There were two principal giant puppets, one, a ten-foot grotesque figure with an ugly rubber mouth, holding a rubber truncheon in its right hand, representing the bourgeoisie, while a thirty-foot green and white dragon symbolised the communists. The puppet representing the bourgeoisie was draped in an old tapestry that gave the appearance of an allegorical figure from the Middle Ages. Fo designed the entire production and painted the giant puppets himself with painstaking attention to detail. A political satire of the past quarter of a century [ . . . ] it dealt with the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, which was conveyed primarily through the use of puppets that the actors moved about the stage or manipulated by strings or sticks in full view of the audience. The manipulation of puppets by warring political factions became a vivid stage metaphor. The continual presence of the huge puppet on stage served as a reminder of the omnipresence of political oppression. Performers wore full or half masks, which symbolised the struggle between good and evil. The masks were easily slipped over the forehead for changes of character, or for shifts of action from the allegorical to the literal by revealing the actors’ faces. Many of the masks were based on the Roman Comedy or Commedia dell’Arte. The puppets resembled

Man is Non-Man • 97 George Grosz cartoons but lacked their horror. [ . . . ] The giant puppet not only represented the bourgeoisie but all forms of political oppression. Throughout the performance, various political forces emerged from its huge stomach. In one scene, the proletariat advanced on the huge puppet shouting ‘Kill the dirty fascist!’ Suddenly Fo’s beautiful wife, Franca Rame, scantily clad in a bathing costume, stepped out from the puppet and introduced herself as Capitalism. At that moment, the dragon entered menacingly. Another huge puppet, representing Italy’s former King, Vittorio Emanuele, pushed Capitalism towards the dragon, shouting that she alone, ‘Sweet Capitalism’, could save Italy from the Bolsheviks. The dragon growled fiercely and wrapped itself around Capitalism, but soon fell victim to her charms as she moved seductively within its grasp. Thus a major theme of the work was conveyed through a visual metaphor utilising giant puppets. Capitalism was merely fascism in an alluring disguise: the oppression of the proletariat continued.13 So the fixed ‘dehumanised’ symbol of an evil is ironically rehumanised in the act of giving birth. It is remote from experience because of its giant scale, and it parodies human functions for satirical effect. It is an example of a political satire expressed through both elephantine and miniaturised human forms—a language of dummies with which we feel safe since they are remote from human likeness, though they quote the actor’s form for deliberate ironic effect, and are deliberately larger or smaller than the reality. Dario Fo has often used the reduction of the dummy for similar ironic effect, both in Fanfani rapito, and as the figure of St George in the reworked La signora è da buttare, where again the dragon puppet is used as the nano a quattro mani to ridicule and satirize the subject portrayed. Again, Grande pantomima was reworked as Morte e resurrezione di un pupazzo in 1971, where a giant (evil) puppet (representing Palmiro Togliatti) is pitted against the same dragon. Again, Sogliuzzo: The puppets were not adornments but pivotal characters in the action, comparable with Luca Ronconi’s Orlando Furioso. Fo’s production became, at moments, a human puppet show. Actors moved with mechanical precision, or struck puppet-like attitudes, minimising the distinction between actor and puppet. When actors put on full head masks, they became puppets. Undoubtedly, this dehumanisation of the actor related to Fo’s political theme of the oppressiveness of the industrial state, but it also arose out of his genuine fascination with the simplicity and beauty of the puppet show.14 The mannequin or marionette represents, as a visual metaphor as we have seen, simultaneously a generalised political force for good or evil, and on the same stage, historical figures of real people; actors become puppets by the use of masks; dummies are manipulated in full view of the audience. Size is critical in the theatrical calculation of the effect on the audience.

98 • Christopher Cairns To set this characteristic in context, we recall Majakovski and the Russian avant-garde, with whose use of giant puppets to represent ‘warring political factions’ Dario Fo would, no doubt, have had considerable sympathy: ‘Majakovski deeply loved the five or six metres tall, papier-maché doll with ruddy cheeks, dressed in rags and, notwithstanding the dress, comparable to Father Christmas’.15 And indeed both Schlemmer and de Chirico had been conscious of the size-factor in staging a non-representational reality. Schlemmer’s Two Solemn Tragedians are, in the end, mannequins, representing ‘such lofty concepts as Power and Courage’, conceived as three-dimensional reliefs with amplified voices, but compared visually and in sound with ‘natural man with his natural voice’.16 In addition, Schumann’s Bread & Puppet contrasts puppets of different sizes with a similarly ideological charge as we have seen in Dario Fo: ‘Schumann employs both little puppets and various metres tall puppets. There is always a dialectic relationship of mutual integration between the puppet and the actor who handles it, while employing unpretentious material’.17

The Surreal Substitution of Actor by Mannequin The dance with a dummy (whose limbs are articulated), later replaced by an actress, in Molière’s Le médecin volant (The Flying Doctor),18 objectifies and physicalises the love song sung by Gros-René, so it creates theatrically a threedimensional image from a sentiment. The song is sung in Italian, but reproduced in French on the sheets, interpreting and translating for the audience, as Dario had done, in Brecht-like fashion, at least twice before. The sheets also mask the substitution of actress for dummy, and vice versa, so the woman is first fi xed (though manipulated) as a mannequin, and then this is followed by the ironic reverse: after the substitution, the actress mimes the movements of the mannequin, before breaking free. Universality, manipulation and the celebration of young love in the face of the opposition of the old: all these Commedia dell’Arte themes are expressed in this episode. The finale employs exactly the same technique in the same play in the classic tossing-in-a-blanket scenario from Goya,19 and surreal double substitution of actor with mannequin to produce the momentary frisson of death in the theatre when the dummy is allowed to crash onto the stage. Resurrection predictably ensues when the actor again replaces the mannequin. This is again a classic Commedia dell’Arte lazzo (joke) aimed at the avarice of the old, since the dead man awakens only when his money is thrown to the audience.20

The Stage Marionette with Symbolic Overtones The mannequin of the State in the Storia di un soldato is one of several devices where dummies and objects become a kind of abstract theatrical language of

Man is Non-Man • 99 images.21 By contrast with Grande pantomima, it logically does not give birth, but is manipulated as a marionette by characters representing other interests, just as the marionette principle is widely used by Dario Fo to represent the attempted control by the power base. In Soldato, the giant marionette is manipulated by a chorus of actors showing that the marionetteer has assumed a theatrical function, and is necessarily in full view of the audience. Thus the boundaries between actor / marionette / half-mannequin (if masked) / symbolic actor—some wear bishops’ mitres, which are also parliamentary papers—as we saw in Grande pantomima, are systematically crossed in a multiplicity of theatrical techniques. As elsewhere in this production, abstract metaphor is used and trades on the audience’s ability to ‘read’ quasi-abstract images. The pupazzone (big puppet) is not a realistic representation. It resembles a giant skeleton, rather than the rotund human—though giant—forms of Grande pantomima and Morte e resurrezione, and might have been loosely based on a painting by Ensor.22 But, importantly, its symbolical overtones are easily read by the audience. When it topples as a result of a terrorist attack and threatens to injure the audience, it is ‘propped up’ by Establishment figures (Fo’s right-wing targets in the satire) in a complex interplay of quasi-abstract imagery and semi-realistic action. The function of this ‘abstract’ marionette and the human parliamentarians who surround it in the symbolic semicircular formation of a parliament, their posturing, quarrels and formation, may be seen from the script: ‘The puppet crouches down and helps the members of parliament stand up again with its giant hands. They all stand up and walk towards the backstage. They reappear having glued large A4 papers on their foreheads so that they look like bishops’.23

The Use of the Marionette as an Expression of Control, Influence, Coercion, By Evil Agents (Government), By Another Person, By the Devil, By a Witch, Hospital Doctors Etc. Etc. In fact, marionettes used in the theatre always convey control of a person by someone else, or by an authority. This can be political (the State controlled by other interests) as in the Story of a Soldier. Dario Fo took particular care to train actors in this and demonstrated the marionette scene from Story of a Soldier. In the scene entitled Il ballo della principessa (The Princess’s Ball) the whole sequence is a tour de force of marionette techniques, as different animations of the Princess seem to run the gauntlet of all theatrical techniques possible. The marionette controlled by sticks is tried but fails, and so the one controlled by strings is introduced. Marionette techniques (by now an easily read language of theatrical action) register with the audience as alternative strategies to achieve control over one individual by another. If one kind of blackmail fails, try another! Dario Fo added his own spin to the succession of techniques (to be used again in L’italiana in Algeri—see below) when the

100 • Christopher Cairns marionette, freed from constraint, liberated from prison, individual at last— frees herself from the marionette-strings of control and dances unfettered: The Princess-mannequin appears on stage, carried by four or five girls, as a saint’s statue in a procession. The Princess is laid down on a platform. She crashes down. From below the platform the girls draw various long poles, as thin as rods. They place the extremities of the rods against the mannequin’s armpits, under her knees, under her elbows and then push. The soldier plays his violin with passion and vigour. The mannequin slowly raises and, with the help of the girls handling her with their rods, makes some dance moves, but then, suddenly, crashes down to the ground, inanimate and destroyed. [ . . . ] The soldier is in despair. Enters the devil. The devil consoles and invites him to make a second attempt with the other mannequin of the Princess. This second mannequin is held up by (invisible) strings ‘handled’ by three girls, as if she were a marionette. The girls stand on the square platform with ladders. The soldier plays his instrument and makes the Princess dance. In the end, the Princess tears away from her threads and dances truly freely.24 The same device occurs again in Dario Fo’s production of Gioacchino Rossini’s opera L’italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers). Here, however, it is combined with substitution, as Haly is first controlled by the women of the harem, but is then substituted by the women in an ironic double twist of the argument about sexual control.

The Mannequin May Share Human Reality and Represent both Man and Its Own Faceless Reality In addition, marionettes controlled by strings have been used by Fo in other contexts. The patient in a hospital bed whose movements are controlled entirely by strings from his limbs is a de facto marionette, as in Trumpets and Raspberries (1981; Clacson, trombette e pernacchi). The ‘cure’ arranged by the witch for the Pope, in The Pope and the Witch (1989), is also a swing contraption, controlled by ropes and pulleys, which involves control of the patient by another person, again a de facto marionette. Finally, the brother-in-law in a wheelchair in Franca Rame’s monologue, A Woman Alone, bandaged from head to foot, who has to be fed through a funnel, is another de facto puppet, whose every movement is necessarily controlled by others, but, in an irony typical of Dario Fo, retains movement in two limbs—those which might be said to express masculinity (or oppression) in relationships with women, just as the use of dolls to stand for complementary aspects of a young woman growing up, in her monologue The Same Old Story, theatricalizes the contrasting characteristics (the young conformist with the aggressively independent) of the growth of the young girl to womanhood.25

Man is Non-Man • 101 The Marionette as Icon in a Cultural Context But I want to pause for a moment with a mannequin which never achieved a life on stage. The story of the fantoccio-dio (puppet-god) in Johan Padan a la descoverta de le Americhe (1992; Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas) is probably well known, but this is a rag doll existing in the drawing only, an image to be conjured up by the actor in the minds of the audience, satirizing many of the uses of western Catholicism.26 The natives believe that intercession with this image will bring about rain, but it is intended to smile, not weep: an ironic reversal of many common practices in Italian popular belief, with marble statues, blood, tears etc. etc. The fantoccio is thus tied, in the fabula, to a whole string of interconnected ironies. First, it is made of rags, a far cry from the graven images of western Christianity; second, it is faceless, similarly to a de Chirico mannequin, which, by defi nition, was almost always faceless. Intercession is not by prayer, but by entertainment (dance) in a joyous celebration of popular beliefs, and laughter is the currency of communication with the deity, a further ironic reversal of traditional European values. In this case, the mannequin is removed from the stage; it exists only as an image created in the mind of the audience by a totally ‘other’ theatrical language of mime and voice, and fi xed only in two dimensions in a drawing in the published script. Nonetheless, its multiple ironies are still clear, and depend on the audience’s imagination and cultural experience. The mannequin as icon, of course, may be a flat statement of an image well known by an audience, as is the case with the Buddha in Mamma! I sanculotti! (Hey, the Sansculottes!; 1993–1994), a production in which the actor Mario Pirovano—suitably plastered—represented the icon on stage.

The Construction of a Marionette in Front of the Audience Representing a Formalized or Stereotypical Human Being, as Formed in the Mind of the Actor, and Communicated to the Audience Three-Dimensionally In L’italiana in Algeri, in the production directed and designed by Dario Fo in 1994, the Bey of Algiers, Mustafa, and his captive Lindoro sing of the qualities necessary in a wife—a classic situation which goes far back into Renaissance treatise literature—and creates by stages a marionette from vegetables. This is then made to dance during the duet, and then taken offstage, substituted by an actress dressed as vegetables, who then mimes the stiffness of a marionette before breaking free as before. The technique is similar to the example we saw in the Médecin volant, but the process is mechanical: by using vegetables, the image created in the minds of the singers is physicalised and yet debased, universal, but individually comic. The generalised sexual aspirations of the male are made to sound like a visit to a greengrocer’s. Those universal and commonplace aspirations are shown to be almost ‘commercial’, undignified and trivial and to unite the very different social stations of Prince and

102 • Christopher Cairns captive slave, so also levelling. The faceless mannequin of the woman (her face is ironically supplied by the males) universalizes her image and makes it, once again, commonplace, ‘commercial’, reconstituted, yet leaves the spectator just slightly uneasy, as is the case with all mannequins. The whole process becomes an entirely predictable—almost mechanical—process. Theatrically, it used the mannequin, and Dario’s favourite surreal substitution, to objectify and physicalise a classic episode for the first time: to build a theatrical (so false, pretence) prop which both creates a three-dimensional image for the audience to illustrate the song and simultaneously devalues, undercuts and satirizes the war of the sexes.

The Mannequin as a Doubling Device The example of the Pope’s double in the Pope and the Witch is an illustration of the doubling device. The dummy, a life-size puppet made by Donato Sartori, is introduced for no apparent reason into the plot of the play. It emerges from behind a double set of curtains, where the real Pope, played by Dario Fo, appears also. Drawing the curtains—either to the right or the left—may reveal the dummy or the real actor. The dummy is justified only by later appearances as a defence from assassination (which failed) in the plot. Implicit is the principle that a world figure needs a double (minder, bodyguard) to survive. But the first appearance of the mannequin jolts the sensibility of the audience on the question of identity. Reality is subject to definition and the ephemeral nature of all identity is questioned. Perhaps also the defence against assassination is a play with private identity and public image. On the surface this is a game: papa-pupo (puppet-pope) says the character in the play, while much of the plot discourses on the public image of a Pope and his (supposed) private instincts as a man. The mannequin doubling as the actor can introduce all the uncertainties of identity, image, façade and the mask (in Pirandellian terms) that we all adopt to survive, as Kantor was to illustrate to devastating effect in The Dead Class.

The Marionette as a Stage Device to Represent Realism In the end, the marionette as a substitute for reality may also be used as a mere theatrical necessity. It may also be used with animals. In his directing of Le médecin volant for the Comédie Française, it is clear from the preparatory drawings that Fo designed a sheep-marionette, which Sganarelle steals at the beginning of the play. In Dario Fo’s drawings, the cords clearly indicate a marionette, to be manipulated by a stagehand from above. In the event, the device was not needed, since a dog-in-sheep’s-clothing performed the part with professional skill, even chasing offstage the gendarmes and interrupting

Man is Non-Man • 103 a popular concert (representing the power base). The doll carried by Franca Rame in Michele lu Lanzone (1969) is just a stage prop to stand for the child (as it would be impractical to use a real one).

The Mannequin Represents an Aspect of the Human Psyche (Dream, Nostalgia and Yearning) On other occasions, the mannequin is a projection of the mind, a dream or nostalgia for a lost love, like the dance with a moving dummy on wheels by Lindoro in L’italiana in Algeri—where the miniaturisation of the dummy which flies into the air, and is only briefly captured by a second actor on stilts before escaping—doubles and trebles the reality to show the dream receding into the unreachable distance. Reduplication is a not uncommon feature in Dario’s theatre, and the idea of nostalgia and yearning is created by three different manifestations of the marionette principle: first, the dummy moves on wheels, controlled from the wings, and seems to acquire a life of its own; second, it flies in the air (the wheels removed) and is approached by an actor on stilts, as if already remote, having left the ground. Third, a tiny copy seems to fly in the sky, as if it is a dream receding far out of reach of the actor, recreating the sadness of an unreachable reality.

The Mannequin as an Extension of Human Powers—To the Surreal, Grotesque, Superhuman Many times in Dario Fo’s theatre, the marionette extends the powers of the human actor to create an ‘extreme’ or extension of the actor’s range to encompass the superhuman. In his direction and design of the Molière farces for the Comédie Française, the opening fight between husband and wife in Le médecin malgré lui (1666; The Doctor in Spite of Himself ) reaches extremes of violence with the ladder prop precisely because a dummy is introduced, controlled by cords from the fl ies, swung about the stage (as an actress could not be without injury), just as the dummy-substitute in Le médecin volant, dancing to the song sung by Gros-René, as seen above, may be thrown about with no fear of injury. The same principle occurs in L’italiana in Algeri when Mustafa is carried by eunuchs while singing in a cage or carriage, which sprouts wings. It retreats into the wings, the singer is replaced by a dummy and the aria is sung from the wings while the carriage careers madly about the stage in a way impossible with a real actor in place. At the end, the singer replaces the dummy, and the carriage returns to earth. In all these cases, the episode is pushed beyond naturalism by the substitution of a dummy, which allows the scene to leave the constraints of reality to fly unhindered into a land of pure imagination.

104 • Christopher Cairns The Mannequin as Dispossessed Actor This is not the mainstream of the story of the mannequin in the theatre of the twentieth century. Fo’s uses of it add an alternative dimension to the place of the actor on stage. Often, he himself plays the part of a dummy or dispossessed actor who functions as a marionette, as in Trumpets and Raspberries, or as the patient (see above) or the victim of another species of exterior control, as in the puppetlike performance of a drugged Pope in Pope and the Witch, always to comic effect. The mechanical, jerky movements of the mannequin—the possession of the actor by exterior forces—in this case, drugs—are highlighted here. Again, the principle is a takeover: control is exercised by an exterior force against the will of the victim. Once again, this constitutes a species of repression. These examples of the theatrical functions of marionettes and mannequins in the theatre of Dario Fo are only part of a much longer story in the ‘marionettisation’ of the theatre in the twentieth century. The working of mannequins / puppets / marionettes constitute a language of theatre in itself—easily recognized by today’s audiences. Thus any aspect, even partial, may be quoted in the search for a theatrical objective. An example in Fo is in his direction of Rossini’s Barber of Seville. Twice the action requires the subservience of a chorus of actors to a control factor. Twice characters on stage seem to assume attitudes appropriate to marionettes controlled by strings (stiff, jerking movements), and thus we find the mechanics of the marionette as a theatrical language ready to be used for other purposes. The stylisation of movement, or movement in unison, is dance, just as the stylisation of language through rhythm is poetry or song. Theatre has made wide use of such techniques in the twentieth century, just as the theatre of ‘life’ will accept unquestioningly the political orator (actor) whose oratory incites song / slogans (unison) and the raised clenched fist (dance) in the assembled crowd (chorus). The quotation of marionette techniques (in full or in part) is a vital part of modern theatre’s flight from naturalism, and the theatre of Dario Fo is very much part of this, as he himself admitted in 1983. Unlike Craig, Dario Fo would not wish to do away with the actor. The mannequin or marionette is an artefact; it can be, with Kantor, an objectification of our inner psyche. It can double with the actor to cause us concern about our identity. It can convey the values of our ideology without actors, as in Schumann. Its roots are in Böcklin, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, via de Chirico, Craig, Schulz and Schlemmer. It is thought that de Chirico may have talked to Craig in Florence about 1911;27 Schlemmer knew the work of de Chirico. Dario Fo is probably the child of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà in this, therefore probably grandchild of Marinetti and Futurism,28 and heir to those so fertile bits of both art and theatre in Futurist Paris about 1910, but adapting well-tried theatrical techniques to decidedly twentieth-century situations. Mannequins are also part of a wider concern about identity in the

Man is Non-Man • 105 twentieth century. From such works as Brecht’s Mann ist Mann (1926; A Man’s a Man), Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo (1947; If This Is a Man) Vittorini’s Uomini e no (1945; Men and Not Men) and, ultimately, Pirandello’s Enrico IV (1922; Henry IV), writers and artists have consistently explored the self, the psyche and our sense of collective and individual identity, from the groundbreaking discoveries of Freud through Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to Sartre, Svevo, Pirandello and beyond.29 The mannequin, and the unease engendered by its presence on stage, is also a reflection of this. Notes 1

2

3

4

5 6

7

Dario Fo, Teatro dell’Occhio (Florence: La Casa Usher, 1984), 24: ‘Si dava per la prima volta valore agli oggetti, maschere, manichini. Poi abbiamo usato pupazzi scenici in gran quantità. Da Grande pantomima con pupazzi [del] 1968, Morte e resurrezione di un pupazzo, Il Fanfani rapito, il pupazzo è stato sempre presente, a volte enorme, dispotico. Per un certo tipo di teatro era una piccola rivoluzione’. See Luigi Allegri, Per una storia del teatro come spettacolo: il teatro di burattini e di marionette (Parma: Università di Parma, 1978) and Franco Carmelo Greco, ed., Quante storie per Pulcinella (Naples: ESI, 1988). See also Allegri in Franco Carmelo Greco, ed., Pulcinella: una maschera tra gli specchi (Naples: ESI, c1990). The comparison with the madman refers, of course, to Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist—and to many other places in twentieth-century European theatre. For a general orientation, see Bruno Schulz, Traité des mannequins (Paris: Julliard, 1961); Tadeusz Kantor, Wielopole Wielopole (Milan: Ubulibri, 1981); Edward Gordon Craig, On the Art of the Theatre (London: Heineman, 1911). See also: G.M. Hyde, “Introduction”, in Tadeusz Kantor, Wielopole Wielopole, an Exercise in Theatre (London: Boyars, 1990), and Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles: A Republic of Dreams (London: Methuen, 1999). See any standard work, for instance: Paolo Baldacci, De Chirico: The Metaphysical Period, 1888–1919 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, c1997). Giorgio de Chirico, “Commedia dell’Arte moderna”, L’Illustrazione italiana 35 (1940): 189–97 (194): ‘Il manichino è stato il punto di partenza e la base delle tendenze moderniste nel teatro’; also in Giorgio de Chirico, Commedia dell’Arte moderna di Giorgio de Chirico e di Isabella Far (Rome: Traguardi, 1945). De Chirico, “Commedia dell’Arte”, 195: ‘Più il manichino somiglia all’uomo e più esso è freddo e sgradevole. Il lato patetico e lirico dei manichini di De Chirico, specie quelli seduti, risiede appunto nel loro allontanamento dall’uomo. Invece fuori dei quadri di De Chirico il manichino e sempre spiacevole, perché esso è una specie di parodia dell’uomo.’

106 • Christopher Cairns 8

9

10

11

12 13 14 15

16

Ibid.: ‘Non hanno tempo da perdere per guardare con attenzione una statua o un manichino e per osservare che un manichino vuol essere l’uomo e per questo è mostruoso; aspira alla vita, però è profondamente non vivo, mentre una statua vuol essere un’opera d’arte, non aspira alla vita, ma allo spirito, e grazie a questo, ha una vita immortale: la vita dell’arte.’ De Chirico, “Commedia dell’Arte”, 195–96: ‘I registi snobs non si sono contentati di introdurre sulla scena un manichino di legno, hanno voluto fare di più, hanno voluto dare all’attore l’aspetto del manichino o della marionetta [ . . . ]. Il manichino non è una finzione, è una realtà, anzi una realtà triste e mostruosa. Noi spariremo, ma il manichino resta. Il manichino non è un giocattolo, fragile ed effimero, che una mano di un bambino può spezzare, non è destinato a determinate funzioni: per i pittori, i sarti, le vetrine dei negozi di abiti, gli ammaestratori di cani-poliziotti, le scuole di borsaioli ecc. Non è la finzione della morte, della non esistenza che noi cerchiamo sulla scena.’ This reminds one strongly of the uses of fi xed stereotype dummies in John Gay, Bertold Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and, eventually, in Dario Fo’s L’amore e lo sghignazzo, but that is too long a story—see Cairns, Dario Fo. See Tadeusz Kantor, A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944–1990, ed. Michal Kobialka (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, c1993), 10–11. Arthur Sandauer, “Preface”, in Schulz, Traité, 19–23 (21): ‘En effet, ce qui, dans l’aspect d’un mannequin éffraie, c’est tout en figurant la vie, il garde une fi xité de cadavre. Pour Schulz, il symbolise un être enlisé dans la monomanie, un esprit dégradé par l’érotisme, un habitant de l’enfer masochiste. Mais seuls les hommes sont reprouvé de la sorte; les femmes, plus charnelles et plus identique a elles-mêmes, sont, pour leur nature memes, déjà des mannequins.’ See Dario Fo and Franca Rame, Pupazzi con rabbia e sentimento (Milan: Scheiwiller, 1998), 113. Richard A. Sogliuzzo, “Puppets for a Proletarian Revolution”, The Drama Review 16/3 (1972): 71–77 (77). Ibid. Angelo Maria Ripellino, “Manichini a Pietroburgo”, in Majakovski e il teatro russo d’avanguardia (Turin: Einaudi, 2002), 47–69 (54): ‘La bambola di cartapesta alta cinque-sei metri, dalle guance vermiglie, vestita di stracci e, nonostante l’abito femminile, paragonabile a una sorta di Babbo Natale, piaceva sul serio a Majakowski’. Ripellino also recalls Artaud, 54: ‘Des mannequins, des masques énormes, des objets aux proportions singulières apparaîront au même titre que des images verbales’. Oskar Schlemmer, “Man and Art Figure”, in The Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and Arthur S. Wensinger (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 16–33 (30–31).

Man is Non-Man • 107 17 Allegri, Storia del teatro, 138: ‘Schumann usa per i suoi spettacoli piccoli burattini ma anche pupazzi alti diversi metri manovrati a vista con un rapporto di dialettica integrazione tra attore e pupazzo, e sempre con l’ausilio di materiali “poveri”’. 18 A drawing illustrating this dance is published in Molière/Dario Fo Le médecin malgré lui, Le médecin volant, Illustrations de Dario Fo tirées de ses carnets de mise en scène (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1991), 98, with stills by Roger Viollet, Paris. 19 Please refer to Francisco Goya’s 1791–1792 painting El pelele (The puppet) in the Museo del Prado collection, Madrid. 20 The relationship between Dario Fo and the work of de Chirico is explored in more detail in Cairns, Dario Fo, passim. 21 See Dario Fo, La storia di un soldato (Milan: Electa, 1979), 80–81. 22 I have in mind James Ensor, Masks (Skeletons) Fighting for the Body of a Hanged Man (1891) which is the only image I know of a skeleton wearing a shawl. The work of Ensor is quoted by Fo in the text of Le commedie di Dario Fo: Isabella, tre caravelle e un cacciaballe (Turin: Einaudi, 1997). 23 Fo, Storia soldato, 76: ‘Il pupazzo si china e con le sue enormi mani sollecita e aiuta i componenti del parlamento a ritornare in piedi. Tutti si rialzano e vanno verso il fondo. Riappaiono tenendosi incollati sulla fronte grandi fogli protocolli così da sembrare tanti vescovi’. 24 Fo, Storia soldato, 82: ‘Appare la principessa-manichino portata in scena da quattro-cinque ragazze come fosse la statua di una santa in processione. La principessa viene collocata su un praticabile. Cade di schianto. Le ragazze estraggono da sotto il praticabile lunghi pali sottili come pertiche. Vanno ad appoggiare le cime delle pertiche contro le ascelle del manichino, sotto le ginocchia, sotto i gomiti e fanno leva. Il soldato col suo violino suona con grande vigore e passione. Il manichino si alza pian piano e, aiutato dalle ragazze che lo manovrano con le pertiche, accenna anche qualche passo di danza, ma poi, sul più bello, crolla inanimato, fracassato al suolo . . . Il soldato si dispera. Entra il diavolo che lo rincuora e lo invita a tentare col secondo manichino della principessa. Il secondo manichino è tenuto sospeso da fi li (invisibili) mimati da tre ragazze, come fosse una marionetta. Le ragazze stanno in piedi sul praticabile a rombo con scalette. Il soldato suona e fa danzare la principessa che alla fine si libera dai fi li e danza a ritmo davvero liberato.’ 25 Orig. Franca Rame, Una donna sola and Abbiamo tutte la stessa storia, in Venticinque monologhi per una donna, vol. 8 of Dario Fo, Le Commedie di Dario Fo (Turin: Einaudi, 1989). 26 Dario Fo, Johan Padan a la descoverta de le Americhe (Florence: Giunti, 1992), 78. 27 See Maria Alberti, “Giorgio de Chirico tra tela e scena: crocevia di esperienze europee”, Biblioteca teatrale 19–20 (1990): 175–88.

108 • Christopher Cairns 28 This complex and often-disputed question is comprehensively discussed in Maurizio Calvesi, La metafisica schiarita (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1982), passim. 29 For a fuller discussion of the whole question, see Cairns, Dario Fo, Chapter 9. See also Ed Emery, ed., Research Papers on Dario Fo and Franca Rame (London: Red Notes, 2002) and the perceptive overview of the relationship between de Chirico and Pirandello in Matthew Gale, “De Chirico and Pirandello”, Pirandello Studies 19 (1999): 18–29.

Chapter Six Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace Stephen Wilson (This Chapter is accompanied by an interview with the author.)

By the start of Chapter 3 of The Adventures of Pinocchio,1 the character Pinocchio has still not yet been given a name. More importantly, he has not yet been carved. Carlo Collodi sets the scene by introducing Geppetto’s home, a small room at the bottom of a house under a staircase, with a single window to let in light.2 Collodi then describes the log that Geppetto has taken home with him. Crucially, it begins to give forth eager utterances that already offer an insight into the character and personality of Pinocchio, despite the fact that the character is not yet embodied as a puppet. The author produces a dialogue between Geppetto and the log, in which the log begins to taunt Geppetto. Collodi describes a fireplace in the back wall of Geppetto’s home. He writes, ‘there was a hearth with a fire burning’.3 Yet he also tells us that this fireplace is not real but rather painted on the wall for effect. Collodi then concludes that ‘beside the fire there was a painted pot, boiling merrily, with a cloud of steam rising from it that looked just like real steam.’4 This description of the painted fireplace and pot informs the reader of the impoverished domestic circumstances of Geppetto and Pinocchio. Yet it also puts a momentary spell on the reader, giving the effect of an illusion to the home that Geppetto and Pinocchio inhabit. Collodi applies what I would term an ‘illusory bandage’ here—a ‘bandage’ that momentarily covers over the breach or tear between reality and representation within the reading of an image or text; the illusion is temporary and it will eventually disappear, just as a bandage is temporarily placed over a wound while the tear in the skin heals. A painter might create this same configuration, perhaps in the form of a motif that represents an unresolved figure-ground relationship or in a figure that never quite takes hold of the picture plane. Collodi playfully seduces his 109

110 • Stephen Wilson reader into a false setting by momentarily admitting that what is ‘really there’ within the confines of the story is in fact at the same time a literary construction. As Wunderlich and Morrissey have noted, ‘Pinocchio is a timeless work, not simply because it is a classic, but because of Collodi’s treatment of time.’5 This scene allows Collodi creative licence to mislead the reader about what is really being portrayed in the visual image that he describes. What is notable here is the issue of what exactly the writer is leading (or misleading) us towards. Such an intervention, which transcends the work’s status as unquestioned representation, seems unlikely to have been an arbitrary discrepancy, since it fundamentally alters the meaning of the text in relation to the assumption of realistic description, even within a non-realist fictional story. Furthermore, the episodic configuration of The Adventures of Pinocchio (albeit on one level a pragmatic decision based on the author’s and publisher’s need for serialization) produces a series of awkward slips or jumps that seem to reiterate this sense of discontinuity. There are other notable occasions on which Collodi intervenes, seemingly innocuously, in the narrative flow. A perfect example occurs in Chapter 35: Collodi describes Pinocchio asking Geppetto to be careful not to slip while walking over three rows of Sharks’ teeth.6 The purpose of Geppetto slipping is to present the protagonist Pinocchio in a new, positive role, furthering Pinocchio’s status as an independent character capable of personal development and thus reversing the ‘Good Bad Boy’.7 The event develops both characters in a new direction and reverses their roles, since here it is Geppetto who is helped and Pinocchio who is the provider, thus reorientating Collodi’s ‘pedagogical’ motif. Creating an event or altering a character in fiction is similar to introducing a new personality; it requires time for the reader to adjust since our sense of familiarity is shaken or fragmented. It is important for Collodi to decentre both his motifs and his narrative since Pinocchio’s ambiguous status is essentially ‘unrepresentable’ (as I shall argue further): fragmentation of the text and disjuncture of text and image—both hint at this ‘unrepresentability’. It is the way that such ‘unrepresentability’ might in fact be represented that I wish to turn to next. While in Florence, I accidentally walked into a shop and to my delight it was full of wooden marionettes, many resembling Pinocchio, one of which was sitting on a chair staring at a painted fire in an actual fireplace—just as described in Collodi’s story—with wooden logs in front. I then took the picture shown on the following page. Looking at this picture, which depicts a scene that is itself a replication of a literary scene describing an illusion, raises several questions. As Barbara Bolt asks in her book, Art Beyond Representation, ‘does the visual image, like the speech act, have the power to bring into being that which it figures? Can the image transcend its structure as representation and be performative rather than representational?’8 This image of an illusory fireplace—this photograph, itself an image of an image which is an illusion—seems to upset traditional

Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace • 111

Figure 6.1 Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace—© Stephen Wilson (2005). Courtesy of the artist.

notions of the function of representation. The photograph further upsets because of its assumed relation to the real—this is a real representation of an illusion which heightens our awareness of the idea of the fake boy (puppet) looking at the fake (painted) fireplace. In my studio, while painting, there is a moment between the application of paint to the canvas and stopping, the glance back at the work, which makes apparent the space between being in the work as a process and coming out

112 • Stephen Wilson of the work to see it as a representation, between what is there and what is not there. The picture also evokes questions about the process of looking at painting, in particular the way in which the viewer manages to fi ll in the gaps between patches of paint in such a way as to perceive a coherent image, and indeed the way in which this coherent image is perceived as a meaningful representation. This aspect of painting practice (and of the viewer’s perception of paintings) is of central importance to the work of the Macchiaioli painting movement. The Macchiaioli began in 1853, thirty years before Pinocchio was published, and thrived until the late 1860s. They were active in Italy during Collodi’s lifetime and also socially they were friends. A similar idea can be seen in the work of Gainsborough, who painted portraits loosely so that the viewer could more easily read their loved ones faces into the brush marks. Another question this photograph raises is of what, exactly, Pinocchio is observing. Or, in other words, what does a puppet see? How can he be looking? What is he thinking and what language are those thoughts in? Is he Italian or is he bilingual? When observed carefully, we see behind the fi re a dour but seemingly illuminated mustard-coloured wall and, to the right, a poker, slanted out of the way of the painted fire. Hanging in the middle of the fireplace wall, between the painted flames, is a hook reminiscent of the moment in Chapter 15 before Pinocchio is hung to die on a tree—it is as if the arm of the wooden figure is gesturing at the hook in accusation. Is this then the wooden puppet left behind after Pinocchio transforms into a boy and discards, even disregards, the older, ‘original’ Pinocchio, leaving him to gaze into a painted fire? Regardless of the original intentions of whoever produced the scene here photographed, in itself the photograph seems to raise the question—at least to anyone familiar with the story—of the ontological status of Pinocchio (as discarded puppet, rather than boy). Is he dead or alive? Or is he enjoying a second existence in the afterlife of the image? Why does Collodi include this playful painted fireplace moment for the reader? What does this impose upon our understanding of the nature of Pinocchio for the rest of the story? Upon further inspection, the unlit logs in the foreground of this photograph seem to embody the confl ict between Pinocchio’s essential nature as a wooden puppet carved from a talking log. Seen so clearly in this image, we are made very aware of the significance of Collodi’s image of a false fire in relation to Pinocchio, which may be overlooked in reading this brief passage. Not only does the image cover over the ‘gap’ between representation and illusion—an effect that might have been produced by a description of any illusion, and not specifically a fire—but it highlights the gap between reality and representation in direct relation to Pinocchio’s status as a carved wooden log who is himself, potentially, firewood. In part, this picture can be understood in relation to the classical use of a fairy-tale structure: the protagonist is always faced with a dilemma. Collodi’s story is rooted within the traditions of novella literature, and he was well versed in the tricks that take place in fairy-tale writing, yet he alters the

Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace • 113 rules to fit his tale in a different way. It was only after the completion of The Adventures of Pinocchio as a novel, and the critical acclaim it received, that his work came to convey the instrumental nature of his sentences, where his linguistic form relays his intentions. Pinocchio’s story entertains all the lightness of romantic feuilleton literature, which Ann Lawson Lucas sums up beautifully in her Introduction.9 Collodi had been invited by the brothers Felice and Alessandro Paggi to translate the novels of Charles Perrault, a groundbreaking series of nine French fairy-tale books written in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it was from this endeavour that he undoubtedly developed his awareness of plot and narrative structure. Lawson Lucas further notes how Collodi’s friend Ferdinando Martini summed up his character in his memoirs—as a melancholic man who found entertainment in entertaining others. However, Collodi weaves the story of Pinocchio into a social and political pedagogy, twisting all previous forms of literary intervention into the societal concerns of the contemporary Florentine context. One of Collodi’s most notable attributes is the way that he ‘interrupts’ his reader; he suspends reality to ensure the reader’s engagement. What makes The Adventures of Pinocchio fascinating, I will suggest, is the way in which Pinocchio as a visual figure is essentially ambiguous, always both doubled and divided between the visual representation of fantasy and reality. This doubled yet fragmented nature, the simultaneous presentation of ‘real’ and ‘not real’, is epitomized by the motif of the fireplace; it raises complex questions about the way in which the reader understands the personality of the central character Pinocchio, which in turn paves the way to experiencing how Pinocchio sees the world and perceives that which is around him. The visual oversight of the presentation as false of first a warm fire, and second, a picture of a room with a fire that is naturalized into the setting, also brings to mind various metaphors related to fire, such as those of ‘stoking a flame’ and ultimately ‘keeping the fire alive’. In view of the idea of the hearth as the ‘heart of the home’ this false fire may also hint at the absence of a mother figure, in the same way that the Shark later suggests a return to the womb. Collodi is also asking the reader to check the imagination and stay with the story until more is revealed. Slowly the reader is slipping into Collodi’s imaginary world described in the image of a fireplace and its unreal setting. Another example of an ‘unassailable visual oversight’ occurs in the title of a later work, Pip, or the Little Rose-Coloured Monkey (1885).10 Pip is the rose-coloured monkey; Collodi uses the word ‘and’ as well as ‘the’ in order to trick the reader into an imaginary splitting of the character; interestingly this split is between the character Pip and, specifically, his highly visual nature as a rose-coloured monkey. In fact the fire or fireplace is a recurring motif for Collodi. For example, in Pip, or the Little Rose-Coloured Monkey, the central character Pip befriends a dog called Soot. We are told he is called ‘Soot’ because his nose is the colour of soot from a fireplace.11 In the previous Chapter Pip plays a wicked game with a horrid old crocodile and as a result loses his beautiful, prized tail. Pip later

114 • Stephen Wilson describes the crocodile as a beast who would even ‘swallow-fire’,12 and further on in the story Pip throws his clothes into a fireplace in order to escape human conformity and its societal expectations. As noted previously this is also the case in Chapter 6 of The Adventures of Pinocchio in which, early on in the story, Pinocchio falls asleep by the fi re, and his feet are burnt to ashes in a ‘real’ brazier full of embers. Again we encounter in Chapter 10 the character Master Fire-Eater, a monstrously sized man who is wonderfully sympathetic when he sneezes.13 His eyes are described as ‘two lanterns with the flame burning behind red glass’.14 Pinocchio interrupts Master Fire-Eater’s play, a performance delivered by puppets, and it is because Pinocchio’s presence is celebrated and he is made famous by the other puppets that the play is momentarily forgotten. Harlequin recognizes Pinocchio in the audience.15 The ensuing mayhem that this causes to the progress of the play means that Pinocchio must pay a debt to Master Fire-Eater, the puppeteer. He calls upon Harlequin and Punchinello to fetch Pinocchio, who is by now hanging from a hook on the wall (which may hint at Pinocchio’s fate in Chapter 15). He explains that, as Pinocchio is made of dry firewood, he should make a nice bright flame for the ram roast. Thankfully, Pinocchio’s pleadings save both himself and Harlequin, who was next in line for roasting, but the motif of fire is ever present. Again, in Chapter 28, when swimming away after having saved Mercury the police dog (also sometimes translated and referred to as Tunny) from drowning, Pinocchio spots smoke emerging from a cave: ‘“In that cave”, he said to himself, “there must be a fire.”’16 Pinocchio is captured in a fishingnet and the fisherman has plans to fry him in oil. Fortunately, in Chapter 29 he is saved once again, this time by Mercury the dog, who sniffs the wafts of smoked fish from outside the cave. Thus Pinocchio’s status as a wooden being and the precariousness of his existence in this form is reiterated throughout the story. Fire can be very sociable but is also very dangerous and, as Gaston Bachelard states, ‘perhaps it has not been sufficiently noted that fire is more a social reality than a natural reality’.17 Collodi, beginning with the image of fire, introduces us straightaway to the duality and ambiguity of the entire story. Fire, as Bachelard elaborates, is an essentially dualistic image representing both destruction and danger, even apocalypse, whilst at the same time representing protection and attraction. Collodi knows well the dangers of this ambiguity to children. It is in his functional use of a ‘fire’ that Collodi generally arranges a ‘fire/place’ as a site designated for cooking, burning, smoking and sleeping. Collodi’s use of a fireplace holds an added incentive; it consumes our looking and allows us to ponder on the implications of playing with fire and also the lessons one can learn from this. ‘In point of fact, respect for fi re is a respect that has been taught; it is not a natural respect. The reflex which makes us pull back our finger from the flame of a candle does not play any conscious role in our knowledge about fire.’18

Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace • 115 Collodi presents the reader with a succession of fireplaces through which the archetypal image is mediated. The image of the fireplace is used both to tempt and to betray the reader. Whenever fire comes up in the story it is also a moment when themes collide or where there is ontological confl ict; the natural meets the unnatural; animate meets inanimate. The metaphorical use of a fireplace thus consistently reinforces and reiterates the fact that Pinocchio is not a human boy but a wooden puppet. Given the fact that Collodi describes a painted fireplace, and through his connection to the Macchiaioli painters (prompted by my own concerns as a painter), it is tempting to raise the question of what it might mean if Collodi had been a painter instead of a writer. Would it have changed anything in his writing? Is it possible that the story of Pinocchio could have been told differently? Would Collodi’s linguistic range be challenged by the need, for example, to choose the colours of the fire? If Collodi was a painter, how might he have painted the details of Geppetto’s illusory fireplace? How does his use of language bear upon the visual phenomena of the fireplace? Would it have been possible to paint this image and not allow the details to slip into redundancy or, worse still, to literalize, particularize and thus trivialize the image? And how might one paint a painted image? As Lawson Lucas states, ‘Geppetto/Joe has his own bit of painted scenery; [ . . . ] he has the comforting illusion of a bright blaze painted on the wall (perhaps a nod by Collodi at the complexities of reality and artifice, fact and fiction).’19 To imagine this fireplace actually painted is to begin to see the slippages between conventional painting tropes: painting from life, representational painting—such terms become problematic or even redundant in the face of such an image. The painted fireplace is both a key image and a setting for the tale, not because the painting is capable of deceiving anyone, least of all Geppetto (perhaps the painter) or Pinocchio, who at this stage is still a puppet and for whom fire cannot warm but only burn. The painting succeeds as a motif in its very failure to convince; indeed, in its simple failure as a fireplace, thus creating the ontological uncertainty as to the reality of the fiction from the outset. In contrast to an illustrator, who depicts an existing scenario or idea, the painter, painting from the imagination, deals with absence, and the failure to transparently ‘represent’ something can make this absence into a forceful presence. A writer must relay events in order to present a total mass or story, rather than simply a conglomeration of unrelated occurrences. Writers speak of the arc of a story—its beginning, middle and end. Yet the details of the narrative arc are obedient only to the writer, and the writing process itself may not be linear, even if its fi nal form is a linear structure. (The presence of footnotes in certain types of writing also destabilizes the linear narrative of the written form.) With The Adventures of Pinocchio, the overall narrative arc was determined in a practical sense by the demands of Collodi’s publisher. Nevertheless I would argue that Collodi remained acutely aware of the effect that this demand would have on the overall feel of the novel and

116 • Stephen Wilson that he chose to ‘absorb’ this pragmatic demand as a conceptual device. As Ann Lawson Lucas notes: Less obviously, the very form of Pinocchio is theatrical, demonstrated in the episodic construction of the novel in strictly separated scenes, and in the use of much vivacious dialogue, which often has the flavour of quickfire stage repartee, matching the style of the quick-witted improvisation of the Commedia dell’Arte.20 It is not difficult to understand how non-figurative or ‘abstract’ thought, which almost eludes grounded representation, might precede the inception of a painting. Yet this may also be the case for the writer who, previous to the actual work of writing may form a loose and barely representable ‘mental image’ of his or her tale, which is just as likely to be visual as linguistic, if it can be described at all, and which originates in the writer’s mind long before it is ever manifest in type. This prefigural image of the ‘story’ may be quite different from the final text but may nevertheless remain in the memory of the writer. For both the painter and writer this intuited internal ‘image’ cannot ever be fully replicated; in attempting to capture the image, at least in a fragmented form, a narrative structure emerges for the writer. This is perhaps particularly clear in the episodic structure of Collodi’s tale since each segment stands alone, thus giving the impression of a series of tableaux as well as the ‘spaces’ between them; such episodic stories also reveal the process of transformation from idea to final work more clearly, since the process of their construction is laid bare. Furthermore, both in the image of the fireplace and the story’s image of the transformation of a log into a boy, Collodi seems almost to have written into his story this very gap between the ‘idea’ or mental image and the final, completed tale. The Adventures of Pinocchio, I would argue, is in fact a story about the creative process. In the same way, a painter might move between a series of unwanted or ‘incorrect’ images in his or her commitment to what cannot be found or represented, so what is actually seen in the pictures, perceived almost as peripheral by the painter, may not be as important as what cannot be seen and which forms the heart of the process. The narrative arc here might then be considered as the relationship between the patch of paint and the whole of the picture, in other words, the relationship between the process of painting and the images that emerge as products of this process. This is a way of understanding painting that subverts the notion of the integrity of the individual work so central to traditional aesthetics, especially where we consider the ‘real work’ to lie in the gaps between the actual works produced, an approach that is central to my own painting practice. In closely looking at the developing theoretical and conceptual concerns of the Macchiaioli painters, one can see how the relationship between the patch and the whole is often stretched to the limit. In this fragmented limit, it is as if the world is about to fall apart, as in

Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace • 117 the tension between unity and disparity, centre and periphery. Furthermore, this is not only an issue for painting; in these tensions, as we shall see, we fi nd an exact reflection of the political situation of the time. Stephen Wilson is interviewed by Susan Lawson on his research concerning Pinocchio and visual culture (November 12, 2006, The British School at Rome). Susan Lawson (SL): You seem to be saying that in Collodi’s story Pinocchio exists as much in the gaps between the Chapters as he does within the actual Chapters. What you have made really clear is that even though the publisher had a particular pragmatic agenda, Collodi was well aware of what that would do to the actual story. I wondered if you could talk about the gaps between your paintings, specifically where you have two pictures together, and also the gaps between each work. Stephen Wilson (SW): In that respect I think it’s very simple. I chose to think about Pinocchio in terms of a fascination, literally, for visual culture in general, but also as a historical artefact. And the way I felt about it was that there is always a disjointed role made for the central character, where it’s never made clear how there is going to be a certainty in terms of Pinocchio’s identity. It’s always the case that the character is submerged in ambiguity and uncertainty. So how I approached that in my studio was that I didn’t feel one painting was ever going to really determine that fascination, but by putting two together I’d allow two events to merge and talk about an element or an event in a Chapter while simultaneously following onto the next journey that occurs, onto the next Chapter. I allowed myself an openended process in order to discover hidden layers within each Chapter, in order to look at the more complex themes that go on throughout the episodic nature of the story. SL: So you consciously were aware of replicating Collodi’s structure, these individual Chapters that don’t work in a traditional narrative way? SW: Initially I probably was. I was probably trying to make straightforward connections, so I’d break it down into certain themes. For example, I would develop on the donkey scenario and make it a consistent theme by returning to it in other works. But then, as I got more involved with the metaphorical and anthropomorphic states that Pinocchio occupies, it became clear that it was going to be very hard for me to work as an artist without falling into the trap of producing illustrations, or the possibility that these paintings added anecdotally to the story or illustrated it. So Collodi’s structure serves as a parallel to what I’ve done in my practice, and how I have tried to manifest the figure of Pinocchio as essentially precarious and problematic. The spaces

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in between allow the non-visual to enter your mind, and I think that it is very important that Pinocchio comes out of an idea of myth, that he plays to an idea of fairy tales and that he talks about oral folk telling as well; so that you really feel this breathing of an inanimate life coming to a visual reality. However, it’s never disclosed exactly what form or shape that’s going to take, and that’s why I feel it’s a perfect tool to talk about visual language and to talk about the associative powers and capabilities that something like The Adventures of Pinocchio can allow you to explore. So if I were to disclose exactly in a complete form what those gaps represent I don’t think I would understand what I’m doing in my own gaps, just as a person and as an artist. I feel there is something that needs to be left essentially to the imagination and that’s something I feel Collodi understood, whether he put that down as a hidden message or as a particular stage of un-clarity. An ambiguity? Yes, it was very important that Pinocchio remained an ambiguous entity that could intervene with a pedagogical undertone, or a political undertone, or something loaded with anxiety, which is the bit that I always felt comes through. Without calling your works representations of Pinocchio, can I ask if there is some form of representation of Pinocchio in your work, where does it lie? I think that the only way I can talk about any clear representation within the work is in its body. It’s a total body of work, as in a totality, and its coming together not only indicates my own interpretation but also follows the themes that run through the story. And I think that’s a very good place to bring in an aspect of the Macchiaioli and how they considered patches as a type of compositional coming apart. Yes. How there’s a process of fragmentation that, and I think I wrote this, is only housed together by the effects of an imaginary participation. The Adventures of Pinocchio relies on this imaginary participation. In the same way, if you’ve got a painting on the wall the viewer is drawn into an imaginary realm just as much as they are distanced from one. And that dilemma plays a huge role in pushing me forward, in why I keep making the next painting. Presumably part of the appeal of Pinocchio to you is the way that it is constantly unresolved, that to try and pin down this stuff and to pin down the painting goes against the gist of your project. Very much so, and I think the project is, in a way, very much centred on a process that talks about the fragment, that talks

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about a compositional coming apart, not only of the narrative but also of how a painting is composed. Could you talk more about this idea of compositional coming apart in relation to a specific work of yours? Yes I can. If we take, for example, a donkey painting, I titled it Show Donkey (see Figure 6.2). I’m thinking about the point where a little man, like a puppeteer, is trying to entice Pinocchio to go to Toyland, and I’m also thinking about this puppet sort of ‘surfacely’ drawn at the right-hand side of the canvas while the show donkey is this vivid seducer, who is not really visually clear, because he is shrouded in Pinocchio’s conscience telling him not to go. It’s kind of homogenized, and shows the fact neither of them is clear and yet that is their compositional coming apart. It’s a feeling of the totality of being taken over by a fragment, the fragment here being Pinocchio’s conscience telling him not to join this wagon of children. Why do you perceive that as a fragment? Because that’s how I painted it basically, and it’s very much to do with a state that’s unclear. It’s twofold, it’s always twofold. There are always two meanings to every action the character makes. Yes, that’s fascinating . . . And I try to show that in the transparent layers of paint, where it’s built up in a way. They are patches that form ‘over’

Figure 6.2 Show Donkey—© Stephen Wilson (2003). Courtesy of the artist.

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a composition. And by doing that makes a kind of narrative collage that seeks a coherence, not only in my interpretation of the event but also in the painting. It represents a very particular coherence. It returns to a particular fragment or a particular patch in detail. You talk about coherence but actually what’s interesting about it is that it doesn’t fully cohere. Visually, I think it’s completely coherent. Yet, at the same time it retains the individual . . . because you were talking about the relationship to the Macchiaioli and of patches. Presumably the point about the Macchiaioli is that, on the one hand, it does cohere as a totality but, at the same time, they don’t subsume the individual patches into that, and so what you’re saying is that it does cohere but at the same time the fragments are still clear? Absolutely, yes. It’s the unity of disparity whereby a unity comes together by the power of a fragment over the composition. And that’s also, in a way, how you describe Collodi’s text as having been written. Yes. I think that’s very much how Collodi wrote it. I think it’s really important to Chapter 15. He only introduced the Blue Fairy, the little girl with blue hair, as a fictional and magical solution, not only to his publishing problems, in that he was forced to write more, but because it allowed an intervention in terms of the representation of the protagonist. Pinocchio was literally brought back to life having been hung on the oak tree. He patches over the narrative discontinuity and forms a new kind of composition, a new totality. When you started doing this work based on Pinocchio, was it Pinocchio the book, the story, that you were interested in, or Pinocchio the character, or are they inseparable? If you want to talk about Pinocchio in terms of identity and agendas to do with visual identity versus literary identity, I think what intrigued me was the wide range of approaches that have been taken by artists and writers, and the different renditions, essentially over 125 years, that run all the way through modernism, and that allow for this product, Pinocchio: and all of its issues that are tied to different cultural agendas, whether they be educational or to do with reform. You mean people use Pinocchio as a motif to talk about their own agendas? Very much so. Whether the artist does it or whether the writer changes the script in some way. It’s a great vehicle, just as the character is. I think it’s right there in the title The Adventures . . . , the adventures are able to continue. It’s essentially universal for that reason, and therefore, although it stemmed from Italy,

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it’s become a much more interesting cultural artefact, as representative of changes in childhood development, and also in its associations to secularism. And I think the Macchiaioli played a big role in that. They were very keen to have a secular identity compared to the religious undertones of their mentors. Collodi was very much a part of this thinking, which also stood to reinforce the evolving mentalities towards a post-Unification Italy. Okay, so here’s a point. You seem to say two things at the same time which are that, on the one hand, it was very specific to Collodi’s politics and Collodi’s cultural context, but then you also talk about this trans-historical Pinocchio and how the motif of Pinocchio—I don’t know if that’s the right word—is used by different people. So is there any political or contextual element to your use, if ‘use’ is the right word, of Pinocchio? I would say . . . In the same way that Disney had a certain . . . I’m not saying do you have an agenda? But . . . Yes, that’s a very good question . . . the context of my use of Pinocchio is my practice and research as a contemporary artist, and how it serves as a vehicle to talk about strategies in visual and literary culture. Where authors deal with personal politics as opposed to public politics, not dissimilar to the anxiety instilled in Collodi’s protagonist. I really feel strongly about seeing this research as a vehicle to instruction, as a way of talking about change, talking about properties of myth and transformation and how . . . Psychological change you mean? No. Change literally in the examples of Pinocchio, in the states of Pinocchio, in terms of what we’ve discussed and how that plays a role for the artist. How it challenges conventions and more conformist approaches towards practice. This is something that I fi nd quite curious. Have I got this wrong, or do you suggest that part of the enduring fascination of Pinocchio is in the fact that it was not the visual representation in the fi rst place, that he’d produced a character through writing that you couldn’t have produced visually? So, if he’s ‘unrepresentable’ visually, is that precisely the reason why he keeps recurring in visual forms? Because people can’t pin him down ever, that no image of Pinocchio could ever pin him down similar to the image of a fi replace. And, I suppose, related to your practice, why did you want to represent in some form something that you say can’t be represented? Well it’s not that it can’t be represented, but that it can’t be represented to complete the success of the text. It’s just like how Perella says: ‘in an absolute or ideal sense Pinocchio has been betrayed by any attempt at a figurative representation.’21

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I think that is such a powerful comment about how we consider the protagonist visually. This is why I asked because . . . do you see your work as a betrayal of Pinocchio? No. But inasmuch as it talks about Pinocchio it also has access to other things which are part of my biography, and part of other themes and subjects outside of it. I mean it can’t only be about Pinocchio. But I don’t feel it’s a betrayal because I’m exposing his ‘unrepresentability’. I feel it falls into a category that questions the idea that a piece of work is ever complete. I’m more interested when things fall closer towards failure or to a problem of composition or to a conceptual problem that doesn’t stick, but somehow keeps reiterating a very clear message or challenge. Okay. In terms of when you’re actually working, if the aim is never to resolve something, how do you end up with a fi nished work that may not be fi nished in the sense that people understand it, how do you know when you’ve reached the point of resolution if your aim is to not resolve the painting? Well no, I think you misunderstood me. I understand when the painting is resolved, but how that’s contextualized in a public sense marks another stage in the process of making a piece of art. Right. And I’m very aware how that disclosure plays a central role in exposing my research on Pinocchio, as one that doesn’t just leave people thinking it’s an anecdotal interpretation of a story about children’s literature. Okay, the word ‘representation’—which is really important to your written work as well, particularly when you’re talking about that picture of Collodi’s fi replace. We talked earlier about this. Would you say that these paintings were representations or not? And, if they are, what would you say they were representations of? I think they talk about the status of ‘representation’ as something that can be ontologically questioned. Yes, that makes a curious sense . . . Yes, and my approach to the idea of the inanimate—where life stems from the inanimate—is like the relationship between the image and the cadaver in Maurice Blanchot’s essay: Two Versions of the Imaginary. I was thinking about that text in relation to the fireplace, and how the fireplace adds all kinds of warnings and associations that occur in a phenomenological participation of looking. Really, that Chapter cornered so many ideas about practice, for example when you’re in the studio looking and you’re hoping that you’re going to actively participate, hoping that, at some point, you’re really going to transform the looking. Those are all states of representation that you’re aware

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of, and it’s how you intervene and how you cross-check and re-examine, and in a way how you come to a point of satisfaction. But what always stays in my mind is exactly what I think Glauco Cambon said about Pinocchio, which is that Pinocchio consistently refuses constructive revision. And I feel there’s an element of that statement, in terms of representation, that really makes sense. It gives a feeling of antirepresentation. Or antidisclosure. I don’t necessarily like that, but that’s the tension I’m fighting with, that’s what I’m trying to solve. So the paintings are actually, in part, about the impossibility of full representation? No. That’s why I put two events or episodes together, as in two canvases hung and spaced side by side. I try and lay the questions out. I try and put the two points together so I’ve got a portrait, I’ve got a larger canvas dealing with a sense of geography, whether it’s internal or external. I’m sort of saying to my audience and to myself: ‘here are the problems’ or ‘here are the solutions’, but it’s just that I don’t want to state that that’s how it’s going to be. I want to keep it as open-ended as possible, like the way I enjoyed reading Pinocchio in the first place. Another way to think about this is how a period in my research is held together by a painting titled Pre-Modern Pinocchio (see Figure 6.3), as a precursor to work that deals with Pinocchio before Walt Disney had made his seminal film. What’s so important

Pre-Modern Pinocchio—© Stephen Wilson (2003). Courtesy of the

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about that painting is that it looks at Pinocchio in terms of submergence or being placed, in a kind of aquatic underworld where you get enveloped in a kind of murkiness that talks about the lack of clarity in the situation, that renders the speculative as essential to depiction. A few of the paintings deal with that. An aquatic sense of nomadic displacement is oddly internalized, journeying more towards the fictional as opposed to the real, and this is how the transference occurs, in the merging. Another one deals with it in terms of patches. I’m thinking about the Macchiaioli patch very strongly in relation to this feeling of submergence, but in the Macchiaioli’s case it’s completely about the Risorgimento. But the two go hand in hand, and Collodi was extremely invested in that. In relation to the idea of submergence, could you talk about that? Yes. Collodi was submerged in his journalism and his political views. His passion was almost fuelled by trying to write about it without being caught by the censors. And it turned out to be a post-Unification book; I mean he wrote it a lot later. There’s a kind of postnostalgia, on the one hand, which is very well considered in Adriano Cecioni’s watercolour entitled Caffè Michelangiolo (Michelangiolo Café) where you’re looking at a feeling of camaraderie that was going on in the avant-garde times of writers and painters, which I’ve written about, and how it formed a real sense of creativity and buzz. And then when Pinocchio comes forward it’s about disjointed memories and a sense of a disjointed future, even though they were supposed to be a unified culture and a unified nation. You really feel that Pinocchio occupies a lot of the problems, the political and regional problems, which turn out to be much harder for the Macchiaioli to convey in their paintings. I think Pinocchio is a much more successful document of the emotional and the political turmoil that they all endured. This submergence. When you talk about submergence in relation to Collodi it’s quite a positive submergence but the submergence in this painting (Pre-Modern Pinocchio)—there’s something quite oppressive, or . . . ? I think it’s more ponderous. The submergence is different for me, and I’m not looking at it in terms of my own subjectivity, that’s not why I painted it. I’m looking at it as a period before Disney had started making the film, and at that point Pinocchio wasn’t that successful, it was still at the bottom of the pile. It’s only later that it really gets its celebration as animation. So I feel it’s apt for that time. It has that in-between state—‘where is the identity of Pinocchio going?’—in terms of the history of the character evolving in illustration and production.

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Did you fi nd it hard to visualize Pinocchio without seeing Disney? How easy was it to get rid of Disney from your head? I’ve never liked the visual depiction of Disney’s Pinocchio. He borrowed it from Yasha Frank’s production anyway. Many people have adopted what Disney has done, with enlarged heads. You only have to think of The Simpsons, that’s the perfect example. But there were pictures in the book originally, weren’t there? Pinocchio was illustrated prior to Disney, wasn’t he? Yes, the fi rst images that Collodi himself acknowledged for the fi rst edition, outside of the works by Ugo Fleres, were Enrico Mazzanti’s drawings. They give a distinct humility and fragility to Pinocchio. You can almost feel the distinction between wood and bone in the way that he has drawn them, which is why I think his illustrations are so often chosen and reproduced. They really bring a tension into the materiality of the puppet. Another fascinating construction of the Pinocchio figure is a recent body of drawings by the British artist James Pyman who presents Pinocchio firmly in the tradition of the graphic comic. He wonderfully appropriates evolving histories of the story by surrounding and checking the fictions of the illustrator and their illustrations. A curious example arises in a reference to Dennis Worden’s Stickboy, or how some of the drawings refer to Marvel comics . . . Pyman imposes autobiographies that somehow inform a type of colluding into Pinocchio’s being. In many ways this is similar to how I think about the question of Pinocchio’s status and the status of representation. In my painting practice, this might be how the figure in Pre-Modern Pinocchio suggests a kind of apparition of bones alongside the protruding internal gaze . . . for me this resembles the endless substance of a jellyfish. The materiality of this figure floats and is floppy in this heavy water. It is submerged like an artefact of temporal material significance. These limbs suggest a soft and gentle marrow existing at the bottom of the ocean. I wasn’t planning at all to make or paint Pinocchio. That’s just what happened. Was that the fi rst? That’s probably the only one. I wasn’t comfortable saying ‘it’s just Pinocchio’. It had to be from that period of my research into Pre-Modern Pinocchio. One thing that we haven’t really talked about, I don’t know how it works in the paintings, but you talk about it when you are talking about the book, is the whole thing about pedagogy. Does that play any part in the practice? It plays a part in how I conduct my practice, in terms of my sense of professionalism and respect towards what I’m

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researching: how I would talk about it and how I feel it’s my duty as an artist to be serious about what I’m doing. That’s one level of it and it’s also, I think, instrumental in how I put together different themes that have an underlying parallel to a piece of literature that talks about instruction, about social forms of instruction. It’s a little obvious to say that Lampwick is going to talk about pedagogy, but on the other hand . . . In what way can a painting talk about it? I think it talks about it in terms of how a gaze looks at you with a real question mark, about what journey one is taking or what one is thinking about doing. I think that it’s a reflective state of considering, taking consideration really seriously. But I wouldn’t say that’s a strong enough reason to say I’m strictly talking about pedagogy. It means teaching? Yes. Being pedagogic means teaching or revealing a message with purpose, and it’s different to, let’s say, being educational, which happens in teaching. Collodi’s role in the story was to introduce a new kind of social pedagogy that allowed him to talk about child and adult development in a way that didn’t conform to orthodox methods, he asks questions about conformity. Right, and what’s the relation between that and the gaze? The relationship is that in the same way that you’re not quite sure what Collodi is spelling out, the gaze is asking for a consideration of your actions, and their consequence, and it’s fi xing . . . You mean in the sense of being aware that you’re being looked at? No, it’s just in the sense of warning. I mean for example in the portrait that is untitled . . . (see Figure 6.4). Of the woman, the girl? Yes. I feel it’s a gaze that steps outside the warning of the face. That’s the pedagogy of the painting. The red in the mouth and the jaw, that gaze is just stepping further away from the face and asking something else. It’s asking you to consider something that’s perhaps a priority but hasn’t stepped up as an immediate understanding. It’s something that’s more embedded in an unconscious but slowly appearing state. Right, okay. You don’t do sketches, do you, except insofar as these pieces? I collect information in a very particular way. I’ve got a personal archive that consists of documents, illustrations and books that form a visual archive. As a collection, I see it as a form of sketching and it’s like a database I can return to. It’s also embedded within my research into art history and

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Untitled—© Stephen Wilson (2005). Courtesy of the artist.

contemporary art. It’s a combination of how the research goes and where reading and writing is a sketch form in itself. But I tend to work in blocks, so I’ll either work on writing or I’ll work in the studio. But I tend not to be able to do both at the same time. But it’s important to you not to fi x the painting previous to the actual process of painting, which you would end up doing if you did a sketch fi rst, wouldn’t you? Yeah, I mean I don’t work in that way. I feel it takes away from the intuition of looking at work and making work. The way I tend to work best is when I get to a point where in one sitting

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I’ll manage to fi nish a piece. But I might not know that at all at the time. It’s that arbitrary moving around with different materials that is sketching, for me. But I don’t hold a record of that. I just hold a memory of that process. And that’s very, very important, that’s the imagination operating, or acting out a curiosity or an interest. One last question, because we have talked about this work, I’m wondering how you came to it? And, perhaps, if you could tell me what you were doing before this series and how you got from there to here? My earlier work was much more object based and installation based and 3D orientated, and I’d had a real investment in figuration. What I’d found was I’d made a really large body of work that dealt with the figure, and it was made of fabric. So it was this hard and soft quality that initially informed my interest in Pinocchio. And I explored that in an essay. But then, as I developed further in my research, I felt that painting was more able to embody feelings of interruption and stillness, and even death. I felt that I could broach some of the more difficult themes with the ambiguity of paint than was possible with objects. You found using painting easier to talk about ideas of stillness and interruption and death, you say. Can you just say a bit more about those themes in relation to these works? Well, traditionally, the story of Pinocchio is read in terms of bringing life to an inanimate object, but it also brings up the scenario between Geppetto and Pinocchio and how they embodied the problematic relationship between the artist and his creation. And, in this sense, it deals with fundamental issues of painting, with its story and its history. For me, it’s in paintings’ episodic stillness that it’s continually stillborn. What’s crucial is that paintings’ interruption perpetuates a critical discourse. This is why, for me, painting is still very much alive and present.

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The Pinocchio story I first read is in Carlo Lorenzini, Pinocchio (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1951). The location of the window changes according to how Collodi forms his eventual narrative: see Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio/The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet, trans., intro. and notes Nicolas J. Perella (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), note 9, 477. Perella describes the window’s moving location as a ‘prop’, which the author uses to add significance to the particular situation that he

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is referring to; for example, the chick in Chapter 5 who exited through another window. Ann Lawson Lucas remarks on the ‘basement window lit by skylight under the front steps’, adding the crucial point that Geppetto’s room is centred on the imagery of poverty, ‘albeit in architectural images foreign to Italy’—Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, trans. Ann Lawson Lucas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); see her explanatory note 6, 172. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 7. Ibid. Richard Wunderlich and Thomas Morrissey, Pinocchio Goes Postmodern, Perils of a Puppet in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2002), 27. Pinocchio Goes Postmodern is a strong title for a critical book about Pinocchio. However, the subtitle, Perils of a Puppet in the United States, underlines the core ingredients of Wunderlich and Morrissey’s achievement. The idea of the ‘peril’ is the postmodern condition that eclectically intervenes for the two writers. The book aims to capitalize on the brandishing of Pinocchio for a consumer-obsessed culture in America. A vital component to understanding their collaboration is knowing the fields they both specialize in: Wunderlich is a Professor in Sociology, who reads and publishes on children’s literature; Morrissey is a Professor of English; both use the text to employ an American childhood critique. The book is excellently researched and an almost faultless contribution to the subject of Pinocchio. Both writers present an obsession for Pinocchio, however, without necessarily presenting the unconscious Pinocchio that Collodi knows exists in everyone—the magic we feel but rarely attain. Another approach to this is conveyed in the words of Helmut Dick, a German artist based in Holland whom I interviewed in January 2005 for ongoing research. Dick has hinted at this feeling when he describes his artwork as being ‘as clever as it is stupid’. While the book addresses (almost addictively) facts and dates that are justified, the critical relevance of Pinocchio is deemed a transparent project that is focused on national identity and how disillusionment is still reflected in the neuroses of American society. The secondary subjects they comment on (mainly cultural) drain the positive spirit of Pinocchio. Somehow Pinocchio is turned into a wooden plank of vacuous modernity from which the essential reasons to invest in Pinocchio are taken away. Collodi’s Pinocchio, as a primary reading experience, is fanaticized to the extent of being inconsequential and redundant. Pinocchio Goes Postmodern adds a heightened anxiety to the art of Collodi’s tale; the economy of their critique challenges the sense of a future for Pinocchio. The reader or the next generation of readers do not necessarily need to understand the subject in a postmodern setting, where the social injustices that Pinocchio is subjected to will never be resolved by a writer or an artist (even in a fictional work, it is the manner in which Pinocchio ‘goes postmodern’ that at times eradicates and challenges the very essence or ‘soul’ of the work). This

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book is a compliment to the story of Pinocchio and Collodi but introduces a highly charged and neurotic take on Pinocchio, and yet, perhaps this is the penultimate Pinocchio in the troubled western psyche that Wunderlich and Morrissey wish to address. See also Richard Wunderlich and Thomas Morrissey, “The Desecration of Pinocchio in the United States”, Horn Book Magazine 58 (2): 205–11. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 158. Pinocchio turns to Geppetto in darkness and, for the second time around, they try to escape through the mouth of the terrible Shark. Unfortunately, due to their failed first attempt, their last candle has been extinguished, and Geppetto is unable to see or swim. However, this Chapter shows Pinocchio taking full responsibility in order to impress his newfound ‘Father’. It appears to be a redemptive situation for Pinocchio, especially considering the previous experiences shared between Pinocchio and Geppetto, which have been minimal. By showing his competence, we are invited to make an improved reading of Pinocchio—as a character capable of growth and maturity. Pinocchio’s development illustrates also a tension between dependence on the good and bad influence of others and a seemingly independent sense of obedience to an inner conviction of right and wrong that implies, like the image of the Good Bad Boy (see next footnote), more than just conforming to the demands of society. The ‘Good Bad Boy’ is a common term associated with children’s literature that inculcates a typical pattern of behaviour. The ‘Good Bad Boy’ personifies a temperamental being, one that revels in brutal and transparent acts of misbehaviour that contrast with the creator’s (in this case Collodi’s) endowment or gift to the character. The ‘Good Bad Boy’ instinctively realizes that good triumphs over bad, intuitively fi nding the correct moral standing in the process. An excellent example is Osamu Tezuka’s Astroboy, a character with a higher sense of justice. Astroboy was created in Japan in 1951; a flying robot devised around the idea of an atom bomb, he is largely based on Pinocchio as a modernized dogooder. The concept is taken further in the notion of the ‘Good Good Boy’ mentioned by Nicolas J. Perella in his edition of Pinocchio in relation to Edmondo De Amicis’s Cuore, a novel written just three years after Pinocchio. Perella draws a parallel between The Adventures of Pinocchio and Cuore as two exceptional works of Italian children’s literature that deal with serious and striking, if not traumatic, events normally avoided or disregarded in reality: ‘Pinocchio has his own type of Bad Bad Boy in the figure of Lampwick; and Pinocchio himself—a scamp but not a reprobate—could be dubbed a Good Bad Boy.’—Collodi, Pinocchio (1986), 12. He further adds in a footnote that the term is borrowed from Leslie Fiedler’s 1955 essay, “An Eye to Innocence: Some Notes on the Role of the Child in Literature”. A disturbing yet fascinating counter to the concept of the ‘Good Bad Boy’ is touched on by Lois Rostow Kuz-

Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace • 131 nets, in When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis, and Development (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, c1994), who discusses a rendition of Pinocchio by Eugenio Cherubini entitled Pinocchio in Africa (1903), which presents a Pinocchio refusing to accept his transformation and depicts an unreformed puppet becoming a foolish King. The narrative is highly racist and, as commented on by Wunderlich and Morrissey, it prevents the positive social message Collodi intended, making this interpretation disturbingly inaccurate as well as an ethical challenge to Collodi’s use of transformation. Wunderlich and Morrissey correctly describe Charles Copeland’s illustrations in the fi rst English translation, published in the U.S. in 1911, as of ‘biglipped Africans [ . . . ] reminiscent of the worst of the minstrel show tradition’—Wunderlich and Morrissey, Pinocchio, 145. The illustrations here are remarkable: fi fty-nine are black and white, with four colour plates that show Pinocchio appearing as a gender-fluid protagonist. 8 Barbara Bolt, Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 3–4. 9 Ann Lawson Lucas, “Introduction”, in Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), vii–xlvi (xv–xvi). 10 See Carlo Lorenzini (aka Collodi), The Adventures of Pinocchio and Pip, or the Little Rose-Coloured Monkey, intr. David Davis, ill. Will Nickless (London and Glasgow: Collins, 1954). The original was written two years after The Adventures of Pinocchio. The story is not the same as Pinocchio although closely connected. Moreover, it is clearly a children’s story, and the protagonist Pip is unfortunately only developed for fourteen chapters. The story differs right from the beginning: Pip is born into a family of monkeys, with a mother and father, unlike Pinocchio, who is not born into a family of puppets. Collodi describes Pip as having an uniquely eyecatching appearance; he is extremely beautiful. However, Pip sees himself as a misfit because his appearance is not like the other monkeys. He is rose-coloured, with the most exquisite tail a monkey can have. Collodi describes the tail with such detail that when the crocodile bites it off it is quite shocking. His tail can never be replaced and one can only imagine how a child might be very upset by the severity of the game Pip lost; it is possible to see in Collodi hidden forms of violation. The kindness is hidden in Collodi’s soft and endearing description of Pip, assuring the reader that he apparently supports Pip, adhering to the thought ‘acts of kindness are at all costs’. Collodi violates this by chopping off Pip’s tail. Collodi’s brutal action goes further; the first action also implicates the trust of the reader—suddenly readers begin wondering what the author will do next. This makes for very exciting reading and allows Collodi to control the narrative even if he scares the younger reader. 11 Collodi again returns to the face, which he tends to use to express a masking of identity. Pinocchio’s nose extends when he lies, and Soot has a nose

132 • Stephen Wilson

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13

14 15

16 17 18

that stands out from the rest of his face in Collodi’s description—reinforcing an ambiguity over his appearance. In the original Pip story, Collodi writes: ‘“Someone [ . . . ] ate it.” “Who did?” “Araba-Babba, a horrid old crocodile, who would even swallow fire!”’ (see Lorenzini, Pip, 201). Interestingly, Ann Lawson Lucas in her rendition of The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996) has chosen to name Master Fire-Eater ‘Swallowfire’. This character is often referred to as Stromboli, The Showman or The Puppeteer in other versions. In Chapter 10, Harlequin informs Pinocchio that when Master Fire-Eater sneezes he acts with unusual leniency and generally facilitates a sympathetic outcome, as he did for Pinocchio. He only sneezes when he is moved emotionally outside of his focus—in this case, he forgets about his food while concentrating on Pinocchio’s plea. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 28. Harlequin and Punchinello are stock characters within the tradition of sixteenth-century Commedia dell’Arte theatre. When Harlequin and Punchinello see Pinocchio in the audience he is instantly embraced onto the stage. The Italian puppet theatre historically appropriated the live theatre, and in this respect Pinocchio has been mythologized by Collodi into the familiar history of puppets. Pinocchio is famous and celebrated by all the puppets on stage. Here Collodi has used the knowledge he had gained from the time he spent editing the theatrical paper Lo Scaramuccia, where he watched many performances and learned the history of Commedia dell’Arte theatre. He plays upon the genres of puppetry and the traditions of Commedia dell’Arte in order to distinguish Pinocchio from the illustrious line of characters who have gone before, suggesting a link to Stenterello, a seventeenth-century Florentine character. It is possible that Collodi is asking the reader to consider a more modern puppet without strings, hinting at the notion of mechanized animation (automata) as opposed to string puppetry (we see this aspect clearly taken up in the Steven Spielberg’s 2001 fi lm A.I. Artificial Intelligence—see Frank Sanello, Spielberg: The Man, The Movies, The Mythology (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade, 2002). This move distinguishes Pinocchio from Harlequin and Punchinello, and in doing this Collodi subverts the history of puppets and how they have been perceived in a modernizing culture. It is worth considering that Collodi was part of an elite culture that invested in him: he was asked to coordinate a linguistic reform, in education, and also to rewrite the Italian dictionary. Because of this, he may have begun to realize his significance in Italy prior to writing The Adventures of Pinocchio. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 105. Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1968), 10. Ibid.

Unpainting Collodi’s Fireplace • 133 19 Lawson Lucas, “Introduction”, xxxv. 20 Lawson Lucas, “Introduction”, xxxiii. 21 Nicolas J. Perella, “Brief Remarks on the Illustrations”, in Pinocchio (1986), 76–79 (76).

Chapter Seven Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body Luciano Folgore’s Papers at the Getty Research Institute Library Katia Pizzi Background Italian Futurism prioritized machines from the very inception of the movement. Symbolic embodiment of the modern, technological age, the machine fuelled the movement’s ambition to propose radical new theories and practices both in the artistic field and, more widely, in a social context. In his “Futurist Founding and Manifesto”, published in Le Figaro on February 20, 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) related with triumphant accents the car crash he had survived a year earlier. A reckless and inexperienced driver, Marinetti had ended up ditching his shiny new racing car in a moat at the roadside. From the muddy industrial sludge filling this rural gutter, Marinetti had re-emerged phoenix-like, burning ever more fiercely with ‘machinist’ intent and passion, virtually reborn into a cyborg, a conflation of man and machine.1 Feeding from, as well as overlapping with, avant-garde trends across Europe, Futurist machine aesthetics played a crucial part in the development of the movement, both prewar, dominated by the dynamic force lines of Boccioni’s canvases and sculptures, as well as postwar. Fortunato Depero, Enrico Prampolini, Ivo Pannaggi, Vinicio Paladini and a whole range of other artists who were in touch with machine art developments in the international arena, especially in Germany and Russia, joined Marinetti in celebrating the increasing agency of the machine, as well as the iconic prowess of the mechanic forces characterizing the modern age. Theatre and stage design, in particular, witnessed the most significant experiences, especially in the postwar period, from Depero’s Balli Plastici (1918; Plastic Ballets) to Paladini and Pannaggi’s Balletto Meccanico Futurista (1922; Futurist Mechanic Ballet) to Enrico Prampolini’s 135

136 • Katia Pizzi Teatro Magnetico (1925; Magnetic Theatre).2 Rapid industrialization in western societies, the First World War and the Bolshevik revolution acted as much as arenas as well as propellers of technology, rushing in a new range of interactive possibilities between human and mechanic. Machines could become subservient, even merged with humankind, thus furthering economic, social and national causes. Under the auspices of a ‘Society for the Protection of Machines’, devised by Fedele Azari (1895–1930) in 1927 and underwritten by Marinetti and much of the Futurist leadership, a forceful alliance was forged between man and machine, where the former undertook to protect, support and further the latter. This initiative marked a shift from a metaphorical, abstract and largely generic interest to heightened, articulated and theoretically informed machine aesthetics in the period leading up to the Second World War. Shortly, the powerful symbolism attached to flying machines contributed to ‘glamourising’ the machine, as shown, in particular, by the widely popular air shows, such as the event held at Montichiari, near Brescia.3 Futurism was shortly to rebrand itself as Aerofuturismo, adopting new stylistic genres and conventions, such as ‘aero’-poetry, ‘aero’-painting and ‘aero’-dance. Capturing the imagination of wider and ever-widening audiences, machines were definitely here to stay. Omero Vecchi (1888–1966), a committed Futurist who published his work under the dynamic pseudonym Luciano Folgore, was one of the earliest and most militant advocates of machines.4 Working as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice by day, Folgore rapidly built a reputation as translator and adapter.5 His long-lasting attention to the figure of Pinocchio and to Carlo Collodi, its creator, appears to be a recurring feature traversing his career and shaping his production from the word go. Not accidentally, the young Folgore had been sworn friends with Ettore Petrolini (1884–1936), one of the most genial and influential Italian comedians of all times. Hinging on parody, slapstick and nonsense, Petrolini’s ‘teatro di varietà’ (variety theatre) enthused the Futurists, who matched it with their theatrical ideals revolving around antipsychology and ‘physical-folly’. In turn, Petrolini collaborated with the Futurists, taking on their principles and performing a few theatrical syntheses by Marinetti, Corra and Settimelli. In 1915, Folgore scripted a show for Petrolini: Zero meno Zero, subtitled Petrolineide di Esopino (Zero Minus Zero: Little Aesop’s Petrolineid).6 Folgore cannot have ignored the striking physical resemblance between Petrolini and Pinocchio, particularly emphasized in the angular features and the prominent nose in early illustrations of Pinocchio by Carlo Chiostri and Enrico Mazzanti. This resemblance is further evidenced by the comedian’s personal experience during childhood, which was reputed to have been a repeat of the toils suffered by the puppet Pinocchio in Collodi’s novel.7 It is important to note that much of the satirical, nonsensical and grotesque talents Folgore bestows on his Pinocchio a few decades later appear to draw on the model set by the immensely popular Petrolini and his enduring macchiette (skits).

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 137 Furthermore, as mentioned above, Folgore was one of the first poets within the Futurist group to embrace machines wholeheartedly. Indeed, as Libero De Libero puts it, Folgore appears to be ‘attached to the machine as to a breast that will not stop giving’.8 In prewar Futurist vein, he understood machines primarily aesthetically, alongside popular nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury poetic renderings by Giosuè Carducci and Gabriele D’Annunzio. His early verses, collected in Fiammeggiando l’aurora (1910; Dawn is Aflame), feature archaic instruments, such as the wheel and the lever, a testimony to Folgore’s hackneyed, pre- or early-industrial leanings.9 In 1912 Folgore’s poems were included in the Antologia collection of Futurist poetry. At least three further collections are ascribable to this period: Il canto dei motori (1912; Chant of the Engines), Ponti sull’oceano (1914; Bridges on the Ocean) and Città veloce (1919; Fast City). Il canto dei motori is particularly close to Marinetti, blending the largely literary ‘machinism’ borrowed from the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio with a nationalist view of technology resonant of Mario Morasso’s 1905 paean to La nuova arma (la macchina) (The New Weapon: the Machine). Folgore’s forceful poem “Volontà” (Willpower) is an ode to coal resonant of Carducci’s ‘monster’, a shrill, steaming, smouldering-eyed and metal-hearted locomotive.10 Equally resonant of Marinetti’s work is Folgore’s enthusiastic reception of electricity in the same poem, a force equated, somewhat generically, to machine technology.11 The machine is an unbridled, disruptive and chaotic force akin to an ‘anarchic fanfare’.12 As suggested by Salaris, the themes covered in this collection are disparate, ranging from illustrations of raw energy and materials, such as coal and electricity, to verses in praise of machinery, such as implements of war, ships and flying machines, to impressions of factories and cities of the future.13 Similarly, both Ponti sull’oceano (1914) and Città veloce (1919) embrace and highlight a Futurist cult of technology. Folgore’s viewpoint has, however, shifted here. Increasingly set in industrial contexts, technology is progressively viewed as a negative and alienating force. Città veloce, in particular, abjures the original, if generic, enthusiasm for the machine, replacing it with an increasingly estranged view whereby humankind is no longer seen as master of mechanical prowess, but is rather disembodied and objectified into stiff, wooden matter, echoing again Marinetti’s early works, especially the plays Le roi Bombance (1905; The Feasting King) and Poupées électriques (1909; Electric Dolls). Folgore now sees human beings as puppets, black marionettes poised between Pinocchio, shop window mannequins and tailor dummies in the metaphysical manner.14 After a period of residence in Florence, where he both contributed to and edited the Futurist periodicals Lacerba, La Voce, L’Italia Futurista (Futurist Italy) and the French review Sic, directed by Pierre Albert-Birot, Folgore returned to Rome. Even though he officially severed his connections with the movement in 1919, Folgore never seriously abandoned Futurism. In fact, he

138 • Katia Pizzi continued writing Futurist performances and contributing to Futurist periodicals throughout the 1920s and 1930s. While his poetry took a more traditional turn, Folgore deflected his anticonformist tendencies in less orthodox forms of writing that continued mirroring his avant-garde interests, from parody to epigrams, ballet, pantomime, fable and comedy. Between 1916 and 1917 Folgore had worked in close connection with Dada and, although he abandoned the movement when Tristan Tzara rejected Marinetti’s activism in his 1918 “Manifesto”, two years later Folgore re-joined Dada under the leadership of Julius Evola and the Roman circle gathered around Cantarelli and Fiozzi’s review Bleu. Dada had, of course, been an important stepping stone in developing Folgore’s nonsensical and humorist inclinations. Furthermore, as argued by Salaris, the ‘ecumenism’ of the city of Rome continued playing a significant role in his experience.15 Under the steering of Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) and Fortunato Depero (1892–1960), Futurism in Rome had become characterized early on by an undercurrent of humour and irony. This is notable, not merely as it provided a counterpoint to the seriousness prevailing in Milan’s headquarters, but especially in its function as a school of humour, both appealing to and nurturing further Folgore’s early inclinations towards fable, parody and nonsense. In these years, Folgore’s avant-garde credentials remained robust, as further testified, amongst others, by his co-editorship of the review Avanscoperta (1916–1917; Reconnaissance), as well as his fruitful meeting with Jean Cocteau in Rome in February 1917. His innate humorous and childlike vein, however, afforded him eccentric status in Futurist circles. Folgore’s sustained collaboration with the satirical reviews Il Travaso delle idee (Decanting Ideas) and La Tribuna Illustrata (Illustrated Grandstand), taken up in 1913 and intensified in the 1920s and 1930s, when he was writing poems under the pseudonym Esopino, highlighted this eccentricity.16 In a paper entitled “Dinamica futurista” (Futurist Dynamic), given at the Futurist Congress of April 26, 1914, Folgore proposed an ‘aesthetic of surprise’ prefiguring, to some extent, Apollinaire’s own ‘aesthetic of surprise’. Inspired by Bergson’s essay Le rire (1900; Laughter), Folgore wrote the poem “Riso” (Laughter), celebrating the malleable and modern spirit of humour, a modality opposed to formalized and ritualized social practices. The paternity of the hugely popular ‘strofa maltusiana’, a ‘Malthus-inspired verse’ made up of quatrains of eight syllables whose ending is truncated for humorous purposes, is also attributed to Folgore. Drawing, in fact, from his unrivalled ability to compose verses incorporating this rhyme, the strofa became extremely popular and widely used in 1920s Italy.17 Folgore’s play Ombre + fantocci + uomini (Shadows + Puppets + Humans), published in 1920 in the journal Roma futurista (Futurist Rome) and subsequently staged in Geneva, combined the author’s loyalty to mechanical and Futurist themes with his growing emphasis on Pinocchio. In the same span of time, Folgore may well have become acquainted with L’uomo meccanico (1921; The Mechanical Man), a fi lm by André Deed featuring a remotely

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 139 controlled, giant metal robot. Most probably, given his Roman avant-garde connections, Folgore would have been familiar with the Balletto meccanico futurista by Vinicio Paladini and Ivo Pannaggi, first performed at Bragaglia’s Avignonesi theatre in Rome in 1922 in front of a large and enthusiastic, if cramped, audience.18 Both Deed’s fi lm and Pannaggi’s and Paladini’s ballet are important stepping stones in the mechanic aesthetics that was sweeping European theatre and fi lm at this time. The disarticulated, machinelike body of a marionette had further been popularized by the fi lm Pinocchio (1911) by Gant (pseudonym of Giulio Antamoro), starring Ferdinand Guillaume. This fi lm is also likely to have been familiar to Folgore and contribute to feeding his imagination. Folgore’s own play L’ora del fantoccio (The Puppet’s Hour), with music by Alfredo Casella, was originally included in the successful programme of Futurist Pantomimes devised by Enrico Prampolini for the Parisian stage in 1927, though regrettably it was never performed. From here on, mannequins, dolls, puppets and robotic creatures will loom even larger in Folgore’s production. As already mentioned, Folgore was a dynamic force behind Il Travaso in the early 1920s, together with the sharp and surreal humorist Achille Campanile (1899–1977). This collaboration paved the way for a new and successful season, steering Folgore progressively away from the Futurist orthodoxy and leading him increasingly towards comical and grotesque prose work of his own devising. Folgore’s numerous forays into the realm of parody and epigram, with antimoral intent, can also be ascribed to this new course. The popularity of his literary production at this time, together with his longstanding, sustained reflections on the genre of the grotesque, are testament to his increasing sophistication in composing humorous poetry and prose. Folgore’s original ‘aesthetic of the wondrous’, highlighting the magic in children’s imagination, as both innate and fed by fantasy literature from Poe to Rabelais and Wells, similarly combines easily with Folgore’s long-standing and growing interest in Pinocchio. Indeed, the puppet Pinocchio will literally take over Folgore’s production for the following three decades. In fact, in combining Folgore’s early mechanical leanings, recurring interest in the puppet theatre, polemical intent and anticonventional nonsense and parody, Pinocchio appears to channel together the manifold interests and inclinations of Folgore’s overall production. As first intuited by Marinetti, Folgore’s humour is dark, laden and terrifying, almost ‘congealed in a metaphysical light’.19 In other words, Folgore’s humour is frequently as dark, grotesque and caustic as Collodi’s own. Folgore will follow Collodi’s lead in contemplating ironically the harsh and punishing journey undertaken by a mechanical marionette striving to become tender flesh and blood, including the anticlimatic ending and authorial loss of interest once the puppet metamorphoses into a rosy-cheeked boy. References, reminiscences and echoes of Pinocchio resonate throughout Folgore’s publications in prose, even those ostensibly remote from it. To cite

140 • Katia Pizzi one example amongst many: Folgore’s absurdist novel La trappola colorata. Romanzo extragiallo umoristico (The Colourful Trap: A Humorous UltraThriller), originally published in Milan in 1934, not merely parodizes the popular genre of the thriller and spy story, but also carries echoes and memories of Collodi’s themes and style. Folgore’s novel is punctuated with both overt and latent references to The Adventures of Pinocchio, from the incident where a gay fireplace sets the feet and legs of the amateur detective Tip aflame, to the popular sayings and proverbs drenched in irony and humour, to the mellifluous villain Butter, conceivably modelled on Collodi’s ‘little man [ . . . ] as soft and unctuous as a pat of butter’.20 In fact, the skewed and lunatic comic genius distilled by Collodi into his wooden creature will shortly seep even more forcefully into Folgore’s radio broadcasts, colouring them with dark humour. Folgore’s Pinocchio is typically modelled on Collodi’s puppet and, through the medium of radio broadcast, frequently plunged into estranging metaphysical atmospheres and alienating settings. Folgore’s technophile stance made him naturally receptive to the development of the new media in Italy, especially radio. He rapidly became a household name from the very first days of airing. Officially inaugurated on September 23, 1924, under the acronym U.R.I. (Unione Radiofonica Italiana), Italian Radio aired Folgore’s own programme Il grammofono della verità. Un quarto d’ora di umorismo (The Gramophone of Truth: Fifteen Minutes of Humour) only one week into the official inception of programming. Folgore’s broadcast was to remain a staple of U.R.I.’s palimpsest for the following twelve years.21 Folgore was a pioneer even by Futurist standards: the “Futurist Manifesto of Radio”, signed by Marinetti and Pino Masnata (1901–1968), was first published in La Gazzetta del Popolo (People’s Gazette) on September 22, 1933, and reissued nearly ten years later under the title “The Radio” (1941), well after Folgore’s pioneering broadcast work.22 Describing radio as an ideal medium for the expression of words-in-freedom, Marinetti and Masnata’s technical reflections prefigure, to some extent, McLuhan’s analysis, concluding that radio and television are eminently superior to books, theatre and even cinema.23 By then Folgore was already a veteran, having been the first to declare that cinema and radio were more properly Futurist means when compared with the written word, and having clocked hundreds of hours of radio broadcasting for at least a decade ahead of Marinetti’s pronouncements.24 Interestingly, while engaged in radio broadcasting, Folgore also composed various essays, fables and short stories in praise of rayon, the modern and autarchic fabric later extolled by Marinetti in Il poema non umano dei tecnicismi (1940; The Non-Human Poem of Technicisms).25 Folgore’s ‘brilliantly playful rayon poems’, proposing updated myths, fables and poetry collected in Mitologia e Rayon (Mythology and Rayon) and Rayon e Poesia (Rayon and Poetry), graced the so-called ‘rayon pages’ of the periodical Corriere Padano (Padanian Courier) throughout 1934. Jeffrey Schnapp maintains that these rayon pages ‘became a standard feature in the major daily newspapers during

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 141 much of 1934.’26 The extensive employment the Regime made of the stick figure and mannequin iconography with reference to rayon, a crucial aspect noted by both Schnapp and Pinkus, is another testimony of Folgore’s innate preference for, and familiarity with, the streamlined, stick-like and mechanical figure of the puppet.27 Beginning in the mid-1940s Folgore focused on scripting and broadcasting serial radio and television programmes for children. In this period, and throughout the war years, he also toured Italy giving humorous lectures and conferences to different audiences, including the exhausted troops needing a boost to their flagging morale. However, it was only after the end of the Second World War that Folgore was able to engage fully with radio and television broadcasts. Due to his experience in this field, Folgore was one of the few Italian authors and intellectuals to be asked to contribute to developing this medium in the nearly two-decades-long experimental period leading to the official beginning of R.A.I. (Radio Audizioni Italiane) TV broadcasts in 1954. Despite his growing interest and more sustained involvement in television, however, Folgore never discontinued his popular radio broadcasts. Throughout the 1940s and beyond, Folgore devised, scripted and performed a colossal number of radio programmes for children and young adults, such as the weekly “Capitan Matamoro” (Captain Matamoro), “La barchetta magica” (The Magic Little Boat), “Radiovolante” (Flying Radio), “Il segretario dei piccoli” (The Secretary of the Little Ones), “Radiolilliput” (Lilliput Radio) and “Pinocchio”.28 Friends and critics alike attribute Folgore’s substantial production to his chronically melancholic disposition; his work includes more than twenty books (two novels and collections of poetry, short stories, epigrams and fables), seventy plays, 1000 radio and television scripts and 1000 newspaper articles.29 Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, in particular, Folgore’s activities were clustered predominantly around children’s literature, education and media. In all these fields, Pinocchio features prominently, usually taking a leading role.

Luciano Folgore’s Papers in the Special Collections at the Getty Research Institute Library Containing a lavish, diverse and illuminating testimony of Folgore’s copious production, forty-five boxes of Folgore’s papers are preserved, archived and made accessible in the Special Collections department of the Getty Research Institute Library in Los Angeles. Dating from 1905 to Folgore’s death in 1966, these archival sources provide an extensive and detailed map of the entire career of this versatile and mechanically inclined Futurist. With the exception of a limited number of volumes, the archive is comprehensive, including both handwritten and typewritten drafts.30 Folgore’s predominantly Futurist period is represented by photographs of and correspondence with fellow

142 • Katia Pizzi Futurists, as well as drafts of Futurist pantomimes, ballets and the already mentioned collections of poems Città veloce and Ponti sull’oceano. There are also numerous newspaper cuttings of Futurist soirées, exhibitions and performances. Half of this correspondence dates back to Folgore’s Futurist years. Most of the plays and manuscripts of poetry and prose, on the other hand, largely document his post-Futurist years. The bulk of this archive is made up of hundreds of draft radio scripts and television plays, a sizeable portion of material spreading across the early years of developing mass communication media in Italy.31 Folgore’s papers are catalogued in six series: series I: Correspondence; II: Manuscripts; III: Music; IV: Personal; V: Manuscripts by other authors and VI: Printed matter. Series I is made up of four boxes containing approximately 1000 items: correspondence spans the period 1910–1975. It includes items of great significance. Boxes 1 and 2 together hold approximately 300 items, most of which is correspondence by Futurist colleagues, catalogued here in alphabetical order. These include a 1914 telegram by Marinetti, recently returned from Russia, inviting Folgore and Giuseppe Sprovieri, manager of the Futurist Gallery in Rome, to meet him impromptu at Rome rail station.32 A postcard dated December 26, 1916, addressed by the Futurist stage designer Enrico Prampolini (1894–1956) to Francesco Giacobbe, highlights the role reserved to Folgore in the forthcoming literary review Noi (We), a short-lived but extremely significant journal arising from the close collaborations established by Prampolini with the wider European avant-garde in the early 1920s.33 The Cubist painter Gino Severini (1883–1966) posted several letters to his friend Folgore in the course of fortyplus years. Six years before dying, Severini’s sharp Tuscan wit attributes his longevity to the Pope or possibly to some Christian Democrat M.P. of high calibre, querying jokingly: ‘Caro Folgore, dunque sei ancora di questo nostro mondaccio, ed io pure, come vedi.’ (Dear Folgore, so you’re still in this bad old world, and me too, as you can see).34 A further lengthy, pessimistic letter written by Severini on March 21, 1922, relating the painter’s despair for his daughter’s deteriorating state of health, vibrates also with growing impatience for the Futurist avant-garde, leading to his own imminent defection.35 Severini’s later scepticism is in strident contrast with the enthusiasm he had displayed when travelling from Italy to France in October 1914, in the company of buoyant French soldiers, ‘tutti di buon umore, blaguers, come sempre, e fiduciosi nella vittoria’ (all good-humoured blaguers, as ever, and confident of victory), as well as probably echoing Folgore’s own detachment from the Futurist orthodoxy, his desire to ‘fly alone’.36 Other items of interest in this first series are from publishers and other associations. Finally, there are approximately 500 letters posted to Folgore in response to his radio broadcasts, many of which emphasize the delight of many children at the antics of Folgore’s Pinocchio. The bulk of Folgore’s archive, however, is stored in twenty-four boxes included in series II: Manuscripts. These manuscripts are arranged in chronological order as well as by genre, with crossovers between them. Classification

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 143 is further complicated by undated or untitled pieces included here, as well as items spanning across more than one genre, making it impossible, in the words of the archivist, ‘to determine whether or not a given manuscript is a theatre play or radio play, or whether a given story may be more appropriately designated as a prose piece’.37 There are also drafts of fables and allegories for children and short stories for adults, drafts of Folgore’s humorous lectures, thirteen pages of Folgore’s travelogue, a draft of “Dinamica futurista” (Futurist Dynamics) and numerous essays about Futurism and / or Futurists. Spanning the period 1928–1967, manuscripts of radio plays are almost entirely works for children. This series also includes a small number of television plays. Box 5, entitled Poetry, includes typescripts of individual poems from the collection Canto dei motori, some of which are signed and dated. It also includes Città veloce of 1919 and Poems and poetry fragments, some of which are dated 1920 and are particularly notable for their occasional but forceful forays into ‘machinism’. Poetry manuscripts include a large number of poems written specifically for children and 200 handwritten pages of poetry for Folgore’s column “Musa vagabonda” (Wandering Muse). Entitled Plays, box 8, contains a List of pantomimes, as well as the Futurist pantomime L’ora del fantoccio, ostensibly drawing inspiration from Pinocchio. Four drafts of this undated ‘Futurist pantomime’ exist, one of which is in the French language. Two are manuscripts, the remaining two are typescripts. One draft is entitled L’eterno fantoccio (The Eternal Puppet); in another version this title is replaced with its French translation L’heure du fantoche. The latter typescript, made up of two pages only, forcefully combines Folgore’s ‘machinist’ leanings with recurrent, if implicit, references to the puppet Pinocchio.38 This short pantomime highlights not merely Folgore’s serious and enduring fascination for the rigid and robotic nature of the puppet, in line with Futurist pronouncements dating back to Marinetti’s Le roi Bombance and Poupées électriques. It also repeats Pinocchio’s own quest and eventual metamorphosis from mechanical into human, as shown in Folgore’s figure of the ‘woman marionette’, as well as a transformation of ‘the man’ character in the opposite direction, from human into machine. However fragmentary, a number of loose notes, written in French and included under the French title Des ombres + des fantoches + des hommes -synthèse futuriste (Shadows + Puppets + Humans - Futurist Synthesis), corroborate my hypothesis.39 Twenty Futurist ballets and pantomimes and numerous plays and skits for children are additional manuscripts for theatre included here. Further substantial evidence of Folgore’s preference for the inanimate, mechanical puppets is provided by archival material stored in box 11 (Stories, Fables etc.). For example, the unfinished, undated and unpublished manuscript L’isola del Robot (Robot Island) sheds useful light on the widespread interest in the mechanical and robotic figure investing popular literature, drama and fi lm between the 1910s and 1920s. As this piece embodies Folgore’s

144 • Katia Pizzi incisive response to the robot culture that was rife in European cinema at the time, as further reflected, for instance, in the fi lms by Gant and Deed cited above, I would suggest dating this manuscript during this decade. This script also notably paves the way for Folgore’s radio broadcasts shortly to follow.40 The piece “On pantomime”, a three-page-long typescript written in French and archived in box 14, illustrates the experience of Prampolini’s Theatre of Futurist Pantomime at the Théâtre de la Madeleine in Paris in 1927. While highlighting the pantomime’s art of synchronizing space and time, this text offers an insight into Folgore’s own take on the machine aesthetics that was sweeping contemporary drama at the time across Europe. He argues: ‘Ce qui caractérise le XX siècle, c’est le machinisme. Notre vie est enchaînée dans la vie mecanique.’ (The twentieth century is characterized by ‘machinism’. Our life is enslaved to the mechanical life).41 Folgore’s enthusiasm for pantomime also fuels his following argument that the ‘ardent machinism’ embedded in Prampolini’s pantomimes will almost spontaneously lend itself to the art of cinema.42 However, the greater majority of Folgore’s material relating to Pinocchio fills the two large and bulky boxes 16 and 18. Folder 12 (in box 16) is entitled Pinocchio (play). This folder contains what appears to be the fragment of an undated play. Here Luzi, Pinocchio’s alter ego and ventriloquist, quizzes Vispa Teresa on the gifts she hopes to receive on the day of the Epiphany. Regrettably, the text that is extant is too short and fragmentary to attempt any critical analysis. More complete is the content of folder 13, including various drafts of the script “Il segretario dei piccoli (Pinocchio)”, a ‘radio drama for two voices’ dated 1948, featuring Pinocchio and the Blue Fairy. These drafts of a weekly radio series, aired every Wednesday afternoon, are either handwritten or typewritten, occasionally both. In the first episode, “Il segretario dei piccoli I”, dated September 15, 1948, Folgore introduces the Blue Fairy. She is posting a classified ad in a magazine, looking to hire an agony aunt able to deal with children’s correspondence, and, to this effect, ends up employing none other than Pinocchio. Pinocchio thus becomes the star of these interactive weekly broadcasts, replying to children’s letters and engaging in witty, surreal and irreverent conversation with his listeners. Folgore frequently interpolates episodes drawn from the original Pinocchio story as told by Collodi, making constant reference to an original narrative formula and set of characters that would have been very familiar to his young listeners. At the same time, however, he highlights the mechanical and self-sufficient nature of the puppet, freeing him from the conventions of the original genre and lending the puppet a nonsensical and surreal, almost Dada, flair.43 This episode’s conclusion sees the Fairy and Pinocchio watching a TV broadcast of the adventures of Captain Matamoro and his ‘faithful Kirà’ in the heart of the African jungle. Notably, the mingling of primitive and mechanical themes is no surprise: the Futurist, particularly Prampolini and Marinetti, as well as the Cubist avantgarde, especially Picasso, relied on this intensely ‘modern’, if ambiguous, conflation, as observed by Hal Foster.44

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 145 Dated September 22, 1948, “Il segretario dei piccoli II” carries on from the conclusion of n. I. Pinocchio is due to meet the Blue Fairy but is delayed due to a prior meeting with his father, the carpenter Geppetto, whom he criticizes with a pun for his insistence ‘a fare tutti i mobili a credenza’ thereby failing regularly to obtain due payment.45 As happens in the previous episode, Pinocchio plays charades and answers queries, including details of the life and works of the renowned Italian children’s author Vamba (pseud. Luigi Bertelli; 1858–1920). When in doubt, Pinocchio relies on the learned advice of a Corvo Dottore (Doctor Crow), resonant of the Crow doctor visiting Pinocchio in Chapter XVI of Collodi’s novel. Through a magical device, Pinocchio engages in a telephone conversation with the leader of the ‘Seleniti’, residents of the moon, who satisfies his curiosity to learn what happens when the moon turns into the thinnest of crescents and disappears altogether. The Selenite describes the moon as an amusement park, also redolent of Collodi’s Land of Toys.46 This reference to Collodi is strengthened shortly afterwards by a rhyming tale where Pinocchio describes his own metamorphosis, as well as the metamorphosis of his friend Candle-Wick, into tame little donkeys, as punishment for the idle and careless existence practised by the two friends in the Land of Toys. “Il segretario dei piccoli III”, dated September 29, 1948, “Segretario IV” (October 6, 1948), “Segretario V” (October 13, 1948) and “Segretario VI” (October 20, 1948) similarly descend from Collodi’s matrix, reworking it in nonsensical and Futurist fashion. In “Segretario III”, Folgore blends dream and reality: haunted by hunger, Pinocchio’s dreams of plenty are transformed into a good deed in aid of the seven malnourished children of Maestro Cherry. Together with Doctor Crow, Pinocchio tells tales, proverbs and amusing stories, elucidating didactically the origin of the nouns ‘cherry’ and ‘peach’. As is customary, this episode ends with a nursery rhyme. “Segretario IV” draws from an episode in Chapter IX of Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, where Pinocchio sells his school primer in order to pay his way into a performance of the puppet theatre. In pedagogical vein, Folgore’s Pinocchio trades his well-known primer for a ‘bellissimo libro di lettura’ (beautiful anthology of reading passages). After telling puns and jokes at the expense of his listeners, Pinocchio’s nose grows longer, prompting Doctor Crow to peck it down to its original size. A little girl would like to learn more about Swallowfire, and a magic touch of the Fairy’s wand cuts to the large and frightening man, sleeping open-mouthed while he is besieged by a snake. It is interesting to note that, similarly to “Segretario V” and “Segretario VI”, as well as scripts of subsequent broadcasts, the various elements and characters drawn from Collodi’s archetype (the nose, especially, but also the snake, donkeys, snail, puppet show, Blue Fairy, Swallowfire etc. etc.) are borrowed and reassembled by Folgore in new patterns and configurations and in keeping with the heightened irony, autonomy and articulation of body and self that are particular to Folgore’s Pinocchio. In these broadcasts Folgore empowers the puppet, charging him with the omniscience afforded to a ‘secretary of the

146 • Katia Pizzi little ones’ and entrusting ideas and initiatives to him alone, albeit tempered by the censorious and pedagogic Blue Fairy. The world Folgore conjures up is both a product of Pinocchio’s invention and an instrument of his pragmatic wit and innate joie de vivre. Folgore underplays the dark and disturbing aspects that underpin Collodi’s story and inspired Disney’s remake. Notably, Folgore’s Pinocchio does not aspire to become a little boy made of flesh and blood. Instead, he embraces entirely his mechanical nature, attributing his tolerant, unorthodox and witty disposition precisely to his mechanical, skewed and articulated body. Pinocchio is wilful and recalcitrant in the face of figures of authority, such as the Fairy, typically resisting their attempts to patronize him. Folgore never chastises his insolence, perceiving it ultimately as an essential part of the puppet’s ‘mechanical otherness’, disenfranchising him entirely from the mellifluous and backhanded promise of human metamorphosis fettering Collodi’s Pinocchio.47 “Segretario VIII”, aired on November 3, 1948, relates Pinocchio’s unexpected meeting with a circus manager. In Collodi’s text, the donkey Pinocchio, ‘The Star of the Dance’, is forced to perform feats of equine agility in front of a packed audience.48 In Folgore’s script, a self-confident and enraged Pinocchio is about to administer a sonorous kick to his cruel Ringmaster, when a familiar bray distracts him. ‘This bray is none other than the voice of Candle-Wick!’, he quips.49 His old friend Candle-Wick, here reformed, honest and hard working, is trapped inside the animal straitjacket. Ever the champion of justice, Pinocchio cannot suffer outrage that is perpetrated on his old friend and pleads so insistently with the Fairy that she ends up releasing Candle-Wick from his ‘asinine skin’ by way of her magic.50 In the same episode, Folgore includes a metanarrative device: prompted by a listener’s enquiry, Pinocchio releases a short biography of his ‘inventor’, Carlo Collodi, revealing, tongue-in-cheek, that he pays Collodi thanks repeatedly, at least twice every day, for the feat of bringing him to light. To follow, a humorous exchange with the Fairy and Doctor Crow highlights Pinocchio’s acumen and sagacity, in patent contrast with the haughty presumptuousness of his two pedantic interlocutors. That Pinocchio is blessed with introspection and psychological insight, in contrast with the Fairy’s sarcastic condescension, is highlighted also in the following episode where Pinocchio forgives the Lame Fox for robbing him of his treasured golden coins, thereby rehabilitating the whole category of foxes, while, at the same time, taking the opportunity to highlight his unforgiving aversion for ‘his barbarous and cruel [ . . . ] enemies’.51 Pinocchio’s humorous polemics, in self-defence of the Fairy’s pedantry, is confirmed in the following episode of November 17, 1948, where Pinocchio banters her censorious attitude towards his clothing; and again in episode XI of November, 24, where Pinocchio’s honesty, no-nonsense and straight-talking attitude are further highlighted.52 Following the model of Folgore’s popular ‘strofa maltusiana’, Pinocchio’s banter is sung in verse, to the tune of fashionable, popular songs of the time. Emerging most prominently

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 147 from these episodes is the Fairy’s inability to bend Pinocchio to pedagogic submission and her fondness for harsh Victorian educational principles, as reflected in Collodi’s original story. Replete with scientific knowledge, sense of justice and community, the puppet’s satire and mocking prevail throughout, highlighting his independence of mind, unbreakable physical fibre and, most importantly, resistance to, as well as undermining of, all authority.53 In this respect, Pinocchio’s irony is consistently egalitarian and anti-authoritarian, possibly carrying an echo of Folgore’s own take on Italian politics following the momentous general elections of April 18, 1948, when the stakes were high due to Italy’s unresolved position in the Cold War power split. Available in three drafts (two typescript and one manuscript) the broadcast of “Il segretario dei piccoli XIII” of December 8, 1948, begins with an Orwellian tale featuring rebellious animals. This affords Pinocchio yet another pretext to mock the pedantry of moralistic tales and Aesopian fables where animals are used to exemplify and chastise human traits and foibles. As happens in a later episode, dated December 29, Pinocchio promotes a Republic of free women and men, a community of like-minded acolytes nicknamed ‘pinocchietti’ (little pinocchios) loyal to democratic and egalitarian principles.54 Through the medium of joke and satire, this episode carries further echoes of social unrest, union activism and industrial action, especially in Pinocchio’s replies to his listeners.55 As is customary, Folgore draws from Collodi’s narrative as if it were a cabinet of props, a tucked-away but frequently visited backstage one can rely on for a nostalgic backward gaze. Most importantly, however, Folgore’s Pinocchio is also a ‘post-Pinocchio’, a figure reinvented and born of a specific political climate, reflecting on a set of progressive and alternative social themes. Food, for example, is an extremely important feature throughout these broadcasts, as much an echo of the indigent hunger traversing Collodi’s narrative as well as a powerful reminder of Folgore’s postwar rationings.56 Furthermore, by 1948 Disney’s powerfully dark interpretation of the puppet’s story would have become familiar to Folgore and his audience in Italy. Indeed, the release of this controversial, previously banned fi lm may conceivably have contributed to sparking off renewed interest in Collodi’s iconic puppet and its national overtones only one year after the inception of Folgore’s successful broadcasts. Released in the U.S. in 1940, Disney’s Pinocchio only came out in Italy in 1947, due to prior fascist prohibition of Anglo-American imports. Perceived as intrinsically American, both in the puppet’s outlook on the world, as well as in the colourful, curvy and supple graphic style of its drawings, Disney’s fi lm caused a furore in Italy, prompting the release of alternative, ‘autarchic’, and therefore more palatable, versions of Collodi’s original. Indeed, Carlo Collodi’s nephew Paolo Lorenzini is reputed to have been so outraged by Disney’s product that he pled with the fascist authorities to sue the Disney corporation for damages. The first feature fi lm designed as an Italian response was shortly to follow: Le avventure di Pinocchio, directed

148 • Katia Pizzi by Giannetto Guardone, released in 1947.57 Haunted by its Collodian matrix, Folgore’s Pinocchio partakes, to some extent at least, of this climate of cultural retrenchment and return to the roots of post-Unification national culture. Folgore’s rejection of a Pinocchio updated and redesigned by Disney’s curved line and his preference for the wooden, angular and roughly hewn marionette devised by Collodi and his earlier illustrators, further testify to the Futurist and mechanical features that are intrinsic to the original Pinocchio icon. That Folgore’s Pinocchio is a ‘post-Pinocchio’ is also substantiated, in “Segretario dei piccoli XIII”, by a covert reference to the long dictatorship recently suffered by Italy. Pinocchio’s sceptical and cheeky take on the current political situation here allude to both Mussolini’s cult of self and the persisting evils agitating postwar Italian society. Pinocchio’s stance remains firmly and consistently anti-Establishment.58 Social and political awareness are carried forward in “Il segretario dei piccoli XV”, a Christmas special aired on December 22, 1948. Gorging his imagination with traditional festive foods from the Italian regions, from Milan’s panettone to Modena’s zampone and Siena’s panforte, all imagined here as competing for supremacy, Pinocchio addresses each individual plea they make, each of them aspiring to be handed out to the underprivileged classes rather than feeding the insatiable appetites of a brutal Ogre.59 Radio listeners would have heard distinctive echoes here of Vittorio De Sica’s popular fi lm Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) released in Italy in the same year, 1948, featuring an unemployed worker struggling to make ends meet in the depressed economy of postwar Italy and driven to steal a bicycle in a desperate attempt to feed his family. Folgore’s delicate and surreal counterpoint, where earthy food matters, relates even more closely to De Sica’s subsequent film: Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan) of 1951. A Neorealist fable set in a shantytown in postwar Milan, this fi lm features a poverty-stricken, perpetually hungry underclass whose escapist fantasies typically revolve around food and the earthy pleasures it provides. Totò, protagonist of De Sica’s film, is also comparable with Folgore’s Pinocchio, both in terms of his indomitable and altruistic optimism as well as of his robotic, Chaplin-like figure. A similar egalitarianism, layered with loathing for pedantry and hierarchies, is visibly carried forward in several episodes aired in the following year, opening with “Segretario dei piccoli XVII” of January 5, 1949, available at the Getty Research Library Institute’s Special Collections in both manuscript and typescript version. A ponderous, bulging box (numbered 18) contains a substantial amount of material relating exclusively to Pinocchio. Holdings include “Il segreto di Pinocchio” (Pinocchio’s Secret) of 1952, Folgore’s serial radio adaptation of Il segreto di Pinocchio. Viaggio ignorato del celebre burattino del Collodi (Pinocchio’s Secret. Unknown Journey of the Famous Puppet by Collodi) by Gemma Rembadi Mongiardini (1856–1916), a novel first published in Florence in 1894 and a remake itself of Collodi’s Adventures. Disguising his identity under the favourite pseudonym Esopino, Folgore relates Pinocchio’s search for his father

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 149 Geppetto, reported missing at sea, and the aid offered by two dolphins: Tursio and Marsovino. Folgore continually cross-references Rembadi Mongiardini’s Pinocchio with his own, underlining the puppet’s pragmatism, common sense, humour, dexterity and singing popular, irreverent tunes, as featured in an episode aired on Novembre 17, 1952.60 Rembadi Mongiardini’s plot is neatly laid out over two further episodes aired on December 1 and 5, 1952, featuring Pinocchio’s sacrifice of his legendary nose in the attempt to save Marsovino from the treacherous attack of the evil beast Narvalo. Out of gratitude, Marsovino replaces it with a prosthetic, made out of a spiral seashell, glued in place and varnished by friendly Tursio. Even though the prosthetic nose looks authentic enough, Pinocchio pleads with his friends to keep this change a ‘secret’, hence the title. In Futurist, ‘machinist’ fashion, Folgore centres his interest here on Pinocchio’s artificial and robotic nose. Pinocchio is similarly over-represented in Folgore’s production in the following year, 1953. The first episode of “Il giornalino di Pinocchio” (Pinocchio’s Little Journal) of July 1, 1953, also available in both manuscript and typescript form, opens with a veritable fi xation with Pinocchio’s nose that will be carried forward not merely across the whole series, but also in all of Folgore’s subsequent Pinocchio work. Attention to the robotic nose comes even before the opening statement, where, in the words of the Blue Fairy, Folgore illustrates the rationale of this new broadcast, a sequel to “Il segretario dei piccoli” populated with nonsensical rhymes, fairy tales and favourite characters, such as the Blue Fairy and Vispa Teresa, alongside Pinocchio.61 Designed to entertain children during the long summer school holidays, this series is made up of humorous or fairy tales. Pinocchio is entirely modelled on its predecessor in “Il segretario dei piccoli”: an angular, bright, cheeky and anti-authoritarian puppet, frequently mocked by Teresa, drawn from the Vispa Teresa of the popular Italian nursery rhyme, appearing in Folgore’s work for the first time. Teresa’s mockery is typically centred on Pinocchio’s conspicuous nose, to the point that her mode of addressing him becomes: ‘nasone’ (big nose), a nickname quickly adopted by other characters (e.g., the Fairy) when conveying disapproval for Pinocchio’s irreverent antics.62 Indeed, this whole series is predicated upon Pinocchio’s nose: its size, bulk, lack of attractiveness and erratic behaviour are constantly remarked upon. By the last episode, dated September 30, 1953, Pinocchio appears to have interiorized thoroughly this peculiar trait, and to have reconfigured his identity accordingly. When answering phone calls, for instance, Pinocchio determinedly uses his pseudonym Nasone.63 Little by little Folgore strips the original Pinocchio bare of traits, adventures and fellow characters. The only extant feature is Pinocchio’s conspicuous and flexible nose: the most obvious short cut to his artificial and robotic identity. With the sole exception of the short draft “Sketch per Riccardo Vitali” (Skit for Riccardo Vitali) dated June 28, 1953, Pinocchio’s mechanical nose will loom large in all of Folgore’s production from now on.

150 • Katia Pizzi “Pinocchio I” (1954) opens with Pinocchio’s loud protestations and pleadings to a Sultan to protect his nose.64 “Le storie di Pinocchio II Estate 1954” (Stories of Pinocchio II Summer 1954) open with Pinocchio and Cirimbella’s successful attempt to flee from prison in the usurped palace of giant Giafar. Waging war against the giant, the two enlist a platoon of 600 pinocchietti or miniature clones of Pinocchio, all sporting bulky, pointy noses. Inciting them with pride for their nasal weapon, Pinocchio calls them to battle, and this battery of noses responds to his call, singing in praise of their noses to the familiar tune of a popular military march.65 The nose army is predictably victorious and Giafar forcibly exiled. Pinocchio, however, cannot suffer the competition of ‘mille burattini a piedi e a cavallo’ (a thousand puppets by foot and on horseback) and, on the cry of ‘I want to be the only big nosed puppet in the whole world’, rattles his drum and makes them evaporate into thin air.66 The final chorus draws attention again to Pinocchio’s artificial nose, marker of Pinocchio’s mechanical nature and identity.67 That Folgore treats Pinocchio’s nose as a defi ning feature of his mechanical identity is further testified to in the following episode “III. Pinocchio. Estate 1954”. Interviewed on the subject of his nose, Pinocchio improvises an elaborate reply in verse describing his nose as headless ‘fuselage’, ‘rolling round better than a wool-winder’ and an ‘audacious’, glowing apparatus ‘going up, going down, protruding / shining bright / free and easy in the sun’.68 This episode appropriately ends with a parody of Little Red Riding Hood, a tale adapted to the puppet theatre by fellow Futurist Enrico Prampolini in 1914.69 Having surreptitiously replaced the red-clad little girl, Pinocchio’s angular features are far too protruding and visible even for the wild wolf of fairy-tale memory. The wolf is finally beaten when Pinocchio starts brandishing his long nose as a weapon, a long and sword-like mechanic instrument threatening to traverse the wild creature ‘side to side’.70 The mechanical theme is carried forward in the following episode, the final one, where Pinocchio is seen giving up the antiquated mode of travelling on the back of a pigeon in favour of an up-todate road journey by motor car. When compared with Marinetti’s racing car, famously crashed in 1908 as related in the “Futurist Founding and Manifesto”, this symbol of modernity prompts Folgore to end this episode with a rebirth resonant of Marinetti’s own utopian transcendence and metamorphosis of the human into the mechanical body of a beautiful car.71 The broadcasts discussed above are integrated with further Pinocchio material. This includes both a typescript and an extremely neat manuscript, a final draft barely touched by afterthoughts, entitled “Pinocchio cosa hai fatto? (RAI, 50s)” (What Have you Done Pinocchio? (RAI, 1950s), described in the frontispiece as ‘a comedy in three Acts and twelve Pictures by Luciano Folgore’. This ‘comedy’ follows Collodi to the letter, including the unsatisfying transformation of the puppet into a good boy. The ‘big nose’ theme, in tandem with the robotic identity of the puppet, is also carried forward and revisited here. Pinocchio is variously described as ‘manichino di legno’ (wooden mannequin), ‘pupazzo’

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 151 (puppet) and ‘fantoccio di legno’ (wooden marionette), an artificial being strenuously resisting metamorphosis into human. Folgore all but relinquishes his Futurist enthusiasm for machines here: in the third Act, where a helpful Queen of Hearts provides Pinocchio with a golden key opening a silver lock in the bronze gate of Queen Melusina’s secret garden, one is powerfully reminded of the Futurist Enrico Prampolini’s abstract and ‘machinist’ Pantomime Mercante di Cuori (1927; Merchant of Hearts). Folgore’s own involvement in Prampolini’s Theatre of Futurist Pantomime further substantiates this claim. Furthermore, Pinocchio’s final metamorphosis is pervaded with dissatisfaction, melancholy and estrangement: no longer an automaton, Pinocchio appears to have lost his true self. His very father can hardly conceal his disillusion and disavows him, declaring: ‘your metamorphosis gives me a strange feeling. You don’t seem to be any longer my son.’72 In the anticlimatic dénouement, a disappointing new Pinocchio feebly defends himself by pleading that ‘puppets will always be puppets’.73 In accruing the bland new status of ‘proper boy’, Pinocchio has forcibly given up his articulated, mechanical body, losing, without it, his genuine identity.74 Folder 6 includes three more manuscripts under the general heading “Pinocchio”: a play entitled Pinocchio, Ciuffettino e il paese dei balocchi (Pinocchio, Ciuffettino and the Land of Toys), the undated, five-page-long manuscript “Pinocchio” and the undated manuscript “Al paese dei balocchi” (To the Land of Toys; a copy of Pinocchio, Ciuffettino e il paese dei balocchi above). The play is spread across ten pages and available in two typescript and one manuscript version. This is an adaptation of Collodi’s story where Folgore replaces the Land of Toys with a more pragmatic, technologically aware and media savvy ‘Paese della Radio per le Scuole’ (Country of the Radio for Schools). Pinocchio and his friends Ciondolino and Ciuffettino are engaging in persuading audiences of the superiority of radio, a new technological medium serving pedagogical purposes, as compared with the vacuous and idle dangers embedded in far more backward Lands of Toys.75 In folder 7 the undated “Intervista con Pinocchio (radioscena di Luciano Folgore)” (Interview with Pinocchio (Radio Drama by Luciano Folgore) is a copy of the third episode of the 1954 series examined above, alternatively entitled “Pinocchio” or “Le storie di Pinocchio”. Since “Intervista con Pinocchio” is a neat typescript copy, it can usefully be read alongside manuscript “III. Pinocchio. Estate 1954” to unravel all of those words that are illegible here. However, in this neater version Folgore crossed out Pinocchio’s adventure in the guise of Red Riding Hood. Other material included in this folder is a four-pagelong manuscript that must have served as script for one of the very earliest, experimental broadcasts of Italian television: “Sketch di Pinocchio. Spettacolo televisivo maggio 1954. Spettacolo Foro Italico. Televisione” (Pinocchio Skit. Television Show May 1954. Show at Foro Italico. Television). Folgore’s fixation for Pinocchio’s mechanical nose is also prominent here and made more conspicuous by its absence. Pinocchio is, in fact, taunted by Formaggina, an

152 • Katia Pizzi ‘annoying little girl’, in music and rhyme. The taunts refer to Pinocchio’s forgetting to don his prosthetic cartilage, variously and repeatedly referring to it in all possible guises and variations: ‘nasone’ (big nose), ‘nasello’ (little nose), ‘nasata’ (nose thing), ‘nasaccio’ (ugly nose), ‘nasin’ (little nose). Indeed, the noun ‘nose’ is itself repeated ten times in a mere four pages of text.76 Pinocchio eventually becomes frustrated with this public obsession with his nose, a metonymy that appears to define him entirely.77 At the end of the episode, he declares himself defeated and rushes home in order to apply the missing feature, without which he can no longer be identified as himself.78 “Assorted Pinocchio Radioplays”, collected in folder 8, carry forward Folgore’s veritable fi xation with Pinocchio’s prosthetic nose. “La Befana”, in particular, re-elaborates familiar material with alterations added to this effect. For example, a dialogue between Pinocchio and a ‘Speaker’ specifies the role played by the carpenter Geppetto in sharpening and polishing periodically Pinocchio’s mechanical appendix.79 The one-page-long typescript “PINOCCHIO”, dated January 5, 1957, and qualified as ‘un-broadcasted’ is too short and fragmentary to be of any interpretive interest. On the other hand, the undated, three-page-long manuscript that follows, entitled “Pinocchio (Luzi)”, hinges once again on Pinocchio’s nose, presenting yet another variation in this amply visited theme. Pinocchio begins with introducing himself as having his nose in the air. Later, while climbing on a mantelpiece in the attempt to nail a gift-collecting sock to the chimney, he accidentally shatters his brittle nose, and proceeds to celebrate this accident in verse.80 He subsequently falls asleep and is delighted to find, on waking up the following morning, that Befana gifted him with a brand new prosthetic nasone. Order is restored and Pinocchio sings a happy tune.81 Assorted fragmentary pages from plays and fairy tales from disparate sources, many of which Folgore had used or re-elaborated elsewhere, complete the count in folder 8. The following folder 9, entitled “History of Pinocchio”, includes one typescript and one manuscript made up of two pages, neither of which are dated or signed. Both are entitled “Pinocchio”. Outlining in summative, generic and rather formulaic fashion the genesis of Collodi’s puppet, this short critical text, however, fails to shed light on the significance and motivations underlying Folgore’s own Pinocchio. Folgore writes: ‘Il pupazzo di legno, deve la sua fama mondiale più che altro alla sostanza di umanità ch’esso contiene. Sembra tagliato non in una materia sorda ed inerte ma nel vivo della vita.’ (The wooden puppet owes its global reputation principally to its human substance, hewn into the core of life rather than dull and inert matter).82 Folgore elaborates this further by declaring Pinocchio a favourite with children of all times due to the puppet’s intrinsic capacity to epitomise the child. Regrettably, however, this terse and generic text fails to explore Folgore’s own approach to Collodi’s iconic marionette, glossing over the issue of Pinocchio’s artificial identity. A final item documenting Folgore’s creative focus on Pinocchio is a letter posted by Rolando Anzilotti, Mayor of Pescia and Chair of the committee to

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 153 erect a monument to Pinocchio, to Folgore c/o RAI. Dated July 9, 1953, this letter congratulates Italian radio programming as a whole, and Folgore in particular, for their emphasis on‘the immortal creature of Carlo Lorenzini’. This witty letter also mentions a song entitled “Ballata a Pinocchio” (A Ballad to Pinocchio), composed by Professor Leonello Incerpi, played by the Angelini orchestra and sung by Nilla Pizzi, the most glamorous pop singer of the day. This song was selected by the committee as its official celebratory anthem. Allegedly prompted by Pinocchio himself and partially written under the puppet’s dictation, this document is the last in a long series of papers carefully looked after by the Getty Research Institute Library documenting Folgore’s sustained interest and involvement with the figure of Pinocchio. Pinocchio will not feature in subsequent series, e.g., series III (“Music”), made up of two boxes including handwritten and printed scores for which Folgore wrote the lyrics, as well as a recording of Re Pistacchio (Pistachio King), with music by Stravinsky. Three boxes of “Personal items”, spanning the years 1890 through 1965 (series IV) include miscellaneous personal material, such as documents, schoolbooks and diplomas. There are also 168 photographs of Folgore, his family and fellow Futurists, as well as twenty-four paintings and drawings, including caricatures. One box of manuscripts by writers other than Folgore (series V) includes reviews and a fragment by Alberto Savinio. Finally, fourteen boxes catalogued as series VI (“Printed matter, 1897–1990s”) include miscellaneous papers such as announcements, programmes, catalogues, newspaper cuttings spanning the years between 1918 and 1990, articles by Folgore, including his column “Musa vagabonda”, reviews of Futurist performances and exhibitions, periodicals, books and humorous magazines utilized as sources for Fogore’s children’s plays, mainly in French, but including a 1902 edition of Rembadi Mongiardini’s Il segreto di Pinocchio, one of the urtexts of Folgore’s radio broadcasts discussed above. Pinocchio similarly does not figure in series III–VI, other than in this 1902 edition of Rembadi Mongiardini’s remake novel. In conclusion, the extent, breadth and nature of Folgore’s engagement with the figure of Pinocchio, as testified by his papers in the Getty Research Institute Library, expose Folgore’s continued loyalty to his Futurist, ‘machinist’ background. Spanning across his entire career, the mechanical puppet is the most recurring feature running through it, infusing his whole body of work with individuality and coherence. Folgore’s Pinocchio is a technologically aware being, both in employing the medium of radio to enable him to reach his audiences as well as in his constant reliance on objects embodying technological modernity, such as airplanes, motorboats, telephone, microphones, televisions, etc. Folgore’s Pinocchio is also dialogical with Collodi’s own, and with the early visual interpretations of illustrators such as Enrico Mazzanti and Carlo Chiostri, highlighting the stiff, angular and mannequin-like features of Collodi’s puppet. At the same time, however, Folgore revisits and reimagines Pinocchio in full-blown technological light. This enables him to colour his Futurist and techno-enthusiastic

154 • Katia Pizzi background with social and political awareness which, in turn, acts as counterpoint, corrective and deterrent to the tender, ‘fleshy’ puppet devised by Walt Disney. Most importantly, beginning from 1952, Folgore’s production focuses entirely on Pinocchio’s nose. Folgore’s veritable fi xation with Pinocchio’s prominent, inflated and artificial nose makes it none other than the most visible, conspicuous marker of the puppet’s intrinsically mechanical identity. It comes as no surprise that, from here on, Pinocchio’s mechanical body, and the nose in particular, become staples of postmodern retellings, from Charyn to Winshluss.83 Notes 1

2

3

4

5 6

7

8

9

See also Pierpaolo Antonello, “On an Airfield in Montichiari, Near Brescia. Staging Rivalry Through Technology: Marinetti and D’Annunzio”, Stanford Electronic Humanities Review 7.1 (1999): [n.p.], accessed June 22, 2007, http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/7–1/html/antonello.html. One of the most talented disciples of the versatile Giacomo Balla (1871– 1958), himself a toymaker and puppet-maker, as well as visual artist, Depero is particularly notable here. His Balli Plastici can be considered as one of the most significant theatrical experiences of his age. Witnessed by a number of celebrities, from Gabriele D’Annunzio to Franz Kafka and Giacomo Puccini, this momentous air show is reconstructed in detail by Peter Demetz in his study The Air Show at Brescia, 1909 (New York: Farra, Strauss and Giroux, 2002). Pointing to ‘light’ (luce-Luciano) and ‘lightning’ (folgore), this ‘dynamic’ nom de plume replaced the passeist combination of ‘Homer’ (Omero) and ‘the old’ (vecchi) in his family name. Folgore translated and adapted works by Shakespeare, Dickens, Pushkin, Calderón de la Barca and many others. Esopino (‘little Aesop’) was one of the pseudonyms Folgore employed in the course of his career. See also Ermanno Paccagnini, “Il giallo in trappola”, in Luciano Folgore, La trappola colorata. Romanzo extragiallo umoristico (Palermo: Sellerio, 2004), 303–26 (310). Similarly to Pinocchio, Petrolini descended from a carpenter, spent a short period of time in borstal, ran away from home in order to join an itinerant theatre company and became a thespian. Dissatisfied with this experience, Petrolini ended up joining a circus, also similarly to Pinocchio. Cit. in Claudia Salaris, Luciano Folgore e le avanguardie con lettere e inediti futuristi (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1997), 370-71; orig. Libero De Libero, Antologia futurista (Turin: ILTE, 1954): ‘attaccato alla macchina come a una mammella inesauribile.’ See Salaris, Folgore, 9: ‘il ciclo Le Macchine (dedicato a Lucini) implicava ancora strumenti arcaici (la leva, la ruota) o marchingegni antropomorfi o zoomorfi, legati ad un universo ottocentesco’.

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 155 10 Cf., for example, Luciano Folgore, Il canto dei motori (Milan: Edizioni Futuriste di “Poesia”, 1912), 63: ‘Pane oscuro di macchine, che sbocchi / dalla gola delle miniere, / e ti ammonticchi / in infiniti blocchi / lungo le vie del lavoro’ with Carducci’s Hymn to Satan (1863) and especially the poem “Alla stazione in una mattina d’autunno” (To the Station on an Autumn Morning; in Barbarian Odes, 1877). See also “Fuori dell’orbita”, 154–55: ‘Ringhia il mostro fatto di ferro / di carbone e di velocità, /e balza nell’oscurità /squassando la sua criniera di fumo’, as well as the “Cantos” “of hangars”, “of garages” and “of stations”. 11 For Marinetti’s own emphasis on electricity, see Simona Cigliana, Futurismo esoterico. Contributi per una storia dell’irrazionalismo italiano tra Otto e Novecento (Naples: Liguori, 2002), esp. 169–205. 12 Folgore, Motori, 156: ‘La macchina vola / [ . . . ] / riempie il silenzio stellare / della sua anarchica fanfara.’ 13 See Salaris, Folgore, 15–16: ‘dall’esaltazione delle materie prime (carbone, elettricità), alle lodi delle macchine (ordigni bellici, aerei, navi), fi no alle descrizioni di città o fabbriche.’ 14 See, for instance, the poem “Arrivi in nero”: ‘Non riconoscere alcuno. / Perdere il senso della carne e dell’anima, /pensare l’umanità tutta a fantocci /di legno nero, in cammino’—cit. in Salaris, Folgore, 36. 15 Salaris, Folgore, 50. 16 Cf. note 6. 17 See Salaris, Folgore, 67 and 69. In humorous analogy with Malthus’s demographic theories, Folgore’s strofa became quickly popular: Petrolini employed it extensively in his performances, and even Antonio Gramsci tried his hand at it in informal correspondence from Moscow. 18 Pannaggi and Paladini’s performance was accompanied by a so-called ‘rhythmic polyphony of engines’ obtained by revving two motorcycle engines up and down, at some risk of gassing to death the audience, tightly packed in the confined space. 19 Cit. in Salaris, Folgore, 75–76: ‘Il comico di Folgore [ . . . ] era costruito proprio con “materiali inadatti: tristezza, nostalgia, depressione morale, disgrazie, tragicità giornaliera” [ . . . ] vaporoso e surreale, ma talvolta bloccato e come congelato da una luce metafisica’; orig. F.T. Marinetti, “Misurazione futurista di Crepapelle”, Dinamo I (September–October 1919). 20 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 123. 21 See G. Calcagno, “Un Omero diventato Esopo”, Radiocorriere, January 1, 1956; cit. Salaris, Folgore, 78, note 128. 22 Reissued in Il futurismo on October 1, 1933, the Manifesto came out as “La radia” in Autori e scrittori, 8 (1941)—cit. “Nota ai testi”, in F.T. Marinetti, Teoria e invenzione futurista, ed. Luciano De Maria (Milan: Mondadori, 1996), cxv–clxv (cxxxiii). 23 See F.T. Marinetti, Pino Masnata, “La radia”, in Marinetti, Teoria, 205–10.

156 • Katia Pizzi 24 See also Luciano Folgore, Papers, 1890–1966, series I, box 14, folder 2 (Dinamica futurista), Getty Research Institute Library, Los Angeles. See especially an undated manuscript of ten pages describing the fi rst Futurist performance involving ‘noise-intoners’ and arguing that cinema and gramophone are far more Futurist and ‘dynamic’ means than books. From now on, unless otherwise stated, references to archival material will be from the Special Collections at the Getty Research Institute Library, Los Angeles, and will be abbreviated. 25 See Jeffrey T. Schnapp, “Rayon / Marinetti”, in Science and Literature in Italian Culture from Dante to Calvino, ed. Pierpaolo Antonello and Simon Gilson (Oxford: Legenda / MHRA / EHRC, 2004), 225–51 (228–30). Schnapp further argues that the autarchic significance of rayon originates from the economic sanctions imposed by the League of Nations after Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935. 26 Schnapp, “Rayon”, 239. 27 See Schnapp, “Rayon”, 241: ‘Under fascism, Folgore suggests, fashion (and by extension literature and art) [ . . . ] have become instruments for the forging of a true mass society. [ . . . ] The same point was made in graphical terms via the army of stick figures and mannequins found in period advertisements for rayon.’ See also Karen Pinkus, Bodily Regimes: Italian Advertising under Fascism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), esp. 195–243. 28 See also Paccagnini, “Giallo”, 311–12. 29 See Folgore, Papers, “Biographical / Historical Note”, Selected Special Collections Finding Aids, accessed October 22, 2007, http://archives.getty. edu:8082/cgi/f/findaid/. 30 This archive does not, however, include Folgore’s Novellieri allo specchio, Nuda ma dipinta, Mia cugina la luna and the above-mentioned La trappola colorata. 31 I gather this information almost verbatim from the section Scope and Content of Collection in the Getty Research Institute Library website, see Folgore, Papers, accessed October 22, 2007, http://archives.getty.edu:8082/ cgi/f/findaid/. 32 Folgore, Papers, series I: Correspondence, box 2, miscellaneous, Marinetti F.T. 33 Folgore, Papers, series I, box 2, Prampolini, postcard to F. Giacobbe, Paganica (Aquila), [recto and verso]: ‘Ma certo bisogna che la rivista si combini io e te, e non altri eccetto Folgore, altrimenti succedono delle complicazioni’. The postcard is also interesting in shedding light on Prampolini’s mercenary attitude towards Count Bino Sanminiatelli, whose fi nancial collaboration and support were crucial to him in those years. 34 Folgore, Papers, series I, box 2. Written from Rome, this letter is dated May 29, 1960, [recto].

Pinocchio and the Mechanical Body • 157 35 Folgore, Papers, series I, box 2. Severini, letter from Viareggio, March 21, 1922: ‘Lo sbaglio della nostra epoca, nel quale siamo tutti più o meno caduti, è che per arrivare a nuove apparenze si son cercati mezzi nuovi; [ . . . ]. Era una pura illusione. [ . . . ] Abbiamo perduto tanto tempo e tanta energia!’ 36 Folgore, Papers, series I, box 2. Severini, letter from Paris, October 14, 1914. 37 Folgore, Papers, Selected Special Collections Finding Aids. 38 The text is quoted here entirely. Folgore, Papers, series II, box 8, folder 2, 1–2: ‘Una camera tutta di un colore, con una sola sedia nel centro e tre porte laterali, che quando s’aprono, immettono nell’ambiente un fascio di luce. Sulla sedia, abbandonata come una marionetta, c’è una donna giovane e bella che sembra che dorma con la testa piegata sopra una spalla. Fa dei sogni amari e ruvidi, che le danno, di tanto in tanto, sussulti da fantoccio. Entra un elegante personaggio di poco più di trent’anni. La donna si desta e si ricompone sulla sedia come una marionetta che vuol sembrare estetica. L’uomo ostenta indifferenza. La donna lo supplica con i suoi gesti legnosi, ma lui passeggia agile e leggero, con l’aria del noncurante. Poi si ritira nel fondo e guarda. La signora, credendolo partito, si dispera agitandosi sulla sedia, infine si irrigidisce spaurita con la [sic] braccia tese in avanti. Ma il giovane ha finto, quasi per godere il dolore della donna, che è sgomentata dal pensiero di non essere amata. L’uomo trae dalla tasca una collana di perle, la mostra in giro, si avvicina lentamente alla marionetta e da dietro le mette al collo un gioiello. Resta in attesa. Sulle prime la giovane signora spalanca gli occhi come a un fatto nuovo. Scioglie un poco la rigidità delle sue braccia. Tocca la collana. Ammira le perle. Si illumina di una improvvisa felicità. Indi si muove come liberandosi dal carcere legnoso della marionetta. Riprende la sua elasticità femminile e si pone a danzare sul ritmo della sua grande delizia. L’uomo che attende le si avvicina, ma lei gli sfugge con volteggi da farfalla. Dopo due o tre tentativi il giovane si sente irrigidire le braccia e le gambe. Diventa a sua volta il fantoccio che ha paura di non essere amato. Cade sulla sedia e gestisce come una marionetta infelice, mentre la donna spalancando le porte danza leggera entro i fasci di luce; soddisfatta della vittoria ottenuta e non curante del povero fantoccio uomo, che continua la sua mimica legnosa e disperata.’ 39 Folgore, Papers, series II, box 8, folder 22. 40 Folgore, Papers, series II, box 11, folder 37 (Story fragments), [n.p., but 1–2]: ‘Sperduta in mezzo all’oceano c’è una piccola isola dove si è rifugiato il celebre scienziato [Granduino?]. Si tratta di un individuo dall’intelligenza formidabile in possesso di scoperte che potrebbero sconvolgere il mondo. Ma il cuore di [Granduino?] è superiore alla sua intelligenza. Sa che il progresso concepito dal lato puramente scientifico rappresenta una minaccia per l’umanità. Per questo si è rifugiato nell’isoletta portando seco il libro delle formule pericolose che tiene nascosto nella sua capanna. Dedito

158 • Katia Pizzi

41 42 43 44

45

46

47

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ormai a opere di pace ha costruito il Robot Carmelo che è un meccanismo capace di risolvere i più difficili problemi di aiutare la gente nelle più disperate contingenze. Gli ha infuso persino la facoltà di pensare mediante una carica elettrica che per ora non dura a lungo ma che in seguito diverrà continua e permanente. Ma un giorno i nemici dell’est hanno sbarcato di nascosto mediante un sottomarino il prof. Kalimt’. The manuscript ends abruptly at this juncture. Folgore, Papers, series II, box 14, folder 16 (On pantomime), [n.p. but 1]. Folgore, “Pantomime”, [n.p. but 3]. To quote one example amongst many, Pinocchio’s recurring exclamation is the invented, absurdist idiom: ‘Gnaffe!’. See especially Prampolini’s six panels on the theme ‘The black continent at the conquest of mechanic civilization’ devised for the Paris Colonial Exhibition in 1931. For a discussion of primitivism in modern art, see especially Hal Foster’s excellent Chapter “Primitive Scenes”, in Prosthetic Gods (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2004), 1–52. The pun is based on the semantic double of the noun ‘credenza’ in Italian, meaning both ‘sideboard / kitchen cupboard’ and ‘credit’. Folgore, Papers, series II, box 14, folder 13, “Il segretario dei piccoli II”, 1–2. Folgore, “Segretario II”, 11. He explains: ‘Nella luna ci divertiamo dalla mattina alla sera; sempre a spese dello stato. Teatri, cinema, giostre, rappresentazioni di burattini, manifestazioni sportive, gite in treno, in aeroplano a sbafo tanto per i grandi che per i piccini’. A similar lack of aspiration to become a flesh-and-blood boy is repeated in “Segretario XIV” of December 15, 1948, 1–2. Pinocchio is very much a stiff and wooden puppet here, emitting those hollow sounds produced by wooden sticks when hitting other objects or falling on the floor. Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, trans. Ann Lawson Lucas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 139. Folgore, “Segretario VIII”, 3: ‘Ma questo raglio è proprio la voce di Lucignolo!’ Folgore, “Segretario VIII”, 4: ‘PINOCCHIO. “Gli ho detto che vi avrei pregato e supplicato in tal modo che avreste finito per liberarlo dalla sua buccia asinina.”’ Folgore, “Segretario IX”, November 10, 1948, 1: ‘i nemici [ . . . ] barbari e crudeli’. Folgore, “Segretario X”, 1: ‘FATA TURCHINA. “Pinocchio sei proprio elegante col tuo abito nuovo. È l’ultimo strillo della moda?” PINOCCHIO. “No, cara Fata Turchina, è l’ultimo belato.” F.T. “Come? Come?” P. “Il mio nuovo vestito è di cartapecora. Andiamo incontro alla stagione del freddo. E poi per una buona lana come me la cartapesta è più indicata. E cosa ne dite delle mie scarpe?” F.T. “Pinocchio non è mica educato mettere i piedi sul tavolo!?” P. “O.K. Avete ragione. Però che ve ne pare?” F.T. “Le trovo migliori delle tue vecchie scarpe di corteccia d’albero.” P. “Sono

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di vero sughero. Me le ha confezionate il babbo con turaccioli di prima qualità.” F.T. “Debbono essere leggere quanto il tuo cervello.”’ In Folgore, “Segretario XI”, 3, Pinocchio relates his exchange with an old lady, whose grandson is not, as she’d have him, ‘un amore’, but rather, in Pinocchio’s own words, a prosaic ‘salsiccione qualsiasi’. See, for instance, Folgore “Segretario XII”, December 1, 1948. Here the burning desire of the Fairy and Geppetto to ‘break his [Pinocchio’s] bones’ are set in contrast with the puppet’s graceful and illuminated civic spirit. See Folgore, “Segretario XVI”, 5. This feature is repeated in Folgore, “Segretario XII”, 10–11. See also the clamoring of street political demonstrations echoing in episode 21 of February 2, 1949. In this vein, Pinocchio declares his categorical antivegetarianism and enthusiasm for eating meat (see Folgore, “Segretario XIII”). For fi lm versions of the Pinocchio story, see also Chapter 8 and Mario Verger, “Differenze e similitudini tra il Pinocchio di Cenci e il Pinocchio di Disney”, Cinemino 17.9 (2007): [n.p.], accessed February 12, 2008, http://cinemino.kaywa.com/mario-verger/. Folgore, “Segretario XIII”, 8: ‘PINOCCHIO. “La megalomania sarebbe la mania della grandezza, la fissazione di credersi più importanti di quello che si è, di ritenersi di fare cose al di sopra delle proprie forze. Ne abbiamo avuti in questi ultimi tempi dei tristissimi esempi.”’ For a distinctively anti-Establishment and anti-hierarchy attitude see also Folgore, “Segretario XVIII”, 10. For an ironical and sexualized Pinocchio with forays in fascist Italy, see also Jerome Charyn, Pinocchio’s Nose (New York: Arbor House, 1983). Folgore, “Segretario XV”, 14: ‘PINOCCHIO. “Te, meneghino d’un panettone, ci tieni ad essere mangiato dall’Orco?” PANETTONE. “Nagotta.” PIN. “Da chi vorresti essere mangiato?” PAN. “Da una brava famigliola di lavoratori.” PIN. “Sta bene. Con un colpo di bacchetta magica ti faccio partire diretto a quella casetta operaia.” (Colpo di bacchetta) “Vai!” ZAMPONE. “Il mio sogno di zampone modenese è stato sempre quello di finire nella pentola di una povera vedova con almeno tre figli. Mi ci mandi, Pinocchio?” PIN. “Subito. L’indirizzo è questo: Vicolo degli Stenti 26, quinto piano. Parti.”’ Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, “Il segreto di Pinocchio”. This episode is available in both manuscript and typescript form. The typescript is undersigned ‘Adattamento radiofonico di FOLGORE’. Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, “Il giornalino di Pinocchio. Settimanale delle vacanze”, July 1, 1953, 1–13. See Folgore, “Giornalino”, August 19, 1953, 1: ‘FATA TURCHINA. “Quel burattino le inventa tutte. Eccolo. Nasone sei un vero perdigiorno, tu.”’ Curiously, this episode carries a mysterious fragment handwritten by Folgore on the verso of the wrapper keeping this manuscript together.

160 • Katia Pizzi

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This short text reads: ‘un sassolino bianco leggermente venato di azzurro. Porta scritto sopra la data d’un tempo lontano: 5–8–924. Sono passati ormai ventinove anni eppure ricordo benissimo il poco male e il gran bene che mi ha fatto questa candida pietruzza.’ I have been unable to uncover whether this fragment refers to one of Folgore’s works, or is rather, as seems likely, associated with a happy private memory. See Folgore, “Giornalino”, September 30, 1953, 13: ‘PINOCCHIO. “Eccomi. (rispondendo) Pronto? Sì, è il nasone che parla.”’ For this nose fixation, see also episodes dated September 2 and 16, 1953, 2 and 3 respectively. Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, “1954. I. Le storie di Pinocchio”, 1–2. Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, “Le storie di Pinocchio II Estate 1954”, 1–15 (13–14): ‘PINOCCHIO. [ . . . ] “Arrotate i vostri nasi! [ . . . ] Rulla tamburo e metti in campo un reggimento di nasoni a piedi e a cavallo.” (rullo di tamburo. Clamore e nitriti). “Silenzio, silenzio miei fidi pinocchi. Ascoltate il vostro generale. La vallata è ormai una selva di nasi puntuti. [ . . . ] Avanti nasoni.”’ Folgore, “Storie II”, 15: ‘voglio essere io l’unico nasone del mondo’. Ibid.: ‘CORO. “Pinocchio il burattino / smanioso d’avventure.” PINOCCHIO. “Riprende il suo cammino / per fare altre bravure. / Bin-Bon-Bon / evviva il mio nason.”’ Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, “III. Pinocchio. Estate 1954”, 1–15 (6–7): ‘Il mio naso, mondo sciocco, / un balocco / non è già come si pensa / negli ambienti alquanto matti / dove i gatti / con i sorci stanno a mensa. / E ne meno è lungo [corno] / che va intorno / sbatacchiando nei contorni / e la punta [solitaria] / leva in aria / per sfiorare i cornicioni. / Il mio naso è un fusoliere / che a piacere / gira più d’un arcolaio / e si caccia nel trambusto / giusto giusto/ dove accade qualche guaio. / Quando dico una bugia, / mamma mia! / ciò che avviene s’indovina. / Il mio naso senza testa / non s’arresta / a allungar la sua puntina. / Cresce un palmo e non vacilla / anzi brilla / e fa ancora più l’audace. / D’ [aumentare] non rifugge / e si strugge / di turbare la mia pace. / Che sia ciò lo so ben io, / perché il mio / lungo naso, al mondo intero / spesso ispiri dei commenti / divertenti / e mordaci per davvero. / Arrabbiarsi a nulla vale, / bene o male/ il nason fa quel che vuole / sale e scende, si protende / e risplende / sempre libero nel sole.’ The words between square brackets are lifted from the accompanying typescript, without which the parts of the manuscript obscured by Folgore’s poor handwriting would not be legible. Prampolini designed scenes and costumes for a marionette version of Little Red Riding Hood intended for Podrecca’s Teatro dei Piccoli—see Günter Berghaus, Italian Futurist Theatre 1909–1944 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 272. Folgore, “III. Pinocchio”, 15: ‘LUPO. “O nipotina mia che naso puntuto che hai!” PINOCCHIO. “È per darti un sacco di nasate, lupaccio della malora. Toh, prendi questa. E poi quest’altra.” L. (spaventato) “Aiuto!

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Tradimento! Tu non sei Cappuccetto rosso.” P. “No, sono Pinocchio e se non scappi subito ti infi lo da parte a parte col mio nasone appuntito.”’ Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, “IV. Il diario di Pinocchio. Estate 1954”, 1–15 (14–15): ‘PINOCCHIO. (cantando sull’aria dello stornello toscano. “Babbuccio amato / il rivederti tanto m’è gradito / che mi par proprio d’essere rinato. / Son rinato, son rinato io, / sei rinato, sei rinato te, / è rinata anche la fata / siam rinati tutti e tre.”’ In spite of the slightly altered title, the substance of this broadcast is comparable to the three preceding ones. See also Antonello, “Airfield”. Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, “Pinocchio cosa hai fatto? (RAI, 50s)”, 1–47 (46): ‘questo mutamento mi fa uno strano effetto. Mi sembra che tu non sia più il mio figliolo.’ Folgore, “Cosa hai fatto?”, 46: ‘I burattini restano sempre burattini.’ See Folgore, “Cosa hai fatto?” 47 and Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 170. A green cardboard cover carrying the title on its frontispiece is included in the same folder. Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, folder 6, Pinocchio, Ciuffettino e il paese dei balocchi, 1–10 (10): ‘CORO. “Danno ormai le sonagliere / il segnal della partenza / e la bella diligenza / pensa a gare di velocità. / Alla Radio per le scuole / tutti e tre ci porterà. / Addio, balocchi, addio, / addio ciuchi e ciuchetti / dei bravi scolaretti / sarem prestissimo / pure noi tre.”’ In the following short manuscript Befana reprimands Pinocchio for requesting presents whose names he cannot spell properly, such as ‘toy train’, ‘cowboy hat’ and ‘squirt gun’. Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, folder 7, “Sketch di Pinocchio. Spettacolo televisivo maggio 1954”, 1–4: ‘nasone’ (1, repeated three times and 3, repeated twice), ‘nasello’ (2, repeated twice), ‘nasata’ (2), ‘nasaccio’ (3), ‘nasin’ (4, repeated twice), ‘naso’ (1 and 2, repeated four times, 3, repeated three times and 4, repeated twice). Folgore, “Sketch”, 3: ‘PINOCCHIO. “Insomma questa storia del mio naso è una vera ossessione per te?” FORMAGGINA. “Te lo dico senza scorno / me lo sogno notte e giorno.” P. (conciliante) “Senti Formagginissima, facciamo un patto. Puoi star zitta per un minutino?” F. “Starò zitta un minutone / se mi parli del nasone.” Folgore, “Sketch”, 3: ‘PINOCCHIO. (desolato) “È inutile. [ . . . ] Ragazzi vi saluto. Vado a casa a rimettermi il naso. Addio.’ Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, folder 8 (“Assorted Pinocchio Radioplays”), “La Befana”, 1–5 (5): ‘ANNUNCIATORE. “A proposito, che cosa ne hai fatto del tuo naso lungo lungo?” PINOCCHIO. “Ti dirò, nei giorni di festa lo lascio a casa. Cosí il babbo me lo tempera e me lo pulisce con la carta vetrata.”’ Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, folder 8, “Pinocchio (Luzi)”, 1–3 (2): ‘PINOCCHIO. “Eccomi qui col naso all’aria [ . . . ]. Dagli dagli tutt’un

162 • Katia Pizzi tratto / contro il duro naso batto / e lo batto tanto forte / che per colpa della sorte, / cricche-cracche gri-gro-gra, / il mio naso in pezzi va.”’ 81 Folgore, “Pinocchio (Luzi)”, 3: ‘PINOCCHIO. “Ma al mattino al mio risveglio / andò tutto per il meglio / perché dentro la calzetta / la Befana benedetta / messo aveva senza pecca / un nason nuovo di zecca. / Lì per lì me lo attaccai / e mi stava bene assai / tanto è ver che per la via / i monelli in allegria / ripetean strizzando l’occhio: Viva il naso di Pinocchio!”’. 82 Folgore, Papers, series II, box 18, folder 9 (“History of Pinocchio”), “Pinocchio”, 1–2 (1). 83 See Charyn, Pinocchio and Winshluss (aka Vincent Parronaud), Pinocchio (Albi: Requins Marteaux, 2008).

Chapter Eight The Myth of Pinocchio Metamorphosis of a Puppet from Collodi’s Pages to the Screen Salvatore Consolo

This Chapter has a twofold purpose. The first purpose is to acknowledge the mythological dimension of Collodi’s Pinocchio; and the second one is to look at some fi lms based on Pinocchio, seen as a sort of intersemiotic translation which confirms Lévi-Strauss’s hypothesis that ‘the mythical value of the myth is preserved even through the worst translation’ because, unlike poetry, its substance ‘does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story it tells’.1 In other words, the fundamental essence of a myth, its purport, will persist throughout the diversities of forms by which the myth story is perpetuated. There are many fi lms where Pinocchio is the protagonist. Quite apart from television adaptations, there have been nineteen fi lm versions from 1911 to the present day in various countries including the U.S., Mexico, Belgium, Russia, Japan and Canada as well as Italy, Pinocchio’s natural home.2 What is the reason for this remarkable international success? One can look first into the mythological dimension of Collodi’s text, in what can be defined as the myth of Pinocchio. Pinocchio is, on one level, a literary figure, but at the same time he is also a mythological figure because his character belongs to the morphological category of the hero. I am not thinking here of the hero as soldier, as is the classic model of the epic hero, but of the heroic traits of Pinocchio, which bring him closer to the tragicomic hero model, whose journey through life is rooted in a pattern of birth-loss-rebirth.3 Heroes are always born in a miraculous way and often in difficult circumstances, as symbolised by wintertime. They look for their own father and 163

164 • Salvatore Consolo experience rites of passage during which they confront trials leading them to defeat their inner demons. At a certain point in his journey the hero faces death and emerges victorious thanks to his personal virtues or to external guides who lead him to success.4 Intimately connected with the life of the hero is the idea of metamorphosis, to which he is often subjected. This is a way of emphasizing the characteristics of the hero, whether positive or negative. In the case of Pinocchio, his birth certainly shows characteristics typical of the birth of a god, a theophany, and Geppetto, in his own small and povertystricken world, is not responsible for an act of creation but for giving the body of a puppet to a piece of wood which already has the life force within it, as evidenced by the voice that frightens Maestro Ciliegia.5 To a certain extent Pinocchio is born before his birth as a puppet. The fact that it is winter is not explicit but the inference is evident in the text: going out to buy an alphabet book, Geppetto wears an old woollen jacket and ‘quando tornò aveva in mano l’abbecedario per il figliuolo, ma la casacca non l’aveva più. Il pover’uomo era in maniche di camicia, e fuori nevicava.’ (‘On his return he was carrying the alphabet book for his little boy, but he was no longer wearing his cape. The poor man was in his shirt-sleeves, and outside it was snowing.’) 6 The theme of the quest for the father is presented in the text as a threestage process leading to a climax, indicative of Pinocchio’s journey towards humanisation from puppet to animal, then a creature of instinct and then to a real live boy: first we find a period of wishing, then of need and finally of action. At first Pinocchio has only a practical desire for a father: ‘Se il mio babbo fosse qui, ora non mi troverei a morire di sbadigli’, (‘If my pa was here, I wouldn’t be dying of yawning now!’), cries the puppet out of simple anger.7 Then the quest for a father becomes an intention, when he says to the Cat and the Fox who want to persuade him to go to the Field of Miracles: ‘No, non ci voglio venire. Oramai sono vicino a casa, dove c’è il mio babbo che mi aspetta. Chi lo sa, povero vecchio, quanto ha sospirato ieri a non vedermi tornare.’ (‘No, I don’t want to come. I’m near home now, and I want to go home where my papa is waiting. Poor old man, who knows how grieved he must have been yesterday, when I didn’t return.’) 8 The driving force of the quest becomes the power of love, even if the task, as we know, is not realized. In the end the quest for the father becomes real when Pinocchio runs like a greyhound to reach him. Following that, he has no hesitation in climbing onto the back of a dove, to be carried to the seashore. When he sees his father struggling in a tiny boat in difficulties, he throws himself from the top of a high rock, screaming: ‘I want to save my papa!’9 His adventures, which are nothing other than trials or ‘disadvantages’, as Pinocchio himself puts it, can be divided into two groups: those where the puppet confronts a potential reciprocal obligation from which he hopes to receive an immediate reward (or ‘synallagmatic’ adventures) and other confrontations in which there is no such obligation (or adventures governed by generosity). It is only the latter, that is to say those where Pinocchio has no

The Myth of Pinocchio • 165 ulterior motive, that lead to his final metamorphosis.10 Furthermore, Pinocchio has altogether eleven encounters with death. He faces the danger of personal death seven times, and on four occasions he faces the death of others, whether real or imaginary. Without following a psychological interpretation, it is sufficient to observe that the encounter with death is a necessary step the hero Pinocchio must take to free himself from the limitations imposed by his nature as puppet.11 Pinocchio is also a novel of metamorphosis. The puppet undergoes four metamorphoses: the first one is his birth as a puppet from a piece of wood. The second one is a negative transformation: despite help from others to achieve his goal of becoming a real boy, Pinocchio is led astray by Lucignolo (CandleWick) and undergoes a regressive metamorphosis into the shape of an animal: a donkey. At this point Pinocchio is not ‘like’ an animal: he ‘is’ an animal, and in one of its lowest manifestations.12 It is only after further trials that the little donkey Pinocchio, facing death once again, reverts into puppet (third metamorphosis) and meets his final trial: the belly of a shark (a shark rather than a whale in the original novel). The fourth and final metamorphosis is brought about by a Fairy, a cruelly kind Fairy according to Spinazzola’s definition, but especially by the potential virtues demonstrated by Pinocchio which, when put into practice, make him a good boy and no longer a donkey.13 There is, thus, a mythological dimension to Collodi’s novel, in what can be defined as the myth of Pinocchio. As we mentioned above, Lévi-Strauss takes the view that, when you translate a myth from one language into another, its purport remains the same, even in the worst translation, unlike what happens in poetry, where both form and content are important. In short, the gist does not change. Furthermore, in a famous essay written in 1959, Roman Jakobson states that three types of translation exist. We distinguish three ways of interpreting a verbal sign: translated into other signs in the same language, into another language or into another nonverbal system of symbols. These three kinds of translation are to be labelled as follows: ‘intralingual translation’, or rewording, that is to say an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language; ‘interlingual translation’, or translation proper, understood as an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language and ‘intersemiotic translation’, or transmutation, that is to say an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of a nonverbal sign system.14 If we think of Pinocchio’s cinematic adaptations as a sort of intersemiotic translation, according to Lévi-Strauss the gist of Pinocchio’s novel and its adaptations will always be the same. Of course the discourse, the denotation, will be different because of the images and different media employed, but the purport will not change.15 Pinocchio will be different but to a certain extent also the same. To prove this theory, I will now compare five different fi lms on Pinocchio in terms of these invariables: Pinocchio by Giulio Antamoro (1911), Pinocchio by Walt Disney (1940), Le avventure di Pinocchio (Adventures of Pinocchio) by Gian-

166 • Salvatore Consolo netto Guardone (1947), Le avventure di Pinocchio (Adventures of Pinocchio) by Luigi Comencini (1972) and Pinocchio by Roberto Benigni (2002). Directed by Antamoro in 1911, Pinocchio was restored in 1994 by the Cineteca Nazionale (National Film Library) in Milan and the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Center of Experimental Cinematography) in Rome. The leading role of Pinocchio is played by Ferdinand Guillaume, a famous French comedian, well known in the silent era as Polidor. All of Pinocchio’s heroic-comic traits are highlighted by Polidor who, as the film opens, adopts the acting style of a clown: filmed full on, he appears through a drawn stage curtain, jumps acrobatically and turns into Pinocchio. Then, he theatrically gestures to the audience to wait, goes back behind the curtain and leads Geppetto by the hand onto the stage. Antamoro reinvents the story, imparting a structure that sometimes differs from Collodi’s plot. He also introduces some brand new adventures. By way of example, in the film Pinocchio is hanged for revenge not by the assassins, but by the chicken thieves. Among the new adventures, there is one in particular that attracted scholarly attention: the adventure of Pinocchio among the Indian Americans and the Canadian soldiers. The whale or shark (we cannot make out for sure which it is from the images) in which Pinocchio found his father Geppetto is captured by Indians, and it is precisely on this occasion that Pinocchio shows his heroic essence. A subtitle reads: ‘Pinocchio che era di legno è creduto un mago e fatto capo degli Indiani. Geppetto è messo arrosto’. (‘Pinocchio is made of wood and, believed to be a sorcerer, becomes chieftain of the Indians. Geppetto is put to roast.’) Then the camera moves to an Indian camp, focusing, in particular, on a tent Pinocchio comes out of, dressed as a chieftain. By now he has struck the pose of a heroic leader and everyone bows. A subtitle reports his words: ‘Comando io! Lasciatemi libero quest’uomo!’ (‘I’m in charge! Release this man!’). In a medium-long shot the viewers see Indians dancing round Geppetto, who is tied to a spit like a roast pig. As Pinocchio orders Geppetto’s release, another subtitle appears: ‘Vattene! Alla pelle mia ci penso io’. (‘Go! I’ll look after my own skin!’) At this point Pinocchio is showing not only the behaviour of an adult, but also the attitude of a hero: the camera lingers on Pinocchio authoritatively indicating that a shabby and bare-chested Geppetto should leave. The next scene, as Pinocchio escapes from the camp, has a comic dimension: he crawls on his hands and knees out of the tent, but, spotted by one Indian, is chased by all the others. Pinocchio reaches the Canadian soldiers, kneels in front of them and begs for help. The subtitle reads: ‘I Canadesi ammazzano tutti gli Indiani, e rimandano Pinocchio a casa . . . come vedrete.’ (‘The Canadians will kill all the Indians and send Pinocchio back home . . . as you shall see.’) Pushed inside the mouth of a cannon, Pinocchio is shot out and rides on a cannonball, until he falls headlong into Geppetto’s house. It has been suggested that this added adventure with Indians and Canadian soldiers may derive either from Buffalo Bill periodicals, which were popular in Italy at the beginning of the 1900s, or may be a tribute to American adventure films.16

The Myth of Pinocchio • 167 It seems to me, however, that the reasons for this strange exploit are to be found first and foremost in Collodi’s text, where Pinocchio’s heroism is fundamental. But where does the American setting come from? In his novel Collodi writes that Geppetto ‘was building a little boat for himself, so as to cross the Ocean. [ . . . ] he took it into his head to look for you in the faraway lands of the New World.’17 This is probably the origin of the idea of Pinocchio as chieftain of the Indians. America, moreover, was always popular among Italians, not only due to Buffalo Bill but also because of mass migration across the Atlantic peaking exactly in the years the film was made. And as far as Pinocchio’s journey home on a cannonball is concerned, it is as well to remember that Collodi often writes that Pinocchio is ‘off like a shot’ and ‘as swift as a rifle shot’.18 In conclusion, Pinocchio’s heroic traits remain unchanged from Collodi’s novel to Antamoro’s film, and although some sequences, such as the one featuring Pinocchio among the Indians, may have been introduced with an eye to the audiences and the times, the heroic essence of Pinocchio is unaltered. Made in 1940, Walt Disney’s Pinocchio apparently shows a Pinocchio who is very different from the original: an all-American boy, a copycat, naïve and not at all rebellious as he is in the original, a creature completely focused on others (even his conscience, Jiminy Cricket, is outside him).19 Pinocchio shows his naïveté, for instance, in a conversation with Stromboli, the puppetmaster whose name in Collodi is Mangiafoco and who is good and generous, unlike in the cartoon. Pinocchio says to Stromboli: ‘They liked me?’ and ‘Am I an actor?’, and when Stromboli gives Pinocchio a clearly worthless coin, he thanks Stromboli and says: ‘I’ll give it to my father’. It is worth noting that Italians were not keen on Disney’s characterization of Stromboli, different as it was from that in the novel, regarding it as a negative stereotype of the Italian immigrant to the U.S. Furthermore, Paolo Lorenzini, Collodi’s nephew, tried, unsuccessfully, to bring an action against Walt Disney through the Italian Foreign Office because of the Americanization of Pinocchio.20 Despite the changes made by Walt Disney, however, Pinocchio is, as usual, a comic hero. He has a miraculous birth, confronts trials and risks death. We also see here the quest for the father and three metamorphoses instead of four: from puppet on strings to puppet without strings, from puppet to puppet with donkey’s ears and, finally, from puppet to real boy. At one point in the film, Pinocchio, who has undergone a partial metamorphosis with just donkey’s ears and tail, is informed that Geppetto has been swallowed by a whale and, despite Jiminy Cricket’s advice, very bravely decides to rescue him: ‘JIMINY. “Hey! Where are you going?” PINOCCHIO. “I’m going to find him.” J. “Pinocchio, are you crazy? Don’t you realize he’s in a whale? P. “I’ve got to go to him.” J. “Hey Pinocchio, wait! Listen here, son. This Monstro, I’ve heard of him. He’s a whale of a whale! Why, he swallows whole ships alive”.’ Then there follows a sort of march on the seabed in search of the father that is both heroic and comic. In conclusion, a comparison of Collodi’s text with Disney’s Pinocchio demonstrates that the variables introduced by Disney are explicable within the

168 • Salvatore Consolo historical context in which the cartoon was made, e.g., 1940 and the Second World War, which the U.S. will soon enter, having broken out in Europe. However, in any case the puppet’s heroic essence is unchanged: whatever the target audience or the cultural context in which the cartoon was produced, Pinocchio remains a puppet, albeit an American puppet, who rescues his father Geppetto and deserves his transformation into ‘a real good boy’. Le avventure di Pinocchio by Giannetto Guardone was made in Viareggio immediately after the Second World War and, although finished in 1947, was not distributed due to the bankruptcy of Minerva distributors. The director, a lawyer, was not a professional film-maker. Given the advice offered by Collodi’s nephew Paolo on the screenplay, the fi lm can be seen as the Italian answer to Disney’s American Pinocchio. The puppet is played by Sandro Tolomei, a real boy portraying the free, nonconformist and hyperkinetic hero of Collodi’s pages. Pinocchio’s comic side is evident from the opening of the film when, in the presence of Geppetto and Maestro Ciliegia, still encased in a piece of wood, Pinocchio calls the latter ‘stupid’, causing a quarrel between the two carpenters. There are many other comic episodes in the fi lm, including Pinocchio held in prison and tied to outsize ball and chains, Pinocchio and Lucignolo with donkey’s ears, covering and uncovering them before laughing each other silly and the laughter turning into a bray. The puppet’s heroism is highlighted, and Pinocchio searches again for his father at sea until he finds Geppetto in the whale and rescues him. Branded ‘filmastro’ (bad fi lm), this fi lm is distinguished both in its fidelity to Collodi’s novel and emphasis on comic characters and situations.21 Guardone’s work also provides further confirmation of the hypothesis put forward by Lévi-Strauss. In transferring to the screen there is no change to Pinocchio’s connotative aspect, linked to his heroic essence; on the other hand, the denotative variables are both scarce and irrelevant, given Guardone’s intention to be as faithful as possible to the original. ‘By the end of the 1970s the RAI channels were aware of the cultural capital that could accrue from co-producing quality cinema, allowing the production until the mid-1980s of films whose subjects were not considered commercial enough for film distribution’.22 Among these films was Comencini’s Le avventure di Pinocchio (1972), which highlighted Pinocchio’s metamorphoses as closely linked to the heroism of the character, and used them as a structural motif: the basic idea of both director and screenwriter, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, was for the Blue Fairy (played by Gina Lollobrigida) to transform Pinocchio from real boy to puppet each time he deserves punishment.23 This means that Andrea Balestri, a seven-year-old boy, who today works as a dustman, plays Pinocchio and faces ten metamorphoses, instead of four as in Collodi’s original.24 Again, the puppet’s heroism is an invariable. After many adventures, both positive and negative, the quest for the father takes centre stage. In order to rescue him, Pinocchio throws himself into the rough sea and, after being swallowed by the shark, works out what to do to be safe and sound. Two sequences

The Myth of Pinocchio • 169 are particularly significant: Pinocchio diving into the rough sea to reach his father and everyone on the quay crossing themselves, believing both father and son are about to die. Pinocchio and Geppetto are inside the shark (as in the original novel), who is sleeping with its mouth open because of a cold. At night-time Pinocchio sits in the open mouth to watch the starry sky, and one night he persuades Geppetto to escape with the help of a tuna fish who will carry them to the shore. It is Pinocchio, a boy of seven, who plans their escape and gives orders to his father: ‘Vieni, vieni via’ (‘Come, come along’). Like a hero, he takes control. It can be seen, therefore, that Comencini’s fi lm confirms Lévi-Strauss’s hypothesis. The essence of Pinocchio is unaltered, and only a few denotative aspects, linked, for example, to the interpretation of the actors (including Gina Lollobrigida and Nino Manfredi as Geppetto) or to Comencini’s stylistic choice to expand the theme of metamorphosis or emphasize realism, are altered. The myth of Pinocchio transcends the historic moment in which the fi lm was made. Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio, discussed in detail in Chapter 9, was the most expensive Italian fi lm ever made, with a forty-five million US dollar budget and noisy fanfare to market the fi lm both in the U.S. and in Italy. After Life is Beautiful, Benigni gained worldwide popularity and success, especially in the U.S. where he became a sort of hero, often guest-appearing on evening shows on American television. Nevertheless, his Pinocchio was a complete flop in the U.S., proving that cultural products designed for success worldwide can be unsuccessful. In this particular instance it can be presumed that American viewers found a Pinocchio played by an adult disturbing, even a popular actor such as Benigni, due to the cultural capital invested in Pinocchio deriving from Disney’s fi lm, unlike Italian viewers: ‘going back to original elements of Collodi’s famous story and shorn of the cute and saccharine accretions of the 1940s version, Benigni’s fi lm has clearly been considered too strange and idiosyncratic for international consumpion’.25 Nonetheless, the fi lm keeps alive the myth of Pinocchio in its heroic essence. The puppet is undeniably a hero, with a magical birth in winter and multiple adventures including, once again, the dive into rough seas to rescue his father. Unlike Comencini’s Pinocchio, however, Benigni’s is more of a comic hero, a sort of hero-clown. For instance, the rock Pinocchio dives from is not high, but comically low. This is not to say that Benigni’s characterization lacks more straightforward heroic traits, which are indeed evident in the final part of the fi lm, when Pinocchio makes superhuman efforts in order to support his father, by then turned selfish and vain. It is through such virtues that Pinocchio gains his last metamorphosis from puppet into real boy. Being a human boy means normality and a consequent loss from the puppet’s personality. The final sequence also reveals Benigni’s most original contribution to the myth of Pinocchio: as ‘good boy’ wearing a blue suit demonstrating his normality, Pinocchio goes to school. He is a shadow of the old puppet, clad in

170 • Salvatore Consolo an old dress decorated with paper flowers, following a blue butterfly in freedom through the beautiful Tuscan landscape. The meaning is evident: symbol of divine freedom, the old Pinocchio should not die out. It seems evident from the analysis and observations above that all the considered fi lms fully grasp, even if through their specific cinematographic language, the semantic value of Collodi’s novel. They do not substantially change its deep meaning. All the fi lms on Pinocchio, in fact, are drawn from Collodi’s book, and Pinocchio the hero is unchanged. It is merely the typology of his representation that changes, the denotative aspects transformed in the transition from Collodi’s pages to the screen. There is no change in connotative meaning, i.e., the heroic life of the protagonist: his mysterious birth and existential journey through life, the trials he undergoes, his death and acquisition of knowledge and of a sense of duty. These aspects are unalterable because myths are beyond the language of their representation, exactly as Lévi-Strauss suggests. Because of the mythological meaning of Collodi’s text, Antamoro and other fi lm-makers featuring Pinocchio understood what Hjelmslev calls the ‘purport’, Pinocchio’s archetypal essence. Their fi lms, compared with the novel, are a little like glass bottles of varied colours, each containing the same water. In the words of the famous scholar: ‘Purport remains, each time, substance for a new form, and has no possible existence except through being substance for one form or another’.26 In short, there is a mythological dimension to Pinocchio and what happened to the famous puppet is what happened to the myth in the classical world: myths are narrated and renarrated. They do not exist in a final version, but instead in a corpus layered into possible variations. These variations can modify and enhance the myth, but only partially: the gist is always the same, like an archetype, and we are always able to find a common denominator among the varied versions of the same myth. Collodi’s Pinocchio demanded, and demands, alternative texts, and fi lms on Pinocchio can be seen as a fascinating variation on this seductive and phantasmagorical myth. Notes 1 2

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 210. See Giuseppe Flores d’Arcais, ed., Pinocchio sullo schermo e sulla scena. Atti del convegno internazionale di studio del 8–9–10 novembre 1990 (Scandicci: La Nuova Italia, 1994). For a historical overview of fi lm adaptations from Collodi’s Le avventure di Pinocchio (Antamoro, 1911; Amadoro, 1930; Ofuj, 1932; Attanasi, 1935; Bachini-Verdini, 1936; Ptusko, 1936; Walt Disney, 1940; Guardone, 1947; Ivanov-Babicenko, 1959; Gossens, 1964; Cenci, 1972; Comencini, 1972; Benigni, 2002); see Ernesto Laura, “Pinocchio nel cinema mondiale: una panoramica”, in Pinocchio schermo, ed. Flores d’Arcais, 11–17. A list of seventeen fi lms on Pinocchio—Pinoc-

The Myth of Pinocchio • 171 chio by Roberto Benigni (2002) and Pinocchio 3000 by Daniel Robichaud (2004) need to be added here—is in Stefano Annibaletto, “Contributo bibliografico”, in Pinocchio schermo, ed. Flores d’Arcais, 179–80. 3 A Chapter in Vittorio Spinazzola’s Pinocchio & C (Milan: Il Saggiatore 1997), 47–97, is significantly entitled “Un burattino eroicomico”. For an opposite view, see Piero Guarducci, “Pinocchio sullo schermo”, in Omaggio a Pinocchio. Quaderni della Fondazione ‘Collodi’ (Florence: Industria Tipografica Fiorentina, 1967), ed. Luigi Volpicelli, 55–59 (56): ‘Le avventure del burattino perdono così ogni contatto col mondo mitico [ . . . ]. Pinocchio nasce, al contrario, su di un terreno che ha, quale fondamento, la storia—non come mito—ma storia di uomini.’ 4 On the heroic traits of a literary character, see David Adams Leeming, The World of Myth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). Particularly on the varied stages of the heroic journey and the archetypal role of fi lm characters, see Stuart Voytila, Myth and Movies. Discovering the Mythic Structure of 50 Unforgettable Films (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 1999). It is not an easy task to give an exhaustive definition of the meaning of myth. For a close examination of the critical debate regarding nature and function of myths, see Richard Caldwell, The Origin of the Gods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), esp. 3–17. 5 On the miraculous birth of Pinocchio, see Gian Luca Pierotti et al., C’era una volta un pezzo di legno. La simbologia di Pinocchio (Milan: Emme, 1981), esp. Mino Gabriele, “Il mito e lo specchio”, 43–46 and Umberto Tadini, “Il legno delle metamorfosi”, 53–58. See also Giorgio Manganelli, Pinocchio: un libro parallelo (Milan: Adelphi, 2002), 11–32 and Pietro Citati, “Il vangelo di Pinocchio secondo Benigni”, La Repubblica, October 11, 2002: 1 and 44. Citati compares Collodi’s book with various films and focuses on the birth of the puppet. 6 Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio, in Carlo Collodi, Opere, ed. Daniela Marcheschi (Milan: Meridiani Mondadori, 1995), 359–526 (385). Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, trans. and ed. Ann Lawson Lucas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 23. 7 Collodi, Pinocchio (1995), 374. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 14. 8 Collodi, Pinocchio (1995), 398. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 36. 9 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 83. 10 The adventures linked to the Cat and the Fox and those to the Land of Toys certainly belong to the first type of adventures: Pinocchio acts, driven by his desire either for riches or fun. In contrast, he acts in an altruistic way when he becomes anxious about Eugenio, who is wounded, when he rescues the dog Alidoro and again when, in the end, he works hard to support his old father. An adventure sui generis is the one involving Mangiafoco where Pinocchio proves to be generous and altruistic because he is ready to sacrifice himself to save Arlecchino’s life, even though the initial reason is simple amusement.

172 • Salvatore Consolo 11 See Emilio Servadio, “Psicologia e simbolismo nelle Avventure di Pinocchio”, in Studi collodiani: Atti del I convegno internazionale: Pescia, 5–7 Ottobre 1974, ed. Anon ([Pistoia]: Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia e Pescia, 1976), 573–79. 12 Before his metamorphosis into a donkey, Pinocchio is compared to the following animals: hare (369), kid (370), leveret (370), viper (381), squirrel (394), roe deer (421), greyhound (430), suckling lamb (434), frog (465) and bird (504) (see Collodi, Pinocchio (1995). These comparisons with animals are connected with the fable tradition where animals illustrate positive or negative human characteristics. Collodi features these comparisons to provide an immediate and profound analogy. 13 Spinazzola, Pinocchio, 78–80. The Blue Fairy is not symbolic of a traditional mother figure. What real mother would have pretended to be dead and buried in a tomb where the funerary epigraph exposes her son-brother as guilty? Cruelly kind towards Pinocchio, her behaviour suggests instead the identification with a pedagogical idea based on the proverb ‘you learn from your mistakes’. 14 Roman Jakobson, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” (1959), in Language in Literature, ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1987), 428–54 (429). 15 See E. Nelson Hayes and Tanya Hayes, eds., Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Anthropologist as Hero (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [1970]), 49–50: ‘According to Lévi-Strauss, the best method of ascertaining the meaning of a myth is to assemble together all the variant forms in which it has been recorded, regardless of their date or source. What we are looking for is the fundamental essence, and this essence, according to Lévi-Strauss, is a matter of logical structure that will persist throughout all the diversities of form by which the myth story has been perpetuated’. For an analysis of the relationship between myth and story, with references to Propp’s hypothesis, see Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale deux (Djion: Plon, 1973), 152–57. Brian McFarlane also proposes a distinction between what may be transferred from one medium to another and what necessarily requires adaptation—see Brian McFarlane, Novel to Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 25: in the case of a mythological text ‘the mythic elements at work in a novel seem likely to be transferable to the screen since their life is independent of whatever manifestation they are found in, resistant as they are to even the worst translation.’ In conclusion, a sort of intersemiotic translation would always be possible. 16 For a link with Buffalo Bill, see Laura, “Pinocchio cinema”, 12. For Antamoro paying homage to American adventure fi lms, see Cristina Bragaglia, Il piacere del racconto (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1993), 19. De Berti thinks the western location of Pinocchio is connected with the exotic location of the travel genre—see Raffaele De Berti, “Il Pinocchio cinematografico di Giulio Antamoro”, in Le avventure di Pinocchio, ed. Isabella Pezzini and Paolo Fabbri (Rome: Meltemi, 2002), 157–73 (166). For a detailed analysis

The Myth of Pinocchio • 173

17 18 19

20

21

22 23 24

25

26

of the fi lm, see Giacomo Manzoli and Roy Menarini, “Pinocchio comico muto”, Fotogenia 4–5 (1997/1998): 211–22. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 80. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 102 and 150 respectively. See Gianni Quilici, “Sul Pinocchio Cinematografico”, UICS Studia 3–4 (June–December 1988): 18–20. For an analysis of Walt Disney’s Pinocchio and of the fi lm’s background and relation between Disney and Collodi, see Robin Allan, Walt Disney and Europe (London: John Libbey & Company, 1999), particularly Chapter 4: “The dark world of Pinocchio”, 67–90. A short anthology of positive opinions voiced by American critics is in Richard Schickel, The Disney Version (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 1997), 234–35. See also Eric Smoodin, Disney Discourse (New York: Routledge, 1994), 218: ‘By 1940 Disney’s reputation as a producer of quality films was fully established, especially the two feature films, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, had been widely acclaimed by the critics.’ News of the intention to bring an action against Walt Disney is reported by Leonard Maltin, The Disney Films (London: Thomas Nelson Crown, 1973), 37. On the legal aspects of the copyright of Collodi’s novel bought by Walt Disney, see Maria Jole Menicucci, “Pinocchio spettacolo. Dagli archivi della casa editoriale Giunti”, in Pinocchio schermo, ed. Flores d’Arcais, 150–51. The definition is Laura’s, “Pinocchio cinema”, 15. For an analysis of characters, see Piermarco Aroldi, “Tradurre è un po’ tradire”, in La fabbrica di Pinocchio. Le avventure di un burattino nell’industria culturale, ed. Gianfranco Bettetini (Rome: RAI, 1994), 55–56. Mary Wood, Italian Cinema (London: Berg, 2005), 23. See Suso Cecchi D’Amico, “Introduzione”, in Lo spazio delle meraviglie, ed. Roberto Fedi (Milan: Banca Toscana, 1990), 13. Metamorphoses in the fi lm are listed as follows: (a) from piece of speaking wood to puppet; (b) from puppet to real boy thanks to the Blue Fairy; (c) from real boy to puppet; (d) from real boy to puppet on Mangiafoco’s theatre stage; (e) from puppet to real boy when Mangiafoco orders Pinocchio to be found and burned; (f) from real boy to puppet when Pinocchio is hanged; (g) from puppet to real boy in the Fairy’s house; (h) from real boy to donkey in the Land of Toys; (i) from donkey to puppet when Pinocchio is thrown into the sea; (j) from puppet to real boy inside the shark-whale. Wood, Cinema, 51. Another aspect the Americans bitterly criticized was dubbing into English by American actors with very bad synchronisation between images and sound. Yet, even the original version in Italian with English subtitles was unsuccessful. For an anthology of negative opinions by American critics, see Rebecca West, “Benigni’s Pinocchio, or the Tale of a Failed National Icon”, in Beyond Life is Beautiful: Comedy and Tragedy in the Cinema of Roberto Benigni, ed. Grace Russo (Leicester: Troubador, 2005), 131–51 (141–42). Louis Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (Madison, NJ: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), 52.

Chapter Nine The Watchful Mirror Pinocchio’s Adventures Re-created by Roberto Benigni Salvatore Consolo

When the subject of a film is not original but derived from a work of literary fiction, then, a problem of creative dependency of the former upon the latter may arise. For this reason, a director of the calibre of Federico Fellini used to remark that, whenever cinema resorts to a literary text, the result will always be, at best, a transposition of an illustrative kind, which coincides with the original in purely documentary details: the plot, the situations, the characters: in other words a whole series of data which our daily observation of reality or newspaper reading could supply with more stimulating richness and immediacy. Why, then, turn to literature in order to make a film? Fellini thought that even authoritative directors were prompted to make films based on literary works because of commercial reasons: ‘Casanova, come il Satyricon, il Decamerone, l’Orlando Furioso appartengono a quel tipo di film che si presume allettino i produttori e che quindi rappresentano una notevole moneta di scambio: io realizzo il Satyricon, ma tu, produttore, poi mi lasci fare Roma’. (‘Casanova, as much as Satyricon, Decameron, Orlando Furioso, are that sort of film that entice producers and therefore are precious currency: I make a Satyricon, but then, you producer, allow me to make Roma.’)1 Yet, even Fellini, before dying in 1993 at the peak of his celebrity, when, in other words, he was able to impose his artistic choices on his producers, was planning to film his own version of Pinocchio, and we even know of an audition where Pinocchio was played by Roberto Benigni.2 This bizarre behaviour on the part of a great director would appear, then, to be a contradiction considering his opinion on fi lms taken from literature, but maybe this is not the case. Fellini could, in fact, have kept the mytho175

176 • Salvatore Consolo logical dimension of Collodi’s text and the universal themes it deals with very firmly in his mind: life, death, upbringing, friendship, beauty. Pinocchio could be rewritten for the screen, his story reformulated, maybe with some variations, a little like poets in the ancient world used to do with myths. In other words, as Pinocchio belongs to the category of cultural archetypes, a fi lm relating his story would quite possibly become part of a cultural tradition which transcends the contingent value of the fi lm and maybe even of the literary source text.3 Benigni crafted a very ambitious fi lm, which he ‘spiritually’ inherited from Fellini, and we must point out right away that its relationship with Collodi’s original text is both intimate and paradoxical, as is clearly exemplified by a scene, apparently of secondary importance, but of high symbolic significance. The stray dog Medoro looks at himself in the mirror, seeing but failing to recognize himself and, frightened, cries to the Fairy: ‘Signora fata, c’è un vecchio qui!’ (‘Lady Fairy, there’s an old man here!’) And the Fairy replies: ‘Medoro, quello sei tu’. (‘It’s you, Medoro.’) Disheartened, Medoro concludes: ‘Gli specchi non sono più quelli di una volta’. (‘Mirrors are no longer what they used to be.’) If Collodi’s Pinocchio were to look at himself in the mirror and see an image of Benigni’s Pinocchio, he would not, at fi rst, recognize himself, just as happens to Medoro. However, if the cause of this is due to the passing of time in the stray dog’s case, for Pinocchio it is a different matter. What makes Benigni’s Pinocchio apparently different is, in fact, the variable of cinematographic transformation, which the fi lm realizes through the specific nature of its narrative. In practice, this consists of the selection of actors, their manner of playing their part, the set, the type of framing of each scene, their duration, the editing: that is to say a number of decisions depending to a large extent on the director. This variable constitutes in essence the denotative aspect of a fi lm, but, considering the connection between form and content, it contributes to determining the interpretation of the literary text in the fi lm, and therefore it also affects the semantic aspect. A fi lm adaptation will therefore always be a semantic adaptation of the literary text it is taken from, beyond the wills of the director and the screenplay writer, because of the specific nature of cinematic language and, even in cases where the res between cinema and literature is the same, the change in signum implies in itself a change in meaning. This is not a new concept: while analysing Le journal d’un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest), Bresson’s adaptation of the novel by Bernanos of the same title, Bazin had intuitively concluded as long ago as the 1950s that fi lmic transposition generates a multiplication of the sense of the source text. There is, however, an important exception. According to a theory ascribed to Lévi-Strauss, mythological content is, in practice, capable of only slight modification in translation from one language into another and, if we consider adaptation as a sort of intersemiotic translation, it would follow that, in re-creating Pinocchio, Benigni cannot substantially alter the

The Watchful Mirror • 177 content of the original story because this is an integral part of the myth.4 Borrowing from Chatman we can, in other words, assert that Pinocchio’s story does not substantially change. The cinematic discourse may change and Pinocchio be apparently different, but he always remains himself, just like Medoro the dog.5 This Chapter therefore aims to investigate and pinpoint exactly the nature of this variable of cinematographic transformation and provide, in the fi rst instance, a rigorous analysis of Benigni’s work, paying particular attention to the different signifying function employed in the fi lm compared with Collodi’s book, and with particular reference to the following issues: narrative structure, presentation of characters, time and space, soundtrack and point of view. The purpose of this analysis is not to confi rm the validity of Lévi-Strauss’s theoretical position, which I verified elsewhere, but rather investigate the creative process and establish whether Benigni’s work brings into existence a framework of formal equivalence when compared to Collodi’s novel, thus becoming a ‘watchful mirror’ to the profound meaning of the book. In conclusion, I will formulate a hypothesis to explain why Benigni’s fi lm did not have the expected public and critical reception, particularly in the U.S., and was even generally stigmatized as ‘worst fi lm of the year 2002’.

The Narrative Structure Collodi’s novel has an open narrative structure, based on a linear succession of adventures faced by Pinocchio when he leaves his home environment, be it his father’s small and squalid hovel or the Fairy’s more welcoming house. It is a simple structure, where the sectioning of the plot derives from the original idea of the novel, a popular serial for youngsters published in twentysix instalments in the magazine Giornale per i bambini (Children’s Journal) between July 7, 1881, and January 25, 1883. The structure of the cinematographic discourse emerges very clearly from the breakdown of sequences listed in the appendix. If we compare the structure of the fi lm to that of Collodi’s novel, as already defined in the Chapter titles, it is obvious that there are no substantial changes. The few differences are of three kinds essentially: first narrative explanation of what was only hinted at by Collodi. The first two sequences of the fi lm are only apparently extraneous to the novel. In their place, Collodi simply wrote: ‘Non so come andasse, ma il fatto gli è che questo pezzo di legno capitò nella bottega di un vecchio falegname’. (‘I don’t know how it happened, but the fact is that one fine day this piece of wood appeared in the workshop of an old carpenter’).6 In these opening sequences Benigni explains what happened before, with a kind of amplification, precisely as in classical times writers of different eras added details to a myth in order to explain it and make it more plausible.

178 • Salvatore Consolo Second, Benigni excludes a number of characters and adventures. The episodes of the snake, the dog Alidoro and the green fisherman are missing, but taking the serial feature into account, the main structure is not at all changed. Maestro Ciliegia disappears: a character who was, however, marginal in the text and his sole function was to give Geppetto the piece of wood as a present. This stresses a realization of Pinocchio’s elective choice: having Geppetto as father even before being born. Third, amplification of a character’s importance, attributing to him actions that are absent from the text or carried out by other characters, occurs in the case of Lucignolo. Lucignolo only appears towards the end of the novel, when Pinocchio has to write invitations to the party designed to sanction his transformation into a child; however, Lucignolo leads him astray by persuading Pinocchio to leave with him for the Land of Toys. With the obvious intention of stressing the theme of friendship, Lucignolo has a bigger role in Benigni’s fi lm. This is why we keep coming across him in places where there is no trace of him in Collodi’s text: the cell together with Pinocchio, then, when out of prison, the henhouse he steals from, while in Collodi the theft is carried out by martens (see sequences 13 and 22).

The Characters In the novel, characters demonstrate exemplary and paradigmatic personalities, gradually forming a realistic and true-to-life catalogue of vices and virtues, following an ethical bifurcation that has its origins in the world of the fable. It is not by chance that anthropomorphic animals are themselves characters, and even the protagonist, Pinocchio, is continually compared to animals. This is precisely because in the Italian fable tradition, which has its origins in the classical world, it is not only Man who is placed in an intermediate position in the axis between animals and gods, but the animals, seen as creatures which are morphologically different but at the same time similar to us, well exemplify human vices and qualities. Between Man and animal there is continuity and discontinuity, a limit, which can sometimes be thrown into question by possible metamorphoses, just as we see happening in Collodi’s work.7 In his dual nature, however, Pinocchio is the only character in the novel to exhibit a conflict and inner maturing process. He is, therefore, the only three-dimensional character, according to Forster’s well-known categorization, while all the other characters are types or two-dimensional figures who remain substantially unchanged throughout the story.8 However, neither three-dimensional characters nor types can magically be transformed into the actors of a fi lm. In the journey from literary text to fi lm a transformation is in fact necessary, consistently with the diversity of cinematographic language, which communicates with its audience, as is well known, not only

The Watchful Mirror • 179 with words, but also and especially with images. The character in a fi lm is seen rather than described with words, and therefore the actor selection is fundamentally important. Rather as happens to real people, one’s first opinion of a character, rightly or wrongly, is based precisely on physical features and clothing. Personality traits, on the other hand, can be captured fully only in the course of the fi lm, since they depend on more complex elements interacting with one other, such as dialogue, patterns of behaviours, gestures and body language. Pinocchio was played by Roberto Benigni, who was also the director, and it must be said straightaway that deciding on an adult actor who behaves like a child, a choice not only misunderstood, but also unquestionably stigmatized by some US critics, is, on closer examination, neither absurd nor altogether unfaithful to Collodi’s text.9 In Collodi’s text, Pinocchio’s age is uncertain. The coach taking Pinocchio and Lucignolo to the Land of Toys is full of ‘ragazzetti fra gli otto e i dodici anni’ (‘little children from eight to twelve years old’). The Land of Toys is populated with children: ‘i più vecchi avevano 14 anni: i più giovani ne avevano 8 appena.’ (‘The oldest were 14; the youngest were just 8.’)10 Elsewhere, however, Pinocchio opposes his dialectically antithetical opinion to that of the Fairy, who wants to send him to school because it is never too late to get an education: ‘ormai per andare a scuola mi pare un po’ tardi’ (‘by now it’s a bit late for me to go to school’).11 Pinocchio would then appear to have passed normal school age and, in this case, no longer perceives himself as a child, but, at most, as an adolescent, even a sort of mature student.12 Having reached the age of fifty in 2002 and therefore neither child nor adolescent, Benigni behaves a little as if he were so, distilling all ages in himself, capturing the strong symbolic essence of the character, as well as relying on Collodi’s lack of precise age identification. This is reminiscent of the Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli’s ‘young boy’: that is to say, of the potential desire for freedom and spontaneity, repressed and controlled in adults, but present in children in inverse proportion to their age.13 Here is, then, the theme of play and carefree wandering, quite rightly underlined by the fi lm. In other words, Benigni-Pinocchio is supposed to represent the Pinocchio asleep in all of us who waits to be awakened in order to perceive the reality around us with different eyes, transfiguring it. And in this ideal world there is no place for work, but only for enjoyment and wandering. The only job Pinocchio would like to have is, in fact, in Collodi’s exact words ‘quello di mangiare, bere, dormire, divertirmi e fare dalla mattina alla sera la vita del vagabondo.’ (‘Eating, drinking, sleeping, and enjoying myself from morn till night, and living the life of Riley.’)14 Here is Benigni—the child, in his white suit with red flowers and pointed hat, carrying on in a parallel with Pascoli, expressing himself somewhat like Giovanni Pascoli’s ‘young boy’. As he does not accept the rules of social life, he certainly cannot express himself using standardized and gram-

180 • Salvatore Consolo matically codified Italian: his regressions to a pregrammatical, essentially phono-symbolic phase are constant, where dialect expressions or semantically mangled terms are prevalent. At other times, however, his utterances contain postgrammatical expressions, with terms of literary derivation, a clear evidence of being an adult.15 As far as Pinocchio’s other traits in common between book and film, it must be said first of all that the puppet always runs. This hyperkinesis is a further instance of modernity and depth of character: running, jumping and fast movements in general represent existential restlessness and intellectual curiosity.16 Pinocchio is aggressive, capricious, impertinent, prone to swift mood changes, a liar, fastidious, naïve and a braggart, but he also has many positive qualities: intellectual curiosity, generosity, altruism, courage, kindness of heart and spirit of sacrifice. All these positive qualities and faults are stressed in the film, but only when the positive qualities become dominant will the final transformation take place. In the film, the character’s strong symbolic value is underlined by a variation in the conclusion: when Pinocchio has finally been turned into a good boy as Collodi wants, the shadow of the old puppet does not remain inanimate on a chair, but lives once again and runs, chasing the blue butterf ly in a charming and idealized hillside landscape, where colours are much more vivid than in reality. All other characters in the fi lm are, as mentioned already, types or models of exemplary behaviour and embody functions as illustrated in the following table inspired by Greimas’s ‘actantial’ typology: Sender Fairy

Object Receiver Pinocchio—the good boy Spectators, especially adults

Helpers Talking Cricket Geppetto Fairy Mangiafoco Medoro

Subject Pinocchio—the puppet

Opponents Cat and Fox Lucignolo Little Man Judge Ringmaster

Played by Carlo Giuffré, Geppetto is a fairly selfish father who wants a son and whose motives are, therefore, not at all disinterested but rather follow a ‘synallagmatic’ logic: he wants ‘a stick for his old age’ and is even prepared to sacrifice himself, provided there is a prospect for gain. Another characteristic of his is his vanity, as shown by his yellow wig, which cheeky Pinocchio takes off his head as soon as he is born. In the fi lm the character’s vanity and selfishness are highlighted in the concluding scenes, where Geppetto-Giuffré thinks of himself alone and of the nice waistcoat he will be able to buy with

The Watchful Mirror • 181 the money earned by Pinocchio, regardless of the stress voluntarily endured at work by his young son. The Blue Fairy, Nicoletta Braschi, the only female character both in the fi lm and in the book, is certainly not the hypotyposis of a traditional mother-figure but a sort of hypostasis of a modern demiurgic divinity, in the fi lm at least, where her importance is amplified, making her the prime mover of the whole series of events. The Fairy knows everything, sees everything, from the beginning of the fi lm right up to the end, whereas in Collodi’s novel she appears for the first time almost halfway through the book, when Pinocchio is chased by the assassins. Furthermore, throughout the fi lm the Fairy is surrounded by light and has blue hair, at times wearing a crown of flowers on her head like one of Botticelli’s Madonnas, at times veiled, whereas in the novel she appears in different guises: a beautiful girl with blue hair, a good woman with two jugs of water, a beautiful lady with a gold necklace or a beautiful young bleating goat with a blue coat.17 The common mark of recognition between fi lm and novel is the Fairy’s blue hair, long and wavy in the fi lm’s case. The Talking Cricket belongs to the group of animals displaying essentially human behavioural traits, but here the adjective ‘talking’ qualifies his main function which is talking to Pinocchio in order to put him on his guard against dangers and, when Pinocchio ignores him, reproach him post factum. The Cricket belongs to the magical world of the Fairy: once killed with a hammer blow by Pinocchio, he reappears in the book as a talking ghost, while in the fi lm he is mysteriously identical to how he was before dying. ‘Ma non eri morto?’ (‘Didn’t you die?’), Pinocchio-Benigni asks him, but gets no answer. However, the tone taken by the Cricket in the book is of a dogmatist, and his warnings often sound like a disquieting prophecy. In the fi lm, the Cricket is played by Peppe Barra, a Neapolitan comedian who manages to make this rather supercilious Cricket seem nice. Arriving at the final appearance of the Cricket was not easy. Barra summed up the genesis of his character as follows: Ci sono stati due, tre giorni di prove trucco, molto faticose; niente andava bene, le protesi, le controprotesi, le antenne sull’occhio, le antenne dietro le orecchie, le antenne di qua, le antenne di là . . . fino a che Roberto Benigni mi ha visto e mi ha detto ‘Sei troppo brutto, io odio gli insetti, ti schiaccerei e moriresti subito! E invece mi piacerebbe che tu fossi un Grillo simpatico.’ E allora ritorna a fare il trucco, prove, controprove. (We had two or three days of make-up rehearsal. This was exhausting, nothing fitted, prosthetics, counter-prosthetics, antennae on my eyes, antennae behind my ears, antennae here, antennae there . . . until Roberto Benigni saw me and said: ‘You look too ugly, I hate insects, I’d squash and kill you straightaway! And yet I’d like you to play a funny Cricket.’ So back I went to make-up, rehearsals, counter-rehearsals.)18

182 • Salvatore Consolo Peppe Barra enacted this Cricket wearing a simple nineteenth-century costume with antennae on his head. Thanks to special effects created in London, Barra acted alone against a green background, so that he appears to be tiny compared with the other characters and his surroundings, whether a rose petal or tomato.19 In order to give life to the character of the puppeteer Mangiafoco, the five-metre tall good ogre, actor Franco Iavarone also had to act against green screens, undergoing several hours of make-up. However, once the job was done, Iavarone declared himself satisfied with the result. Mangiafoco is described thus by Collodi: ‘such a huge, ugly brute that it was terrifying just looking at him. His beard was as black as a blot of ink, and it was so long that it reached from his chin right down to the floor; needless to say, as he walked along, he kept treading on it. His mouth was as wide as a kitchen stove, his eyes looked like two lanterns with the flame burning behind red glass’.20 But Mangiafoco is good natured: he ‘appeared to be a terrifying man [ . . . ] but deep down he wasn’t a bad man.’21 Thanks to special effects and a gaze radiating goodness, Iavarone created a perfectly credible Mangiafoco: a gigantic and frightening appearance in oxymoronic combination with a heart so tender that he easily obtains from Pinocchio, both in the book and fi lm, a kiss on the tip of his nose. The last of the characters with the function of helper is the stray dog Medoro, played by Mino Bellei and transformed by Danilo Donati into the Fairy’s coach driver. This closely follows Collodi’s original: Un magnifico Can-barbone che camminava ritto sulle gambe di dietro, tale e quale come se fosse un uomo [ . . . ] vestito da cocchiere in livrea di gala. Aveva in capo un nicchettino a tre punte gallonato d’oro, una parrucca bianca coi riccioli che gli scendevano giù per il collo, una giubba color di cioccolata coi bottoni di brillanti e con due grandi tasche [ . . . ] un paio di calzoni corti di velluto cremisi, le calze di seta, gli scarpini scollati. (a magnificent Poodle-dog who walked upright on his back legs, just like a man [ . . . ] a coachman in full-dress livery. He wore a three-cornered tricorn hat on his head, trimmed with gold braid, with a white curly wig which fell to his collar, a chocolate-coloured jacket with diamond buttons and two deep pockets [ . . . ] a pair of knee-breeches made of crimson velvet, silk hose, court shoes.)22 Unlike what happens in the book, in the fi lm Medoro has a voice: he talks to the Fairy, and one of his distinguishing features is, as well as his vanity, his short-sightedness. I believe this is an expedient allowing the director to play with lights, as that short-sighted driver’s every request to the Fairy for light, when driving the coach at night, is heeded.

The Watchful Mirror • 183 Moving onto the group of characters with the function of opponents, these are characterized by negative traits but to different degrees. The Cat and the Fox are dangerous but likeable cheats, prepared to carry out any wickedness for money, always together because they complement each other: ‘The Fox who was lame leaned on the Cat while walking, and the Cat who was blind was guided by the Fox.’23 Except we discover they are impostors when Pinocchio shows them the five gold coins received from Mangiafoco: ‘At the pleasing sound of that money, the Fox made an involuntary movement, stretching out the leg that appeared to be paralysed, and the Cat opened wide both his eyes like two green lamps; but he hastened to close them again, so much so that Pinocchio did not notice a thing.’24 For these two roles Benigni chose Bruno Arena and Max Cavallari, a successful cabaret double-act known as ‘Fichi d’India’ (Prickly Pears). Arena and Cavallari highlighted effectively a comic expedient already present in Collodi’s text and with a long tradition in the history of comic gags: as if suffering from echolalia, the Cat automatically repeats the Fox’s last words, with exhilaratingly comic outcome. Their make-up is light: a larger than normal nose and facial hair, to accentuate beard and suggest whiskers. Mimicking was an important feature in their performing style: ‘Benigni ci ha fatto improvvisare con tutta la nostra fisicità perché per lui siamo gli ultimi clown.’ (‘Benigni made us improvise with our whole body as he ultimately thought of us as clowns.’)25 Much more dangerous an opponent turns out to be the Little Man, a veritable and successful villain, who, unlike the Cat and the Fox, whose attempted frauds are destined to fail, continues to perpetrate his sinister activity ad infinitum, judging from what we gather from Collodi’s pages: his coach will always transport disobedient, lazy and lying children to the Land of Toys and, once they have been turned into donkeys, his trade will continue uninterrupted. His is a ‘silent, secret, hidden cruelty’, a cruelty originating from the ‘ruthless universe of man’, as argues Bruno Traversetti.26 The role of the Little Man is played in Benigni’s fi lm by Luis Molteni, who is successful in portraying this unctuous and perfidious character exactly as described by Collodi, possibly even making him more hateful to youngsters: ‘Un omino più largo che lungo, tenero e untuoso come una palla di burro, con un visino di melarosa, una bocchina che rideva sempre e una voce sottile e carezzevole, come quella d’un gatto, che si raccomanda al buon cuore della padrona di casa.’ (‘A little man who was wider than he was tall, as soft and unctuous as a pat of butter, with a little red-apple face, an ever-smiling little mouth, and a sweet and gentle voice, like that of a cat winning over the tender-hearted mistress of the house.’) 27 A similarly ruthless character is the Ringmaster: ‘dressed in a black tail-coat, white tights and leather boots which came right up over his knees’,28 who talks like a buffoon and, when the donkey Pinocchio becomes lame, decides to sell him without second thought. Benigni makes the Ringmaster even crueller in his fi lm: the lame donkeyPinocchio must be killed, and Benigni chose actor Alessandro Bergonzoni

184 • Salvatore Consolo due to his ‘physical prowess’, ‘elegance’ and overall suitability to embody fully the frightening nature of this character.29 The simian judge of the court of Sillybillytrap is ‘an aged great ape who was respected for his advanced years, his white beard and especially his gold-rimmed spectacles, without lenses, which he was obliged to wear continually as a result of an inflammation of the eyes which had been troubling him for many years.’30 This judge pronounces the famous sentence against Pinocchio, who had turned to this tribunal precisely to seek justice: ‘This poor fellow has been robbed of four gold coins; seize him, therefore, and cast him into prison at once.’31 In the film the role of judge is played by Corrado Pani who, despite having no spectacles, displays, close-up, an inflammation of the eyes, keeping them half-closed. To make things even funnier and more surreal, Benigni introduces a variant: the ape-judge and the other judges beside him are licking lollipops in the three colours of the Italian flag, which we later learn to have been confiscated from Candle-Wick. Benigni’s allusions to an unjust Italian justice condemning Pinocchio and many other innocent people are obvious. We now come to the last of the opponents: ‘one very close and favourite friend, whose name was Romeo, but everyone called him by the nickname of Candle-Wick, because of his slender figure which was wiry, lean and tall, just like the new wick of a night-light.’32 Pinocchio’s ‘favourite friend’ is a special opponent because he is not a professional cheat, but a wastrel, a rebel, a sort of fallen angel who shows Pinocchio a different way of life with the sincere intention of taking the puppet to heaven, rather than the pit of hell. Candle-Wick / Lucignolo is played by Kim Rossi Stuart, as a sunny and restless, vital character. Like Benigni, Rossi Stuart only apparently plays the part of a child: ‘Non ci siamo certo messi a fare i bambini: sarebbe stato patetico. Abbiamo invece cercato di ritrovare quell’entusiasmo di vivere che è prerogativa dell’infanzia.’ (‘We certainly didn’t want to play children—that would have been pathetic. We rather strove to recapture that joy of living that is childhood’s prerogative.’)33 In conclusion, it is clear from this comparative analysis of the many characters, both three-dimensional characters and types, that in the move from novel to film it is possible to trace systematically some degree of equivalence relating to their physical representation and character traits: the interpretation offered on-screen by individual actors finds precise matching in Collodi’s text.

Time and Space Time and space are substantially indeterminate in Collodi’s novel, as is appropriate for a fairy tale, but they are not simply background: they are rather functional to the construction of Pinocchio as character. On this topic, Spinazzola commented that both characters and space and time ‘appear to be constructed depending on the absolute protagonist. In realizing himself,

The Watchful Mirror • 185 Pinocchio realizes the settings of his enterprises around him as well as the chronological continuum his adventures are part of. [ . . . ] Collodi adapts the space-time coordinates within which the narration is inscribed to the perception of a child-like, and therefore immature, subject.’34 That events take place in Tuscany is never stated explicitly and even if critics agree in observing that Collodi was thinking precisely of the Tuscan landscape, what emerges is rather a sort of Tuscany-world, where descriptive elements are left vague: main street, lane, hedge, embankment, pine trees, oak trees, slopes, brambles, ditches, plain, wood and seaside.35 Spaces outside are potentially dangerous and, as well as harbingers of risky meetings, they are also breeding grounds for Pinocchio to release his natural inclinations: disobedience, laziness, selfishness and the tendency to go wandering off. In other words, the outdoors is a figurative representation of the puppet’s pseudo-anarchic essence, while indoor spaces, be they Geppetto’s humble abode or the Fairy’s white house, represent what Pinocchio must become, developing traits that are contrary to the ones he possesses: obedience, laboriousness, altruism and the willingness to stay put.36 The village where Geppetto’s house is located is never named, but its presence hovers throughout the fi rst half of the novel and represents, just like the house, a safe place, at the margins of which there are two dangerous places: Mangiafoco’s theatre and the wood with the Red Lobster Inn. In the second part of the novel, following Pinocchio’s hanging, we find a very different landscape with strong fable-like connotations, starting with place names: the village of Sillybillytrap, the island of the ‘Busy Bees’ and finally the Land of Toys. Benigni opted to shoot his fi lm in studios in Terni, and Geppetto’s village was re-created artificially, although there is certainly no shortage of ancient hamlets in Italy he could have fi lmed from. This was a deliberate, antirealist decision on his part, also echoed by other outside sequences: Benigni could not fi lm in the real Tuscan landscape because he wanted colours to be stronger. The landscape needed to be retouched artificially. The sky was retouched, so that it was not merely blue, but an absolute blue. As Benigni’s co-script writer Vincenzo Cerami puts it: ‘La ripresa doveva essere scollata dalla realtà per risultare iperreale. Per entrare cioè nel mondo del pinocchiesco’. (‘Our shooting had to be divorced from reality in order for it to look hyperreal, to open the way, that is, to a Pinocchio-like world.’)37 Danilo Donati, the man the film is in memory of, created both external and internal scenes, looking after all aspects of setting: from set colours to buildings. Years of work were required, and Donati’s principle was always adhering to Collodi’s text, aiming to achieve images that mirrored the book. When no precise description was available, it was down to Donati’s original creation, as he himself stated when talking about the Land of Toys.38 Even time settings, which do exist, are as vague as place names and, in reality, suggest a sort of time continuum. When he finds his father in the shark’s belly, Pinocchio, in fact, asks him how long he has been in there: ‘It

186 • Salvatore Consolo must be two years by now, two years, dear Pinocchio, that have felt like two centuries!’39 From Pinocchio’s birth to his becoming a good boy, then, more than two years are supposed to have elapsed, but in fact this period could be centuries or merely days.40 One does not notice the passage of time in the narration, even when it is spelt out, and this is the reason why Benigni decided to move from one sequence to the next mostly by using cuts. Cuts, that is to say a clean transition from one shot to another, allow, in contrast to fade-out, the maintenance of narrative continuity, leaving spatial and temporal connection substantially unaltered. In other words, cuts are technically functional to temporal homogeneity and allow scenes to follow on from one another without chronological pause. Benigni’s film has also sought, therefore, to maintain equivalences in the space / time dimension, bringing an interpretation that is coherent with the text to the screen.

The Soundtrack The soundtrack surely constitutes an important part of cinematographic language and, in continuous interaction with images, contributes to the full realization of a fi lm discourse, carrying both meaning and emotion.41 It consists of three elements: spoken material, music and sounds in general. Dialogue is the aspect of a fi lm’s soundtrack most easily fi nding a precise echo in the source text because, at least theoretically, utterances can be identical to those in the book. In the case of Pinocchio this is precisely the case, in part at least. Benigni and Cerami did choose to keep much of the original text in the fi lm dialogues. This was possible because Collodi’s language, particularly in dialogues, is very close in lexis and syntax to Tuscan, albeit as it was spoken at the end of the nineteenth century. Pure dialect is never used, the syntax is simple and the lexis, though rich, is fairly limited. Castellani Polidori’s critical edition includes an index of frequency of usage, which demonstrates that Collodi used approximately 6,000 words, and only about half of these have one occurrence.42 I have already spoken about Benigni-Pinocchio’s style of expression, and all other characters display, even when their utterances have been modified, the same spontaneity found in Collodi’s text: allocutives, interjections, discourse markers, hesitation, repetition, solecisms, etc. Let’s take the episode at the puppet theatre as an example. Harlequin recognizes Pinocchio in the audience and exclaims: ‘Numi del fi rmamento! Sogno o son desto? Eppure quello laggiù è Pinocchio!’ (‘Divine Providence! Do I dream or do I wake? Yet over yonder that is surely Pinocchio!’).43 In the fi lm there are minimal variations: ‘Numi del firmamento! Son vivo o son desto! Eppure quello laggiù mi sembra un burattino’. (‘Divine Providence! Do I live or do I wake! Yet over yonder that is surely a puppet!’)44 In Collodi’s book Pulcinella / Punchinello cries immediately afterwards: ‘Yes, it’s really Pinocchio!’ while in the fi lm Pulcinella speaks Neapolitan, and so the

The Watchful Mirror • 187 use of a higher register, in itself ironic on Harlequin’s lips and next to Pulcinella’s vernacular speech, takes on a comical connotation in the context of the fi lm.45 Novel and fi lm are not dissimilar, though, and this is only one of many occurrences. As far as music is concerned, this was composed, arranged and directed by Nicola Piovani, who also composed the musical score for Life is Beautiful. From the titles alone of each of the seventeen pieces, all taken from Pinocchio’s world, we gather that Piovani aims to contribute empathically and directly to an understanding of images: The Blue Fairy; The puppet; The Cat and the Fox; Pinocchio’s travels; Lucignolo; The piece of wood ; The Talking Cricket, The misadventures; Pinocchio’s promenade; The Fairy’s kiss; The puppet theatre ; Lucignolo’s death; The Circus; The Land of Toys; Finale; Pinocchio’s song (composed by Benigni, Cerami and Piovani; sung by Benigni); The Fairy’s theme.46 Audiences listen to these pieces almost without noticing because they interact harmonically with images on-screen and other sound effects, and it is also thanks to the music that we arrive at a better understanding of the fi lm not only on an emotional but a conceptual level. The music is, in fact, a contributing element to the signification of dialogue and images, joined together at the editing stage according to precise narrative and dramatic aims. Let’s take, for example, the beginning. A sudden sound fade-out is crossed with indistinct noises, progressively disappearing to make way for Piece A, a sweet and mysterious music. This, in turn, fades out and is crossed with the dialogue between the Fairy and Medoro, which is just as mysterious and uttered in calm tones. Music and dialogue are therefore perfectly integrated and directed towards the same communicative signification, producing the effect that is achieved in literature by the rhetorical device of synaesthesia. Therefore, when in the fourth sequence Geppetto, having realized the puppet he has just created miraculously speaks, exclaims: ‘Ma questo parla!’ (‘This thing speaks!’), we suddenly begin to hear the initial music accompanying the Fairy’s first appearance: we not only see the mystery, we also hear it, so that audiences understand we are in the realms of magic, a fairyland where everything is possible, even talking puppets. Another example is in the second and third sequences. After the Fairy’s appearance and her dialogue with Medoro, the move from first to second sequence happens with a cut: the scene changes and, contextually with the long-shot view of the hamlet, indistinct voices and various noises are heard, including a peal of bells and the squeaking of horse-drawn carts. These noises are joined by Piece F, accompanying the ruinous rolling of the log, vivified by the butterfly and seen in medium-shot, until the scene changes and, with a further cut, we move to a third sequence. Geppetto is seen inside his humble home, and we hear him comment to himself about work on a frame he has just finished, when suddenly we hear a crashing sound at the door. This noise, like many others in the fi lm, is semantically linked to the image shown and, although re-created artificially in a sound lab, comes over realistically.

188 • Salvatore Consolo In conclusion, as can be gathered from my examples above, the fi lm creates a perfect fusion between sound and images, thus achieving full communicative signification, largely faithful to the source text.

The Viewpoint To Collodi’s heterodiegetic and omniscient narrator, with numerous textual inferences addressed to his ‘little readers’, corresponds a focus directed mainly towards the Fairy. She embodies not only magic, but also the sublimation of the narrator’s pedagogical ideals: a strict guide who, despite being able to impose her own will by force, decides to fight the puppet’s stubbornness by making him experience first-hand the consequences of his misguided choices. The Fairy, then, always knows what awaits the puppet and, although other focuses are present in the text, the main viewpoint substantially coincides with her actions and behaviour. Alongside narrative, fi lms carry a narrative strategy. The viewer of Benigni’s fi lm sees a story whose diegesis is constantly checked, sometimes in such subtle and sophisticated fashion that this control can only be spotted after several viewings.47 I therefore believe that, in Pinocchio, we must distinguish between scenes supplying direct and objective information on the world they show, as is the case in the first sequence, and others where the viewpoint is marked. Now, the Fairy’s viewpoint is dominant in the fi lm, even more than it is in Collodi’s novel, and her viewpoint is epistemologically aligned with the viewer’s own. It is as if the Fairy was in a director’s control room and ran the show from there. Her function becomes obvious at the end of sequence 9, when Pinocchio is hung from a large oak tree. Here Benigni opts for parallel editing: scenes of the puppet’s chase and hanging alternate with those showing the Fairy viewing events from a window in her home in the woods, precisely as from a director’s control room. In other words, Pinocchio’s hanging is shot ‘subjectively’ because, as happens in classic cinema, the camera replaces the watching character, e.g., the Fairy. Her function is even more evident in the fi nal scene of the same sequence, when the Fairy is fi lmed, in a long shot, inside her home, and spectators also view Pinocchio hanged through her window. The meaning and dramatic function of the preceding shot, when the Fairy was shot in close-up, as she looked through her window, with a sad, faraway look, emerges, a posteriori, even more clearly. The Fairy-director returns once again in sequence 21, edited in parallel with sequences showing Pinocchio being forced to act as guard dog. Here, too, the Fairy weeps, looking out of her window, and the meaning is obvious. A further confirmation of the Fairy’s important mediating role can be found in those scenes where Pinocchio, in his ceaseless run in pursuit of life, is fi lmed from behind and above, in a long shot which becomes hyperfocal distance.

The Watchful Mirror • 189 We see him thus because the Fairy, who constantly follows the puppet, right up to the end of the fi lm and his, partial at least, transformation into a good boy, sees him this way. The predominant viewpoint both in the fi lm and the novel is, therefore, that of the Fairy, and with greater emphasis in the fi lm, compared with the novel. In conclusion, it seems to me that, through the specificity of cinematographic language, Benigni fully captures the profound value of Collodi’s work, which he then translates intersemiotically onto the screen, looking for cinematic equivalents in each of the formal aspects examined above. However, if Pinocchio is always himself, behind different appearances, why did fi lm critics, particularly US ones, greet Benigni’s work with coldness and, in some cases, with clear hostility?48 Rebecca West maintains that Pinocchio is one of the icons of Italian culture, and the failure of the fi lm is due, essentially, to its ‘Italianness’, to Benigni’s ambition to embody this icon, exporting it all over the world, in opposite fashion to what he does in Life is Beautiful: In Life is Beautiful, Benigni transcended his Italianness and became a universal symbol of paternal sacrifice and of the saving power of inventive humor, in Pinocchio Benigni attempted to embody Italy and its cultural specificity, and became the butt of harsh criticism, seen especially by foreign audiences as a middle-aged man acting silly. The failure of his fi lm is a telling commentary on just how national icons work: when easily understood, without great subtlety, even stereotypical, they are readable and assimilable by the world; when dependent on subtle cultural associations and delicate national emotional resonances, as the ‘authentic’ Pinocchio sought by Benigni is, they may just have to stay at home, appreciated by the cultures in which they were born.49 I cannot fully agree with Rebecca West since even in Italy Benigni’s Pinocchio faced negative critical reception, although Italian critics did not pan the fi lm as they did in the U.S.50 What are, then, the reasons for this failure? Starting from an observation of types of translation equivalences achieved by Benigni and acknowledging that this is a fi lm addressed to adults which, however, is liked above all by children, it is possible to fi nd an answer. I simply believe that adult spectators are unable to view the fi lm with children’s eyes and are therefore unable to capture its fantastic, fablelike aspects, such as carefree and excessive play and fun. These aspects are essential in order to establish an emotional connection and rule out ideas of affectation and artificial exuberance in a fi lm that, just like a watchful mirror, interprets and translates in actual fact the deep meanings of the book. This, however, is not enough to command success, if receiving audiences do not possess, as Bourdieu would say, adequate ‘cultural capital’.51

190 • Salvatore Consolo Appendix. Benigni’s Pinocchio. Sequences Sequence 1. Night-time. In a dream-like, rarefied atmosphere, 200 silverhaired mice arrive pulling a coach of the same colour. Once the coach comes to a halt, the driver, the stray dog Medoro and the Fairy begin a discussion about happiness, life, death and the passing of time. The Fairy breathes over a blue butterfly, symbol of a happy life, and the means through which the piece of wood destined to take the shape of Pinocchio will be awakened to life. S. 2. Daytime. In a village life goes on normally, when the blue butterfly, lifegiving logos, rests on a piece of wood carried with others on a cart. The wood becomes animated, rolling down through the village, furiously and very fast, until it crashes against Geppetto’s door, ready to be born. S. 3. Inside his poor carpenter’s workshop-home Geppetto stops his work and, having found the piece of wood outside his door, brings it in and decides to create a puppet. S. 4. No longer a piece of wood but a puppet, Pinocchio shows immediately his restless nature: he acts naughtily, speaks disrespectfully and runs away from home ‘perché fuori è bellissimo’ (‘because it’s beautiful out there’). Pinocchio’s run through the streets of the ancient village has comically devastating effects, overturning the entire town, until the puppet is stopped by two policemen. Geppetto catches up with them, and the policemen seize him, deeming him responsible for letting the puppet run away from home. Geppetto also has to pay for damages. The puppet’s flight continues in the idyllic landscape of the Tuscan countryside, where he is amazed to discover nests and squirrels. S. 5. Inside Geppetto’s home. Having returned home, Pinocchio is happy with the day he’s had but feels cold and hungry. The Cricket intervenes, inviting Pinocchio to change lifestyle, study and work, but Pinocchio has no desire to go to school, and the only job he fancies having is eating, drinking, sleeping and having fun. Because of the Cricket’s continued reproaches and prophecies about a future ‘in jail or the hospital’, Pinocchio tries to squash him with a hammer and, after various attempts, seems to succeed with a trick. Pinocchio’s mood quickly changes because the puppet is tired, sleepy, hungry and cold. He concludes repetitively: ‘Che brutto paese! Che brutto paese!’ (‘What an awful village! What an awful village!’) S. 6. Outside, snowy weather. Geppetto returns home and, once indoors, sees the puppet asleep in front of the fire with his feet burning. He quickly fetches a bucket of water saving his young son who, having woken up, tells him the misadventures he faced in his absence. The puppet is repentant and full of good intentions: he promises he will be a good boy, go to school and distinguish himself. Geppetto offers him a pear, the old man’s breakfast for the following morning, and we then see him outside,

The Watchful Mirror • 191 still in sacrificial vein, returning home in his shirtsleeves, even though it is snowing, with an alphabet book under his arm so that Pinocchio can get on with his studies. Pinocchio understands his father’s sacrifice and shows his gratitude by repeatedly kissing him. The old man is moved and gives Pinocchio a little cap made of bread. S. 7. Instead of going to school Pinocchio sells the alphabet book for four farthings and goes into the puppet theatre where he meets Mangiafoco, a good ogre who initially wants to eat Pinocchio but then, moved by the puppet’s family predicament, asks Pinocchio to kiss him on the nose and presents him with five gold coins. To move him further, Pinocchio invents a most hilarious story: he has never known his mummy and daddy and is so ‘poverissimissimo’ (‘extra-arch-poor’) that, through sheer hunger, was forced to eat a yellow wig that looked like wheat. Pinocchio is also supposed to have a brother who is ‘morto, risorto, morto due volte e che muore continuamente’ (‘dead, resurrected, twice dead and continually dying’). His father was so poor he could provide for nothing at his brother’s funeral: nobody, no flowers, even the dead man was not there. S. 8. While returning home, Pinocchio meets the Cat and the Fox, and, blinded by the prospect of growing rich in the country of the Barn Owls, buries his coins in the Field of Miracles and dines with the Cat and the Fox at the Red Lobster Inn. S. 9. Midnight. Outside the Inn. The innkeeper tells Pinocchio that the Cat and the Fox are waiting for him under the big oak tree, and Pinocchio sets off. The Talking Cricket appears and tries in vain to put the puppet on his guard. Disguised as murderers, the Cat and the Fox chase Pinocchio and, after a long hunt, catch and hang him from the oak tree. S. 10. The Fairy, having witnessed Pinocchio’s hanging from the window of her home without intervening, orders the coach driver Medoro to save Pinocchio. She then looks after Pinocchio, although he is at first reluctant, and he recovers. Questioned by the Fairy about what happened, Pinocchio lies and his nose grows. Only when he tells the truth is he forgiven. S. 11. Pinocchio goes to meet Geppetto but, on the way, bumps into the Cat and the Fox and lets them trick him once again: he buries his gold coins in the Field of Miracles, but, on his way back, after a walk to the town of Sillybillytrap, finds nothing, despite digging a deep hole. Shot against the background of a yellow flower, the Cricket is only too pleased to tell Pinocchio sarcastically what really happened, and the puppet angrily decides to report the Cat and the Fox to the court of law in Sillybillytrap. S. 12. In the court of law in Sillybillytrap, standing before judges who are licking with gusto at lollipops in the three colours of the Italian flag, Pinocchio is sentenced to five years in jail according to Article 1 of the penal code of Sillybillytrap.

192 • Salvatore Consolo S. 13. Pinocchio meets Lucignolo who is held in his same cell. Lucignolo is a lollipop thief and tells the puppet his misfortunes before leaving jail, laying the foundations of a long-lasting friendship that will see them as accomplices and as supports for each other. S. 14. Geppetto is outside, at night, looking for Pinocchio with a lantern. S. 15. Pinocchio is still in prison, getting on with his studies on his own. The blue butterfly appears, a true cinematographic metonymy of the puppet’s forthcoming liberation, then flies away through the bars of the cell window. S. 16. Following an amnesty, Pinocchio is freed from jail and rejoices, jumping up and down in the Tuscan landscape. He goes looking for his daddy, but stumbles upon the Fairy’s tomb, learning from the epitaph that he was the cause of her death. S. 17. While Pinocchio desperately weeps over her tomb, there arrives a pigeon who guides him to the sea. Upon seeing Geppetto struggling in a small boat, Pinocchio bravely dives in, in spite of the dangerously rough sea. S. 18. The sea is now calm. Pinocchio lies fainted on a beach. After coming round, he goes to the village of the Busy Bees where he meets a woman carrying a jug who turns out to be the Fairy. Pinocchio promises her he will go to school and behave like a good boy. S. 19. On his way to school Pinocchio has a skirmish with other boys who took his little bread cap and refuse to give it back. One boy, Eugenio, is hurt after being struck on the head by a book fiercely hurled at him. Pinocchio is held responsible by the policemen since the book belongs to him and runs away in search of a hiding place. S. 20. Hiding in a field of sunflowers, Pinocchio is caught in a snare and forced by a farmer to replace his dead guard dog. S. 21. The Fairy weeps, looking out of her window. S. 22. Evening. Pinocchio the guard dog sees Lucignolo stealing from the farmer’s henhouse. As soon as he recognizes Pinocchio, Lucignolo sets him free. S. 23. Pinocchio returns to the Fairy’s house with the dog’s collar round his neck and the snare on his feet, but lies about what happened to him, and his nose grows for the second time. Only when he tells the truth, amid tears and declarations of repentance, does his nose grow smaller and the Fairy forgive him, promising she will make his dream of becoming a real boy come true. S. 24. A party at the Fairy’s home with school teacher and friends to celebrate the puppet’s forthcoming transformation into a good boy. Lucignolo is missing, though, and with the Fairy’s permission, Pinocchio leaves and goes looking for him. S. 25. Outside, in the countryside. Pinocchio meets Lucignolo who, licking several lollipops, tells him he wants to go ‘lontano, lontano, lontano’ (‘far, far, far away’), to the Land of Toys where it is Sunday every day of the week, and holidays last from January 1 through December 31.

The Watchful Mirror • 193 S. 26. At the Fairy’s home. Medoro tells the Fairy, with certainty in his voice so as to console her: ‘tornerà’ (‘he will be back’). S. 27. The Little Man arrives on a cart pulled by donkeys. Lucignolo and Pinocchio get on the cart and leave for the Land of Toys, portrayed as a chaotic and colourful theme park, populated with children and adults, as observed through the troubled eyes of the Cricket, for whom that world is real hell. S. 28. It’s evening in the Land of Toys. Lucignolo and Pinocchio go to sleep. S. 29. The Little Man talks to other characters, including the Ringmaster, about the donkeys he has for sale, all of them young. Some braying is heard in the background. S. 30. Pinocchio wakes up in a boy’s bedroom where the dominant colour is red and, looking at himself in a mirror, realizes he has donkey’s ears. S. 31. Pinocchio goes to Lucignolo’s bedroom, where the dominant colour is blue. The two friends put a piece of canvas over their heads in order to conceal their donkey ears. Having removed it in unison, they tease each other silly until Lucignolo goes into contortions, eventually concluding his metamorphosis with a loud bray. The Cricket then appears and reproaches Pinocchio, explaining that he, too, will become a donkey. S. 32. Pinocchio is a circus donkey, and the Fairy sadly witnesses his performance ending with the animal falling lame during a routine. S. 33. Following the Ringmaster’s orders, the clowns throw Pinocchio the donkey in the sea with a stone tied to his legs. S. 34. The Fairy is on the seashore. Immediately afterwards we see the puppet, rather than a donkey, emerging from the sea. A huge shark arrives and swallows Pinocchio. S. 35. Inside the shark’s belly. Pinocchio is reunited with Geppetto and, in order to convince him to leave, steals his wig and proceeds to leading him to safety. S. 36. Terra firma. Pinocchio physically supports his father who cannot walk properly. He then supports him materially, working hard in order to keep him. S. 37. Pinocchio turns the water wheel of Giangio, the greengrocer. S. 38. Geppetto drinks the milk that Pinocchio, more and more exhausted, gets him. The puppet works harder and harder, sacrificing himself in order to provide for his father who, on the other hand, thinks selfishly and plans to purchase a new waistcoat. S. 39. While at work, Pinocchio hears a loud bray and witnesses the death of a donkey he understands is Lucignolo. S. 40. Pinocchio is so exhausted he almost falls asleep on his father’s bed. Oblivious of his son’s exhaustion, Geppetto plans the purchase of a new jacket with money earned by Pinocchio. S. 41. On his doorstep, Pinocchio is making wicker baskets so as to earn a few more pennies. Tired, he falls asleep, when the Fairy arrives on a silver

194 • Salvatore Consolo coach pulled by mice. She rewards Pinocchio, who is greeted by Medoro and the Talking Cricket. S. 42. Inside a wealthy house. Geppetto, with real hair, rearranges his tie. Pinocchio, too, wears a new suit made of blue corduroy. On a chair in a corner of the room lies a lifeless puppet with his flowery suit. S. 43. Pinocchio the child goes to school, where a teacher awaits him on the doorstep. The shadow of the old Pinocchio chases the blue butterfly, initially along the school wall, then over the green and charming Tuscan hills. Notes 1 2 3

4 5 6

7

8 9

Federico Fellini, Fare un film (Turin: Einaudi, 1990), 174–75. See Giovanna Grassi, “Benigni: il mio Pinocchio ereditato da Fellini”, Corriere della Sera, October 5, 2002, 37. Pinocchio’s mythological dimension was discussed at a conference in Urbino in July 2001, chaired by Paolo Fabbri and Isabella Pezzini—see the proceedings Le avventure di Pinocchio tra un linguaggio e un altro, ed. Paolo Fabbri and Isabella Pezzini (Rome: Meltemi, 2002), in particular Paolo Fabbri, “Dal burattino al cyborg. Varianti, variazioni, varietà”, 277–98. See also Chapter 8 in this volume: Salvatore Consolo, “The Myth of Pinocchio: Metamorphosis of a Puppet from Collodi’s Pages to the Screen”. See E. Nelson Hayes and Tanya Hayes, eds., Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Anthropologist as Hero (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [1970]), 49–50. See Seymour Chatman, Storia e discorso (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978). Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio, in Carlo Collodi, Opere, ed. Daniela Marcheschi (Milan: Meridiani Mondadori, 1995), 359–526 (361). Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, trans. and ed. Ann Lawson Lucas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1. For a comparison of Pinocchio with various animals, see Chapter 8, footnote 12. On the function of animals in the history of thought, see Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origin of the Western Debate (London: Duckworth, 1993). See Edward M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, ed. Oliver Stallybrass (London: Penguin, 2005). See Susan Wloszczyna, “Movie Talk”, USA Today, January 8, 2005: 1, accessed February 17, 2011, http://www.usatoday.com/community/ chat/2003-01-08-wloszczyna.htm: ‘Why would a grown man want to play a boy puppet? It is sick’; Elvis Mitchell, “How Many Actors Does it Take to Make a Log Talk?”, New York Times, December 26, 2002: 1, accessed February 17, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/26/movies/fi lmreview-how-many-actors-does-it-take-to-make-a-log-talk.html?ref=rob

The Watchful Mirror • 195

10 11 12

13 14 15

ertobenigni&pagewanted=1: ‘his idea of a child is a 40-ish man with a receding hairline, pancake makeup and 5 o’clock shadow’. See also Jane Horwitz, “Pinocchio”, The Washington Post, January 3, 2003: WE30 and Jonathan Rosenbaum in Chicago Reader Movie Review, January 5, 2003: [n.p.] For a positive review, see Tullio Kezich, “Ma il burattino senza età è anche grande fi lologo”, Corriere della Sera, October 12, 2002: 37. Collodi, Pinocchio (1995), 483 and 487 respectively. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 123 and 127 respectively. Collodi, Pinocchio (1995), 454. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 92. On Pinocchio’s age, see Aldo Novi, “L’età di Pinocchio”, Pedagogia e Vita’ 1 (October-November 1960): 84–86 (the puppet is an adolescent); Domenico Ferrero, “L’età di Pinocchio”, in Appuntamento con Pinocchio (Bologna: Quaderni della Fondazione Collodi, 1978), 27–32 (Pinocchio’s age is that of a child between seven and nine); Kezich, “Burattino”: 37: ‘nella lunga storia delle trasformazioni sceniche del burattino [ . . . ] figurino Pinocchi di ogni età e colori’. See also Roberto Benigni, Io un po’ Pinocchio (Florence: Giunti, 2002), 159: ‘Pinocchio non è un bambino, non è un ragazzo, non è un adulto, non è un adolescente, ha dentro tutte le età. Fermarlo a un’età precisa è impossibile.’ See Giovanni Pascoli, Il fanciullino (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1992). Collodi, Pinocchio (1995), 372. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 13. See Gianfranco Contini, “Discorso sul linguaggio di Pascoli”, in La letteratura italiana, Otto-Novecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1974), 140–62. The following are just a few of many examples: ‘Chiudi quella porta, sono tutto ignudo’ —ignudo is a cultured version of ‘nudo’; ‘Grillo mio, sai mica dove tiene le cose il mi’ babbo?’—the use of mica after the verb stresses the colloquial nature of a language with a vernacular tone through the apocopation of the possessive mio; ‘Sei proprio un grillaccio del malauguraccio’—this shows a demotic tendency towards augmentatives, with invented terms such as malauguraccio (see also: ‘Te lo promettissimo’, the superlative of a verb rather than an adjective; and ‘Illustrissimo Mangiafochissimo’, a formal and correct use of the superlative but counterbalanced by the ungrammatical use of the superlative of a proper noun); ‘Ah ci sei cascato! Ci hai una voce antipatica . . . Non c’ho più voglia di giocare, ora c’ho una fame, sono stanco, c’ho un sonno, c’ho un freddo . . . ’—this is another demotic use of ci with the verb avere, to reinforce the expression; ‘Io sono un burattino testardo e piccoso’ —piccoso for cocciuto is nowadays very rarely used; ‘Fatina grazie per avermi spispiccato’—spispiccare is a verb invented by PinocchioBenigni; ‘Rivivisci, rivivisci fatina, rivivisci’—the verb riviviscere is also invented by Pinocchio-Benigni and is repeated anaphorically, thus giving emphasis to the expression: ‘Che serratura alla gola provai, quando lessi’ —metaphorical use of the noun serratura and of the simple past instead of the more widespread present perfect; ‘Quando spunta il sole fa cri cri / e se vado a scuola anche il maestro fa cri cri. Quando il gallo canta cricca il dì.

196 • Salvatore Consolo

16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29

30 31 32 33

/ E poi torno a casa e anche il mio babbo fa cri cri. Proprio non mi piace il lunedì. / Il carabiniere sotto i baffi fa cri cri. Fa venire sonno l’abbiccì, / gl’è che noi ragazzi siam così, tutti così: / a noi non ci garba punto quel cri cri’— these lyrics are written by Benigni and Vincenzo Cerami and sung by the Tuscan actor at the end of the film. They contain the phono-symbolic onomatopoeia cri cri, seeking to represent a language common to men, nature and animals and semantically derived from the specialized verb criccare, indicating the breaking of metals. See Giovanni Gasperini, La corsa di Pinocchio (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1997). Collodi, Pinocchio (1995), 409, 450, 500 and 506 respectively. Cit. in Benigni, Io, 44. Maria Pia Fusco interviews Peppe Barra, “Mi sentivo nel paese delle meraviglie”, Repubblica, September 28, 2002: 45. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 27–28. See also Iavarone, cit. in Benigni, Io, 70: ‘Quattro ore di trucco, una barba che ti attaccano pelo a pelo, sudore, fatica, poi c’è la grande soddisfazione di fare un personaggio così. Io credo che questo personaggio mi sopravviverà.’ Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 29. Collodi, Pinocchio (1995), 413. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 49–50. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 33. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 35. Bruno Arena and Max Cavallari, “Album Spettacoli”, Il Giornale, October 28, 2002: 30. Bruno Traversetti cit. in Benigni, Io, 209: ‘La crudeltà dell’omino di burro, silenziosa, segreta, inavvertita, nascosta dall’apparenza gioviale e dai modi suasivi, irrompe nella convenzione della fiaba con la gelida alterità di una perfidia vera, che non ha origine nell’universo smodato degli orchi, ma in quello spietato degli uomini’. Collodi, Pinocchio (1995), 483. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 123. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 140. Benigni, Io, 242: ‘Il Direttore del Circo è Alessandro Bergonzoni. A parte i giochi verbali che lo legano al testo di Collodi, quello che mi piaceva di Bergonzoni, era la fisicità. La potenza fisica del personaggio, la bellezza, l’eleganza, sembra nato Direttore del Circo, sembra una parte scritta apposta per lui. Nella scena più crudele del film, il Direttore del Circo sembra molto educato, ma diventa terribile, diventa un personaggio spaventoso.’ Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 65. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 66. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 118. Paolo Scotti, “Ecco Pinocchio, il fi lm dell’anno”, Il Giornale, September 28, 2002: 30. See also interview with Kim Rossi Stuart in Giovanna Grassi, “Anch’io, come Lucignolo, da ragazzo cercai di scappare”, Corriere della Sera, October 11, 2002: 38.

The Watchful Mirror • 197 34 Vittorio Spinazzola, Pinocchio & C. (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1997), 85: ‘Così come i personaggi narrativi, allo stesso modo gli spazi e i tempi del racconto appaiono costruiti in funzione del protagonista assoluto. È Pinocchio che, realizzandosi, realizza intorno a sé gli ambienti in cui le sue imprese si svolgono e il continuum cronologico nel quale si inseriscono. Occorre però essere più precisi. Le coordinate spazio-temporali entro cui la narrazione si iscrive vengono adeguate da Collodi alla percezione che dell’una dimensione e dell’altra può avere un soggetto infantilmente immaturo. Da ciò un’accentuata deformazione soggettivistica del senso di realtà comunemente invalso: e l’ingresso in un universo dove sia la dislocazione topografica degli eventi sia lo spessore della loro durata sono regolamentati da una logica altra. Questo universo ad usum pueri è massimamente idoneo a situarvi una fiaba, perché consente di semplificare e stilizzare al massimo la descrizione degli sfondi e lo scorrimento della diegesi, in modo da conferire risalto alle scene in cui il protagonista spettacolarizza più efficacemente sé stesso.’ 35 On landscape in Collodi’s Pinocchio, see Felice Del Beccaro, “Il paesaggio in Pinocchio”, Omaggio a Pinocchio, Rassegna Lucchese 9 (1952): 75: ‘è proprio il paesaggio toscano quello che ha fatto da movente allo scrittore’ and the generic and exceptional features of this landscape are stressed as well, identifying it as a sort of ‘paesaggio dell’anima’. For agreement with Del Beccaro, see Renato Bertacchini, “Epifanie e segni del paesaggio nelle Avventure di Pinocchio”, in Gian Luca Pierotti et al., C’era una volta un pezzo di legno: simbologia di Pinocchio: Atti del congresso organizzato dalla Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi di Pescia (Milan: Emme, 1981), 113–38. 36 For a recent study on space in Pinocchio, and up-to-date bibliography, see Laura Barcellona, “Il burattino itinerante”, in Avventure di Pinocchio, ed. Fabbri and Pezzini, 35–73. Barcellona offers a further distinction into two spatial areas: the space of guilt (Chapters 1–30) and the space of contrapasso, where guilt is expiated (Chapters 31–36)— idem, 39. 37 Vincenzo Cerami, interview with Stefano Bartezzaghi, conducted by Camilla Valletti, “C’era una volta . . . le metamorfosi di un pezzo di legno”, Indice XX (1): 37. 38 Danilo Donati cit. in Benigni, Io, 230: ‘Secondo me Collodi non l’ha neppure immaginato il paese dei Balocchi. Non lo descrive nemmeno, dice solo: un paese così non c’è mai stato, né ci sarà mai. Niente altro. Con quello ha salvato tutto, quindi puoi fare quello che vuoi. Non è realtà, è veramente un paese dei sogni.’ 39 Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 156. 40 For an analysis of the time dimension in Pinocchio, see Marco D’Angelo, “Lettore avvisato, burattino salvato. Strategie seriali”, in Avventure Pinocchio, ed. Fabbri and Pezzini, 75–94 (79). 41 On the language of cinema as a modern answer to repairing the laceration between reality and the world of signs, see Mario Pezzella, Estetica

198 • Salvatore Consolo

42 43 44 45 46 47

48

del cinema (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), esp. 37–42. On the importance of soundtrack, see Gianni Rondolino, Cinema e musica (Turin: Utet, 1991), 73. For a definition of the ontological value of soundtrack, see James Buhler, “Analytical and Interpretive Approaches to Film Music: Analysing Interactions of Music and Film”, in Film Music: Critical Approaches, ed. Kevin J. Donnelly (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 39–61 (53–55). Michel Chion talks of the sounds of a fi lm rather than a soundtrack as something extra, ‘an add on’ to underline the centrality of the image: see Michel Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 143: ‘A film without sound remains a fi lm; a fi lm with no image, or at least without a visual frame for projection, is not a fi lm’. Chion further openly contests the use of the term ‘soundtrack’— see Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 3: ‘Discussions of sound in fi lm rarely mention the voice, speaking instead of the soundtrack. A deceptive and sloppy notion, which postulates that all the audio elements recorded together onto the optical track of the fi lm are presented to the spectator as a sort of bloc or coalition, across from the other bloc, a no-less-fictive image track’. See Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio, crit. ed. Ornella Castellani Polidori (Pescia: Fondazione Nazionale Collodi, 1983). Collodi, Pinocchio (1995), 389. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 27. My italics. Collodi, Pinocchio (1996), 27. In the fi lm Pulcinella cries, in vernacular Neapolitan: ‘È proprio isso!’ Nicola Piovani, Pinocchio, Tentacoli Edizioni Musicali, 2002. CD. David Bordwell is of the opinion that a fi lm has a narration but not a narrator. It is the spectator who organizes a series of signs to reconstruct the story—see David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 20. On the other hand, Seymour Chatman states that a human narrator who can be related to a third person does not exist in fi lm, but the cinematic narrator is the composite of a large and complex variety of communicating devices which are illustrated schematically. The spectator does not therefore construct, but he reconstructs the narrative—see Seymour Chatman, Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 134–35. For negative opinions expressed in US newspapers, see note 9. In the U. S., dubbing without synchronization between voices and images was also ferociously criticized, along with choosing an adult to play the part of Pinocchio—see Jane Horwitz, “Pinocchio”: WE30: ‘Shot in Italian, the movie is dubbed so sloppily into English that even little kids notice the lip flap.’ See also Mitchell, “How Many Actors”: ‘That might account for the quality of the voice-overs, which are so sloppy you might feel as if you’re watching a 1978 Hong Kong action picture: the dubbed mouths of

The Watchful Mirror • 199 the Italian cast are probably still moving an hour after the fi lm is over.’ Reviews were still negative when, in February 2003, the fi lm was re-shown in New York and Los Angeles in the Italian version with English subtitles. Kevin Thomas wrote that Benigni’s ‘fi lm fails as an original-language art fi lm just as it did in its English version aimed at children’— Kevin Thomas, “Undubbed but still wooden”, Los Angeles Times, February 7, 2003, accessed February 18, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/07/ entertainment/et-Pinocchio7. 49 Rebecca West, “Benigni’s Pinocchio, or the Tale of a Failed National Icon”, in Beyond Life is Beautiful: Comedy and Tragedy in the Cinema of Roberto Benigni, ed. Grace Russo Bullaro (Leicester: Troubador, 2005), 131–51 (149–50). 50 See, amongst others, Aldo Busi, “Reazioni”, Corriere della Sera, October 5, 2002: 37: ‘Un fi lm letterale, ma non letterario, che non rende onore al libro e alla letteratura. Un passo indietro rispetto al romanzo’; Giordano Bruno Guerri, “Pinocchio un capolavoro? Non diciamo bugie”, Il Giornale, October 5, 2002: 1 and 31: ‘Gli è che il più costoso e pubblicizzato fi lm italiano di tutti i tempi ha un punto fortissimo e uno debolissimo che sfortunatamente coincidono: segue pedissequamente il romanzo di Collodi, ma non vi aggiunge niente’; Maurizio Carbona, “Costoso e ambizioso, levigato e smaltato. Ma manca l’emozione”, Il Giornale, October 5, 2002: 31. 51 On the concept of ‘cultural capital’ as formulated by Pierre Bourdieu, see Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, ed. Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (Cambridge: Polity, 1993), 4–5 and 67–72.

Chapter Ten Beyond the Mechanical Body Digital Pinocchio Massimo Riva

Perhaps no text fits Italo Calvino’s definition of a classic better than Pinocchio: a book which renews itself at every reading, while remaining unforgettable, indelibly embedded (and unconsciously active) in the most secret folds of our memory.1 Yet, reading Carlo Lorenzini’s coming-of-age tale as a classic literary work (as Calvino and others have suggested) inevitably opens the door to a number of unsettled questions about the genre to which it is assigned and the methodology we might apply to its analysis. Is it a modern folktale for (eternal) children, to be analysed with sophisticated semiotic or anthropological tools aimed at explaining its profound wisdom and universal appeal? Or is it a pedagogical-psychoanalytical ‘romance’ about childhood and its discontents, revealing more about the adult mind and culture of the newly united Italy in which it was written than about the children it was written for? These are some of the preliminary questions I addressed when introducing Pinocchio as one of the key texts in my course on Literature and Adolescence, a course which focused on the ‘discovery of childhood’ and the uses of ‘coming of age’ narratives (a minor genre of Bildungsroman) in the modern Italian tradition, from Vittorio Alfieri’s Vita (Memoirs) to Italo Calvino’s Sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Spiders’ Nests). What follows here is largely an account of how this traditional approach to Pinocchio soon led to a radical transformation of this course into something I can best describe as an experiment in pedagogy, entirely focused on Pinocchio’s unique story and character, well beyond its status as classic book for children and adults.2 To be sure, Collodi did not write his masterpiece with technology in mind. At least, not consciously. Yet, in what follows I will argue that Pinocchio—the 201

202 • Massimo Riva story, as well as the character—can indeed be read as a response to technological change and its effects on our shifting idea of the ‘human’. Coming of age is, undoubtedly, the underlying theme of Pinocchio, the story of the puppet who became a boy. And adolescence, a transformation driven by nature as well as nurture, is both the underlying myth and the true engine of Modernity: a constant renewing or rejuvenation of the world is at the core of the myth of the endless progress of humanity, a progress mostly realized through technological means. In the most secularized versions of this myth, humanity ‘comes of age’ thanks to the by-products of its applied intelligence and labor. Yet, a fundamental tension is established between rejuvenation, or the myth of endless renewal, and growth. We can look at Pinocchio as a peculiar embodiment of this fundamental ambivalence of Modernity. In the story of Pinocchio the theme of adolescence and its discontents is subtly intertwined with the age-old myth of an artificial man, which can act as either a mirror, a caricature, or the prototype of a new humanity. From this point of view, the tale of Pinocchio is ahead of its time, which might account for its continuing appeal. It would be hard to deny that today adolescence and technology are intertwined in ways that are unprecedented. The consumption of technology by adolescents is not linked solely to socializing and communication—it is the means by which they learn to function in society, almost an apprenticeship to modern life. Arguably, young people are nowadays both the main producers and consumers of technological change. Another macroscopic phenomenon in our techno-cultural age, linked to the influence of video and computer games as well as the advent of social networks, is the transformation of the self-imaging and self-representation modes of adolescents, as individuals and as a group, through technological media. There is no more vulnerable and unstable season in life than these years of anxious search for one’s own identity. Couple this with powerful new systems of social exchange, and we see that new technologies have brought with them new ways of playing with, constructing, projecting, disguising, even stealing identity— sexual as well as social or financial, moral as well as biological—unleashing possibilities that are both threatening and liberating for the playful development of our children’s (and our own) psyche. Many Foxes and Cats, and many Little Men, Mangiafocos or Ringmasters lurk around our children in cyberspace, waiting to take advantage of their naïveté or their hunger for fun, play or easy monetary profit . . . These are some of the general premises guiding a rereading, or reinterpretation, of Pinocchio as a cautionary tale about technology. Indeed, it is the fundamental ambivalence of technology that brings us directly back to this old-fashioned, somewhat outmoded coming-of-age tale—a minor classic and a counter-Bildungsroman, as I defi ne it. One question, however, comes immediately to the fore: what contemporary adolescent could really identify with a clumsy puppet when the possibilities of reinventing oneself as an imaginary creature or a powerful cyborg or a manga idol seem so lim-

Beyond the Mechanical Body • 203 itless and so much more enticing in the digital age? Yet, I would argue that one of the reasons why Pinocchio’s tale maintains its appeal—for adult as well as young readers—is precisely because it is focused on that evanescent threshold, that crucial transition from childhood to young adulthood, envisioned as a defi ning moment in the biological, social and cultural make-up of modern humanity. Pinocchio’s long-lasting charm lies in the subtle identification it suggests between the child (or adolescent) reader and a creature half-artificial and half-magical which, however, is bound to evolve into the prototype of a fullgrown human, a boy. This identification, as we said, is somewhat ambivalent: as ambivalent as the tale’s rhetorical structure, oscillating between, on the one hand, the comic pleasure provided by the puppet’s adventures and, on the other, the moral or pedagogical messages, and in the tale’s closure, the final metamorphosis in which the identification with its ideal readers is recomposed. Perhaps this ambivalence can be profitably recast into our technologydriven context: the act (in its comical or performative meaning) of becoming a boy can be easily seen as the result of a necessary, evolutionary progress: from the quasi-mechanical being, the puppet, which represents childhood, to the organic, semi-adult human being hidden within, a progress that only labor and sacrifice, in nineteenth-century terms, can accomplish. This evolution, however, implies a specific bio-technological transformation: from the mechanical body towards a new kind of embodiment which is virtual as well as physical. The pedagogical lesson is also embedded in this hierarchy: the reasserted superiority of the biological over the mechanical, entirely consistent with the humanist tradition stretching back to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, which gave human beings the peculiar quality of being unlike any other creature, and yet containing in themselves all the seeds that God planted in the world, seeds or qualities that Man must cultivate in himself in order to ascend the natural ladder and transcend his own nature.3 Yet, throughout Modernity, this idea of the centrality or superiority of the human being is also in growing tension with the Enlightenment view of a mechanistic, clocklike, predictable, controllable universe, on which the human body itself is modelled. (A trace of this can be seen in Disney’s restaging of Geppetto’s hut as the laboratory of a clockmaker.) No creatures embody the ambivalence of evolution more than puppets. Puppets are the secularized progeny of hieratic automatons, ancient technological constructs symbolically integrated into premodern culture. As a modern toy, the puppet is still linked to magical thinking, and yet it is also tied to the technological imagination of artificial beings, our own, ‘scientific’ and ‘rational’ way of playing God. Here, in its simultaneous, conscious-unconscious ties with both premodern and contemporary (even futuristic) modes of thought and imagination, lie the deeper roots of Pinocchio’s originality: this is also what makes of Pinocchio such a stimulating pedagogical model for us today, at a juncture when the boundaries between the human and the

204 • Massimo Riva non-human, or the posthuman, are being actively and practically, that is technologically redrawn, and a new idea of the human emerges. According to the semiologist Paolo Fabbri, Pinocchio should be treated as a modern myth,4 myth as a type of speech, to quote Roland Barthes from his Mythologies,5 a message and a system of signification: or, in other words, a signifying energy, or information that can find its concretization and its vehicle in a variety of media. Myths (and folktales as their equivalent in popular culture) are the genealogical DNA of human culture. In order to reach our conclusions and fully understand in what sense Pinocchio is a myth, and a myth concerning technology, however, we need to take a short détour and look at Pinocchio from another angle: as the embodiment of a ‘poetic character’, in the sense defined by the eighteenth-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. It is not by chance that Vico (like Jean–Jacques Rousseau) is considered one of the forefathers of the Romantic ‘(re)discovery of Childhood’ as an active trope of the (western) Modern mind, the virtual place (of memory) where reason and imagination meet. The discovery of ‘poetic characters’, as Vico writes in the introduction or Idea of the Work, is ‘the master key’ of his New Science. As he explains in another section of his book: ‘The first men, the children, as it were, of the human race, not being able to form intelligible class concepts of things, had a natural need to create poetic characters; that is, imaginative class concepts or universals, to which, as to certain models or ideal portraits, to reduce all the particular species which resembled them’.6 According to Vico, poetic characters therefore are ‘imaginative genera (images for the most part of animate substances, of gods or heroes, formed by their imagination).’7 Taken together, all the gods and heroes of humanity, all the protagonists of our fables and myths, compose a sort of ideal gallery of portraits, or animate models, of our species. In this gallery of symbolic models of humanity, Pinocchio occupies a peculiar place: as a puppet, an artificial neurospaston—to use the ancient Greek technical term for puppet, composed of two words which survive also in modern English: neuro and spastic (a terminology almost entirely transferred to psychopathology)—Pinocchio is the technological prototype of all mythological, poetic characters, ‘animate substances, gods or heroes’, according to Vico. In a famous and oft-quoted passage of the Laws, Plato writes that Man (with all his nerves or passions) is nothing more than a puppet with invisible, interior cords, in other words, an automaton: ‘We may imagine that each of us living creatures is a puppet (neurospaston) made by gods, possibly as a plaything, or possibly with some more serious purpose.’8 As the song goes (‘I’ve got no strings on me’), Pinocchio is an extraordinarily anthropomorphic puppet, a (comic) prototype, a plaything, pre-destined to evolve (after a series of trials and errors, or adventures) into a ‘more serious purpose’, a superior life form: a ‘real’ boy. Yet, the fact that it is a puppet, or, to be more precise, the fictional character of a puppet, makes it difficult for Pinocchio to be contained within

Beyond the Mechanical Body • 205 the boundaries of a single narrative, the artificial closure of a single story. Puppets are tools, playthings of the imagination, made to act in countless shows or playful variations of their story. Indeed, they are the most typical product of human imagination and, in their secularized, modern version, they seem designed for children simply because, as Vico writes, ‘it is characteristic of children to take inanimate things in their hands and talk to them in play as if they were living persons.’9 This (metaphysical) property makes them a quintessential medium of the poetic mind. Martin Heidegger’s more enigmatic argument, in his essay on “The Question Concerning Technology”, may here prove useful: the essence of technology, he argues, is not technological but poetic—technology is a kind of poiesis, a way of bringing forth, or revealing our true nature.10 In other words, in its multiple avatars, as a poetic character and technological construct, Pinocchio, the puppetboy, paradoxical embodiment of a natural and artificial life form, invites us to rethink ‘poetically’ the essence of technology, our own peculiar form of life: in the (eternal) return of the puppet as the seed of humanity, poetry, technology and pedagogy continue to implicate, and challenge, one another. In the tale of Pinocchio, as in every folktale worthy of the name, the boundaries between what is alive and what is dead, the organic and the inorganic (inert matter) are repeatedly tested. The fi nal transformation (in fact, the resolution of an ambiguity which accompanies Pinocchio throughout its/ his vicissitudes) is both biological and virtual, in a social and moral sense. The dual identity of the puppet-boy is not only the reason for both the tale’s entertaining power and its moral message: it is at the core of its peculiar philosophy. In our digital age, Pinocchio’s ambivalence can be recast as the fundamental ambiguity of a body increasingly viewed as both mechanical and biological, in a virtual way. Digital culture transcends the mechanical body and its materialistic philosophical premises. From this point of view, Pinocchio’s tale might well represent the birth of a new kind of humanity, an emerging life form, a sort of bio-technological adolescence of the new Man (or Boy). In short, at the core of a rereading of Pinocchio as a (cautionary) tale about technology lies precisely the question of our own ambivalence towards this transformation. Again, according to Fabbri, as a puppet carved out of wood, Pinocchio is first and foremost an intermediary between the world of nature and the world of humans. This is the substance of the Pinocchio myth: as a literary and a ‘poetic character’ (in Vico’s sense) Pinocchio embodies the relationship or, if we prefer a more current coinage, the ‘interface’ between the natural and the artificial, the animate and the inanimate, the organic and the inorganic. We can look at this from two different perspectives: one historical and the other theoretical (the two perspectives of course overlap). As a modern myth and narrative construct, Pinocchio has its roots in traditional culture: namely, in the history of puppetry. Here we find again two intertwined paradigms according to which we can look at Pinocchio: the Platonic-Christian, or humanist paradigm; and the technological paradigm which, since the mod-

206 • Massimo Riva ern Enlightenment, spreads in a culture radically transformed by productive and representational technology. As a system of communication, a ‘message’ in Roland Barthes’ words, Pinocchio is thus an intermediary in a new, emerging sense: it reproduces itself, disseminates itself and evolves in a variety of mediated cultural and technological embodiments. In other words, as a seed, Pinocchio is inseparable from the various media in which it/he takes shape. This rereading of Pinocchio in contemporary terms is a thought experiment which, in my course, leads students to project new adaptations or a reinvention of Pinocchio as a virtual creature, within a digital realm. On the digital platform, all media converge, and the scattered Pinocchios of our imagination can come together, revealing what they have in common. After reading Collodi’s original story and a number of its versions and remakes in multiple media (from illustrated books to cinematic animations, etc.) along with a variety of critical interpretations (from Manganelli’s Pinocchio parallelo to psychoanalytical, structuralist, even theological readings), students are invited to play Geppetto and conceive, design and perform their own three-dimensional Pinocchios. One of these projects, for example, envisioned a threedimensional virtual puppet that one could build and rebuild within a new version of the Platonic Cave: a full immersion Virtual Reality environment on the Brown University campus, transformed for the occasion into a replica of Geppetto’s workshop for the digital age. Conceived as a sort of interactive game, the project requires the reader-user to assemble and reassemble all of Pinocchio’s body parts—a crucial function assigned to the nose, of course, the most difficult to catch and insert, the one body part that, when finally put in place, made the whole virtual puppet ‘come alive’ and jump around in the three-dimensional space of the Cave. What makes this project interesting as a thought experiment, however, is the fact that the assemblage of this digital Pinocchio is done by using a laserlike beam to drag fragments or segments of texts (taken both from Collodi’s original story and its interpreters) and strings of computer code scattered on the four walls of the Cave in the shape of the puppet’s body parts. Once activated, with the insertion of the notorious nose, these textual limbs float to the center, taking the shape of a robotic puppet, made of language and code.11 The nose is the algorithm that animates the whole construction. In short, this striking project was aimed at visualizing the idea of our digital Pinocchio as a hybrid, incorporeal being, a seed or body of information whose limbs are made of a peculiar recombination of text, image and code: a digital clone of his original ancestor, Collodi’s literary avatar, and a further evolution of its/ his multifarious visual progeny, but also a new cultural form—perhaps even the harbinger of a new, somewhat uncanny life form—in itself consisting of a new type of writing, a new kind of cultural encoding. The virtual environment in which this Pinocchio is conjured up can be viewed as the three-dimensional expansion and unfolding of the written page and the screen on which Pinocchio first came into existence.

Beyond the Mechanical Body • 207 Now, I would consider this playful digital Pinocchio we created in the Cave as both a performative interpretation and a perfect example of what, borrowing an expression nowadays in use, we can call virtual heritage. Pinocchio can indeed be seen as our ancestor, in a cultural sense. And our experiment is the reconstruction (or reinvention) of this cultural icon in a way that reveals its complex, multilayered nature as a product of our imagination. Yet, the moment of Pinocchio’s creation—and, as a minor Bildungsroman, the whole story of the puppet-boy as a myth of (self)-creation—is the moment of maximum tension in the story itself. As I have written elsewhere, Pinocchio’s unique status as a peculiar life form, the last in a line of uncanny half-living and halfdead, half-organic and half-inorganic creatures, is defined at the moment of his manufacture. After carving his little golem’s hair, forehead, and eyes, Geppetto suddenly realizes that the half-formed piece of wood is staring at him: ‘Spiteful wooden eyes, why are you looking at me?’12 Nobody answers (there’s no mouth yet): the first sound to come out of Pinocchio, once the mouth is fi nally carved, is mocking laughter, confirming the fundamentally comic, rebellious, adolescent nature of this mini-Frankensteinian golem.13 We can view this scene as a re-enactment of Freud and Lacan’s ‘mirror stage’. Playing Geppetto, my students find themselves confronted again with this ominous moment of ambivalent identification, in which they give a body (a new kind of virtual body) to a mischievous idea. This playful identification is uncanny precisely because it implies a new form of animation of the inanimate: Pinocchio, the digital avatar, looks back at its creator. The idea is mischievous because it somewhat questions the traditional hierarchy, the superiority of the natural over the artificial, of the organic over the inorganic. In other words, here is the possibility, made visible in a subtle, transparent body, of something artificial, inorganic and yet ‘alive’, a creature of our imagination with a body of its own, a non-mechanical body, a body of pure information and energy which, as such, uncannily imitates our own. Here is a juncture in which technological imagination and primitive forms of animistic thinking come together. Indeed, to adopt the language of biological vitalism, Pinocchio’s vital principle, its entelechy—the Aristotelian term roughly meaning ‘the end within itself ’—is embedded in the piece of wood as a sort of élan vital (vital impetus; Bergson), something that the opening sequence of Roberto Benigni’s cinematic adaptation effectively illustrates—with the piece of wood tumbling away and wreaking havoc in Geppetto’s village, trying to escape its destiny of becoming Pinocchio. Pinocchio, in other words, even before becoming who he is destined to be, is chock-full of energy. Releasing energy, cosmic and comic energy, is its way of becoming who he/it already is. Conjuring up, embodying, consuming and releasing energy is the function of all technological tools. From this point of view, the entity named Pinocchio also fulfi ls his/its own nature as an ancestral fossil of our imagination. All technological artefacts, as material or virtual extensions of our body and

208 • Massimo Riva its functions, re-embody and expand our own élan vital, properties that we already possess, at least to some, often insufficient, extent, enabling us to perform what we desire and fi nd difficult or sometimes impossible to perform on our own. This is also the nature (or functions) of our toys: prostheses of a virtual humanity, one that does not yet exist, or might have existed a long time ago, in mythical times. Puppets both mimic us and liberate us from our mechanical or biological constraints. To young users, as well as to many adults, all technological gadgets are just toys, tools of immanent transcendence. Yet, all made things, including technological products (as all folktales essentially teach) share this dual, ambivalent quality: of being at the same time useful but rather prosaic things (a piece of wood becoming the leg of a table, for example, the prosaic destiny that Pinocchio escapes, in his refutation of Master Cherry’s trivial idea of technological transcendence); and virtual but rather useless objects, charged with secret and far more mysterious, transcendental powers: the power of projecting, conjuring up an imaginary, artificial-biological body which is not yet ours. By manufacturing a puppet, Geppetto the carpenter, and my students, confront again this uncanny technological ambivalence. We, as readers, identify ourselves in Pinocchio precisely because of his dual, borderline form of existence: tied to the matter that it is, limited by its mechanisms and yet projected towards another, virtual form of emerging life. In short, Pinocchio can be seen as an evolutionary model. In a book on the development of modern physics, Nancy Cartwright suggests that models play a role in physics comparable to that of fables in the moral domain: they ‘transform the abstract [of physical or moral laws] into the concrete [of experimental observations or behavioral consequences].’14 What kind of model is Pinocchio, however? As a quintessentially ‘poetic character’, in the sense defined by Vico, Pinocchio (as explained in Vico’s passage quoted above) is a perfect embodiment of the poetic mind, embedded in the most metaphysical implications of child’s play. In my course, I take Vico’s formulation as a philosophical guiding principle and challenge students to adopt and adapt it to the context of our contemporary, technologically determined metaphysics. In other words, I challenge them to think poetically about technology. Let’s sum up our argument. As a puppet, a neurospaston, Pinocchio is profoundly ambivalent: an entirely artificial, mechanical being, the product of an old-fashioned, artisan technology, made out of a piece of ordinary wood— itself a sort of nondescript, primeval υλη or matter. Yet, as a pine nut, a seed of something yet to come, Pinocchio is uncannily alive before being made. The trajectory from the artificial to the natural that Pinocchio (the character as well as the tale) in its peculiar evolution represents is a thoroughly paradoxical one. Something that is already alive, part of nature, has to go through an inanimate, manufactured stage in order to ascend to a higher stage of existence. I have likened this process to the adolescent stage in human life and linked it to the fundamental modern myth of a constantly self-renewing,

Beyond the Mechanical Body • 209 perpetually coming-of-age humanity—an adolescent humanity which likes to play with its own ever-more sophisticated technological toys, engaged in reverse-engineering its own nature. Recent studies have focused primarily on the historical side of this reverseengineering, the making of modern Italians, in a sociopolitical and sociopsychological sense.15 I take Pinocchio’s metaphor in a different direction. All technologies have to do with the transformation of ‘dead’ or inert matter into a more sophisticated kind of matter, which has a peculiar life of its own, informed by an end, a goal or intention that we call function, utility or even, symbolically, beauty, the latter a sort of non-functional, peculiarly human function. Even the aesthetic form, however, is a product of techné or technology: it is technology transcending itself, perhaps finding again its original, playful vocation. This process of transformation, playing with our own nature, is what makes humans different from other species. In short, homo technologicus reproduces itself (as a species) constantly transcending itself (as a species). This process of transformation is what Pinocchio is all about: transcending the unconscious mechanical body in order to be reborn as a moral, that is, a thoroughly virtual being. Yet, and here is the point, at the core of Collodi’s tale we find a dialectic of embodiment and disembodiment which is central to our contemporary way of relating to technological change: the reverse-engineering of a natural (merely biological) body into an artificial (bio-technological), virtual one. Here is the paradox: only once humanity is conceived as purely natural, made of biochemical processes and codes that we can somehow decipher and manipulate, can its inner drive to transcendence, to pure virtuality, be fully entrusted to technology. In the digital age, when technology seems to become ever-more pervasive and immaterial, the imagination of our own bodies coincides with an effacing of their material, biological underpinnings. The ambivalence at the core of Pinocchio’s tale is again topical: the reverseengineering of humanity that Pinocchio enacts can still be read as a straightforward humanist tale, a tale of restraining and (self)-fashioning adolescent bio-energy into a socially acceptable identity. Yet, to a contemporary reader, this tale may suggest a different kind of reverse-engineering: a paradoxical revenge of the puppet as an artificial life form, or an artificial intelligence capable of becoming human, all too human (as Spielberg’s retelling in AI has shown). From this point of view, the dilemma that Pinocchio presents for us, its contemporary readers, is simple: the story of the puppet who became a boy invites us to ask ‘what makes us who we really are?’ Nature, society or technology as the recombination of natural and social processes? Evolution, culture or technology as an attempt at reverse-engineering one into the other? If we interpret Geppetto and the Blue Fairy as the representation of sociotechnological forces, rather than familial agencies, we may argue that both present Pinocchio with different, alternative modes of self-transcendence: a more modest, mechanical one, Geppetto; a more ambitious, magical or

210 • Massimo Riva virtual one, the Blue Fairy. Geppetto sends the puppet to school; the Blue Fairy attracts him back into the woods, realm of all magic. One could argue that Pinocchio finds the Blue Fairy—or better the dead Girl with blue hair (another uncanny apparition)—in his wanderings into the woods. Yet, the woods are precisely where Pinocchio, as a less than golden, quite ordinary, yet unformed bough, comes from.16 Both Geppetto and the Fairy are alternative transformative agencies: the agents of a transcending technology which is as much physical or mechanical as it is virtual and magical. Yet, Pinocchio’s peculiarity is that he is more than just an automaton, a self-moving mechanism, the intermediate evolutionary stage beyond the puppet and the human. What animates him/it is the engine of all technological dreams: he/it aspires to become a living technology, something much more threatening and ridiculous, for our idea of ourselves as human—a paradox, a contradiction in terms. As we said, Pinocchio suggests the idea of a thoroughly reverse-engineered being. From a philosophical (and pedagogical) point of view, this is also the point of maximum tension in the construction of both Pinocchio the puppet-boy and Pinocchio the tale: its primal energy (in Freudian terms, Pinocchio’s id, if you wish) must be unleashed, contained and reshaped. Is this primal energy biological? Is it technological (poetic)? Hard to tell, in the case of Pinocchio. Impossible to tell, really. Pinocchio is a selfpropelled puppet, somewhat less and somewhat more than a simple automaton. As an aspiring automaton, its energy is already human; indeed its being wireless already captures the energetic paradox of humanity: ours is the only species which seems to have cut its umbilical cord from the nurturing earth and yet keeps finding ways to resupply and consume its ever-growing need of energy, in extra-corporeal ways. Yet, in the end, Pinocchio is above all a character in a tale. This is his/ its peculiar energy and mode of existence: a living, entirely artificial being, the imaginary embodiment of a virtual humanity. As penetrating critics have put it, coherently with its ambivalent nature, moving by itself and driven by external forces, Pinocchio is not a monad (in Leibniz’s sense): as an amoral entity (the tale is also a morality play) he is not self-sufficient. He is a product of need, he actually embodies primal biological, physiological needs (hunger, motion)—life at its purest or most basic stage, the lack of fulfi lment. From this point of view, Pinocchio is all but an example of entropy. If he stops, he dies. Moreover, as a dual character, a binary and even ‘Trinitarian’ being (natural-artificial-human, or natural-mechanical-magical) he is bound to be the subject of complex symbolic thinking: hence, all the Christological and mythological and psychoanalytical references that scholars have found in this simple tale all go back to its Trinitarian origin. In today’s world, we can rethink and re-elaborate all these symbols and metaphors in terms that are familiar to our way of reconceiving our technologically modified nature. In fact, Pinocchio’s own identity is so feeble that he easily falls prey to those who want to take advantage of his instinctive naiveté, interpreting and over-

Beyond the Mechanical Body • 211 interpreting it/him. As the avatar of a child, he is the fool and, to some extent, the ‘savage’, an exotic creature who comes from the woods (via the workshop of a poor village carpenter). In order to become who he is, Pinocchio has to shed several false skins, or identities, in which he is temporarily imprisoned, beginning and ending with his wooden, mechanical puppet body. This seems like an almost linear, evolutionary path from the primal matter of the pine nut to full-fledged humanity (crossing the animal kingdom). Within this evolutionary framework, however, the fundamental contradiction in Pinocchio’s character (and story) lies precisely in the metaphysical nature of the puppet ‘without strings’, simultaneously a made toy (a mecha) and a sacred object, a living being and a dead thing, what all symbolic and technological (poetic) artefacts actually are: dead projections of our living energy. Only as a wooden (a mechanical) puppet can Pinocchio undergo unscathed various tests and trials and survive them all, only to be (tragically) sacrificed and forced to rid himself of his laughable, comical and immature mechanical skin. A magical, maternal, supernatural agency has to take over, where the artisanlike, paternal, mechanical one has failed to impose or inspire a true transformation, true transcendence. Pinocchio the puppet ends up hanged, at the end of the first part of Collodi’s tale (Chapter XV). The reverse-engineering has so far failed. The contrapasso of the puppet hanging from a tree, attached to a string, is both a regression to an earlier stage and an uncanny caricature of its distant, arboreal origins. The umbilical cord has been reattached. In order to move forward, in its evolutionary path, the story needs a new kind of technological metaphor, a more liberating kind. And the cord must be cut, again. Grace and gracelessness both mark Pinocchio: as a mechanical creature who imitates life, the puppet also embodies the intrinsic aesthetic ambivalence of our technological achievements.17 The aesthetic principle that secretly informs their utilitarian scope is not entirely compatible with a practical end. In the second half of Collodi’s tale, Pinocchio is the object of another kind of magic, a metamorphic one: a sort of intelligent design, linked to a female principle which transfigures its own natural and domestic roots. The Blue Fairy, the Lady of the Woods with all her animal servants, the sister, mother and step-mother, is not only a sublimation of all relevant feminine archetypes in the story—from the point of view of a coming-of-age puppet-boy. She is also, I would argue, the guardian angel (the dea ex machina) of an alternative, ecological (approach to) technology, one that evokes or conjures up the unfathomable wisdom of nature’s cycles of life and death.18 In short, Pinocchio’s adventures are split between an archaic and a modern way of approaching the dilemmas of life, and this applies also to the story read as a cautionary tale about technology, the way in which Collodi’s original text can become the subject of a pedagogical experiment. Undoubtedly, this is a contemporary take on Pinocchio, yet, one that is coherent with its nature of perennial folktale, even clearer today since technology has

212 • Massimo Riva become the central tenet of our existence, and we have become aware that our destiny as a species increasingly depends, for better or worse, on our technological creativity or destructiveness. In conclusion, I tried to argue that Pinocchio’s story somewhat prefigures the fate of contemporary techno-humanism: the clashing and coming to terms, in our technological imagination, of our artistic and scientific modes of thought, our way of imagining ourselves and our destiny as hybrid, natural-artificial-transcendental beings. To this end, I embraced what I’ll call a constructivist epistemology. Indeed, a characteristic of our contemporary culture is what we may call ‘total constructivism’. In the words of Evelyn Fox Keller (who teaches History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), we ‘live and work in a world in which what counts as an explanation has become more and more difficult to distinguish from what counts as a recipe for construction.’19 I would argue that this does not apply exclusively to the life sciences or the physical sciences but increasingly also to the humanities. Reproduction through technological means—be it a synthetic DNA sequence or a model of our brain in AI, or even the electronic version of a text we have received in written or print form—is more than a reproduction: it is a re-encoding of our own biological-cultural heritage. A logic of discovery is at work in this re-encoding, because, in order to reproduce and re-encode the products of our imagination, we have to discover their essential properties, both physical and cognitive. If we push things a little further we could say that scientists and scholars are engaged in a common task: reinventing the mechanisms of life, intelligence or cultural transmission, through the technological tools that we are building for this purpose. From the mechanical to a metamorphic, digital body: Pinocchio is perhaps a foretelling and foreboding apologue of our own foreseeable destiny. The reverse-engineering of a still adolescent humanity is always underway. Yet, the humanistic outcome of the tale is not entirely assured. Notes 1 2

3

Italo Calvino, Why Read the Classics, trans. Martin McLaughlin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 1–3. I outlined this perspective in more detail in: Massimo Riva, “Digital Pinocchio: The Literary Text as Artificial Life Form,” in New Approaches to Teaching Pinocchio and its Adaptations, ed. Michael Sherberg (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2006), 144–52. See Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oratio De Hominis Dignitate / Oration on the Dignity of Man, ed. Massimo Riva, Michael Papio and Francesco Borghesi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), 27–30: ‘The Father infused in man, at his birth, every sort of seed and all sprouts of every kind of life. These seeds will grow and bear fruit in each man who sows them. If he cultivates his vegetative seeds, he will become a plant. If

Beyond the Mechanical Body • 213 he cultivates his sensitive seeds, he will become a brute animal. If he cultivates his rational seeds, he will become a heavenly being. If he cultivates his intellectual seeds, he will be an angel and a son of God.’ 4 The observation can be found in the transcript of an interview: Paolo Fabbri, “Pinocchio e la semiotica”, Enciclopedia Multimediale delle Scienze Filosofiche, accessed February 19, 2011, http://www.emsf.rai.it/tv_tematica/trasmissioni.asp?d=327. 5 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Cape, 1972), 109: ‘Everything, then, can be a myth? Yes, I believe this, for the universe is infinitely fertile in suggestions. Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things. A tree is a tree. Yes, of course. But a tree as expressed by Minou Drouet is no longer quite a tree, it is a tree which is decorated, adapted to a certain type of consumption, laden with literary self-indulgence, revolt, images, in short with a type of social usage which is added to pure matter’. The same can be said of the tree stump transformed by Collodi’s narrative magic into a (talking) puppet who wants to become a boy: the various stages of this transformation are the fundamental stages in Pinocchio’s myth, its fundamentally transformative message. 6 Giambattista Vico, The New Science of Giambattista Vico, 3rd ed. (1744) trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 74–75. 7 Vico, New Science, 22. 8 Plato, The Laws, Book I, 644, trans. A.E. Taylor (London: Dent, 1960), 22; and further: ‘That, indeed, is more than we can tell, but one thing is certain: these interior states are, so to say, the cords, or strings, by which we are worked; they are opposed to one another and pull us with opposite tensions in the direction of opposite actions, and therein lies the division of virtue from vice.’ See also Henryk Jurkowski, A History of European Puppetry from its Origins to the End of the 19th Century (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, c1996), 43–44. 9 Vico, New Science, 71. 10 See Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”, in Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition: An Anthology, ed. Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek Heidegger (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 252–64. 11 As I wrote in my essay, Riva, “Digital Pinocchio”, much of the original inspiration for this project and the whole experiment was provided by Franz Fischnaller’s installation “Pinocchio Interactive”, http://www.fabricat.com/VRI_PINOCCHhome.htm. 12 Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio/The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet, trans., intro. and notes Nicolas J. Perella (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), 97.

214 • Massimo Riva 13 Riva, “Digital Pinocchio”, 149. 14 Nancy Cartwright, The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 36. 15 The most recent and interesting of these attempts is by Suzanne StewartSteinberg, The Pinocchio Effect: On Making Italians (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 16 See James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). 17 See Heinrich von Kleist, Über das Marionettentheater (1810). 18 Interestingly enough, this supernatural role is not as explicit in Collodi’s original text as it is, for example, in Disney’s adaptation. Perhaps this is because the faith in the magic powers of technology (transfigured as a manifestation of a supernatural intervention) was so embedded in the American mind between the Great Depression and the war. 19 Evelyn Fox Keller, Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 203.

Contributors

Professor Christopher Cairns (Westminster). Professor Cairns is Emeritus Professor of Italian Drama at the University of Westminster and was Honorary Research Fellow at Royal Holloway College, University of London (2005–2010). His academic interests include Commedia dell’Arte, the Republic of Venice in the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation. He is the author of numerous books, including Pietro Aretino and the Republic of Venice (1985) and Dario Fo e la pittura scenica (2000). Forthcoming projects include a book entitled The War Correspondence of Ralph and Dorothy Hammond Innes and a Historical Dictionary of the Italian Theatre. Professor Cairns has also worked as a theatre director and translator for Channel 4. Dr. Salvatore Consolo (Varese). Salvatore Consolo works on the history and theory of cinematic adaptations from literary texts in Italy. He received his PhD from the University of Birmingham where he also taught for seven years. He is currently Head Master at Varese 1-Mazzini School where he continues researching on fi lm adaptations and the history of the Italian education system. Dr. Jill Fell (London). Dr. Fell does research on marionettes, dance and Zurich Dada. She published extensively on Alfred Jarry in the U.K., U.S., France and Germany; see specially her book Alfred Jarry: An Imagination in Revolt (2005). Dr. Fell is an Associate Research Fellow of the French Department at Birkbeck College, University of London. Professor Charles Klopp (Ohio State). Charles Klopp is Professor of Italian in the Department of French and Italian at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches modern and contemporary Italian literature and culture and is Director of Graduate Studies in Italian. His latest book, La veste zebrata, the Italian version of his Sentences: The Memoirs of Italian Political Prisoners from Benvenuto Cellini to Aldo Moro is due shortly from Felici publishers in Pisa. 215

216 • Contributors Susan Lawson is an independent writer and editor in the fields of contemporary art, art history, architecture and visual culture. Commissioning Editor in Art and Visual Theory at I.B. Tauris Publishers, she is the author of Rubens (2006) and co-author, with artist Catherine Elwes, of Installation Art, A Guided Tour (2008). Dr. Ann Lawson Lucas (Hull). Ann Lawson Lucas taught nineteenthcentury Italian literature, especially Collodi’s Pinocchio and Salgari’s adventure novels, in the Italian Department at the University of Hull. Her research interests include periodicals for children, comparative studies and Italo Calvino. Her publications include the Oxford translation of Collodi’s Pinocchio (1996), Gunpowder and Sealing-Wax: Nationhood in Children’s Literature (1997) and “Collodi et Perrault: aristos et animaux” in Tricentenaire Charles Perrault, edited by Jean Perrot (1998). Professor Jean Perrot (Paris). Founder of the International Institute Charles Perrault in 1994, Professor Perrot is the author of a number of prize-winning publications in the field of children’s literature and comparative studies, including Art baroque, art d’enfance (1991), Carnets d’illustrateurs (2000), Jeux et enjeux du livre d’enfance et de jeunesse (2001), Le secret de Pinocchio (2003) and Mondialisation et littérature de jeunesse (2008). He is currently Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature at Paris University and Fellow of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature. Dr. Katia Pizzi (London). Dr. Pizzi is Senior Lecturer in Italian at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. She has published books, Chapters and articles in the U.S., the U.K., Italy, Slovenia, Hungary and Iceland on modern Italian literature and culture, including children’s literature and illustration, the northeastern borders of Italy (especially Trieste) and the Futurist avant-garde. Her current projects include a monograph on Italian Futurism and technology. Professor Massimo Riva (Brown). Massimo Riva is Professor of Italian Studies and Modern Culture and Media. His recent works include: Italian Tales: An Anthology of Contemporary Italian Fiction (2004) and a forthcoming book entitled Pinocchio digitale: postumanesimo e letteratura. He is the author of numerous essays on the application of computing to literary studies and directs the Virtual Humanities Lab at Brown University (http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/vhl_new/). His current work in the digital humanities is focused on an interactive version of a nineteenth-century panorama about the life of Giuseppe Garibaldi (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/garibaldi/).

Contributors • 217 Dr. Stephen Wilson (Chelsea College of Art). Stephen Wilson is an artist, independent writer and researcher. He is the 2007 Abbey Award Holder in the British School at Rome. He is a regular tutor in the MA Fine Art course at Chelsea College of Art as well as lecturing on art theory at Sheffield Hallam University. Wilson’s doctorate included extensive work on a project entitled: The figure of Pinocchio approached as an image in relation to visual culture from the Macchiaioli to the present day.

Index

Acchiappacitrulli. See Sillybillytrap Adam, Adolphe, 57 Adventures of Pinocchio, The, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 39, 40, 56, 57, 64–71, 72, 75, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115–116, 117, 118, 120, 123, 124, 125, 129– 131nn5–7, 132n15, 140, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 163, 165, 167, 168, 169, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 201, 202, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214n18. See also Avventure di Pinocchio, Le Aesop, 147 Aesop, Little. See Folgore, Luciano Africa, 83, 84, 131n7, 144 age, digital, 13, 203, 205, 206, 209 Albert-Birot, Pierre, 137 Albertus Magnus, 54 alchemy, 50, 53, 54 Alfieri, Vittorio, 201 Alidoro. See Mercury A.I. See intelligence, artificial Alighieri, Dante, 58n5 Allegri, Luigi, 93 America, 11, 65, 166–167, 169; americanization, 11, 167, 168; and consumerism, 129n5; its mentality, 214n18; its society, 129n5. See also United States Andersen, Hans Christian, 2, 4, 54, 55 android, 1 Angelini Cinico, orchestra, 153 animate, 115, 204, 205 animation, 99, 124, 131n7, 190, 204, 205, 206, 207, 210; through mechanical means, 132n15 animator, 84, 88

Antamoro, Giulio, 3, 11, 139, 144, 165, 166–167, 170 Anzilotti, Rolando, 152 Aphrodite, 57 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 138 Arabic, 66 Arena, Bruno, 183 Argonauts, 32 Ariosto, Ludovico, 58n5 Aristotle, 207 Arlecchino. See Harlequin Arno the, 64 Arrivé, Michel, 85 Artaud, Antonin, 83, 84 artefact, 4, 6, 7, 9, 50, 53, 104, 117, 121, 125, 207, 211 artifice, 10, 13, 50, 115 artificial, the, 207, 208, 210. See also body; creature; intelligence Ashurst A., Eliza, 35 Asor Rosa, Alberto, 72 Astroboy, 130n7 Atreus, 31 Aulnoy d’, Baroness, 20 automaton, 1, 2, 4, 5, 33, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 151, 203, 204, 210; mechanical, 51, 132n15 avant-garde, 75, 76, 81, 85, 98, 124, 138, 139, 142, 144; in Europe, 6, 85, 98, 135, 142. See also theatre avatar, 2, 205, 206, 207, 211 Avventure di Pinocchio, Le, xv, 3, 5, 8, 12, 13, 50, 51, 54, 56, 57, 136. See also Adventures of Pinocchio, The Azari, Fedele, 136 Bachelard, Gaston, 8, 114 Baldini, Antonio, 64 Balestri, Andrea, 168

219

220 • Index Balla, Giacomo, 138 Balsamo, Joseph. See Cagliostro, Count Alessandro Balzac, Honoré de, 20 Barbier, Jules, 56 Barra, Peppe, 181–182 Barthes, Roland, 204, 206, 213n5 Baudrillard, Jean, 3, 23, 33 Bauer, Henry, 6, 84 Bauhaus, 94 Bazin, André, 176 Beato Angelico, 18 Belgium, 163 Bellei, Mino, 182 Benigni, Roberto, 1, 3, 11, 12–13, 19, 166, 169, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 199n48, 207 Bergonzoni, Alessandro, 183–184 Bergson, Henri, 138, 207 Bernanos, Georges, 176 Bertelli, Luigi, 145 Blake, William, 5, 64 Blanchot, Maurice, 122 Blue Fairy, 4, 5, 12–13, 19, 20, 27, 28, 29, 34, 36–37, 39, 41, 42, 52, 53, 57, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 120, 144, 145, 146–147, 149, 165, 168, 173, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 185, 187, 188–189, 190, 191,192, 193–194, 209–210, 211 Boccioni, Umberto, 135 Böcklin, Arnold, 104 body, 1, 5, 6, 17, 22, 23, 24, 36, 68, 70, 76, 78, 82, 87, 118, 145, 179, 183, 203, 206, 207, 208, 209, 212; artificial, 7, 164, 208, 209; biological, human, natural or organic, 13, 31, 203, 208, 209; mechanical, 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13, 14, 56, 71, 135, 139, 146, 150, 154, 164, 179, 201, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211, 212; virtual, 207, 209, 212. See also Pinocchio Boehme, Jacob, 6, 85–86 Bolt, Barbara, 110 Bonnard, Pierre, 85 Böhn von, Max, 84 Botticelli, Sandro, 181 Bourdieu, Pierre, 13, 189 boy. See child; Pinocchio Bragaglia, Anton Giulio, 139 Braschi, Nicoletta, 181 Brecht, Bertolt, 98, 105 Bresson, Robert, 176 Broglio, Emilio, 41

Buddha, 101 Buffalo Bill, 11, 166, 167 Bumblebee, Lord, 25, 26 Buonarroti, Michelangelo, 52, 124 butterfly, 3, 12, 19, 20, 21, 27, 38, 170, 180, 187, 190, 192, 194 Cabaret Voltaire, 82, 83 Cagliostro, Count Alessandro, 50 Cairns, Christopher, 7–8, 93 Calvino, Italo, 201 Cambon, Glauco, 123 Campanile, Achille, 139 Canada, 11, 163, 166 Candle-Wick, 30, 67, 69, 126, 130n7, 145, 146, 165, 168, 178, 179, 180, 184, 187, 192, 193 Cantarelli, Gino, 138 Canuti, Filippo, 35 capitalism, 97 Carducci, Giosuè, 3, 64, 137 caricature, 17, 20, 21, 23, 31, 32, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81–82, 84, 85, 88, 153, 202, 211 Carrà, Carlo, 94, 104 Carroll, Lewis, 21 cartoon, 85, 97, 167, 168 Cartwright, Nancy, 208 Casella, Alfredo, 139 Castellani Polidori, Ornella, 186 Cat and Fox. See Fox and Cat Cavallari, Max, 183 Cecchi D’Amico, Suso, 168 Cecioni, Adriano, 124 Cerami, Vincenzo, 185, 186, 187 Chapais, Henri André, 138–139, 144 Chaplin, Charlie, 148 Charles Albert, King, 35 Charyn, Jerome, 154, 159n58 Chatman, Seymour, 177 Cherry. See Master Cherry Cherubini, Eugenio, 131n7 child, 3, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 58, 65, 66, 69, 70, 75, 78, 80, 81, 86, 88, 95, 100, 103, 114, 119, 121, 126, 129n5, 130n7, 136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145–146, 149, 152, 164, 168, 169, 177, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 192, 193, 194, 195n9, 198–199n48, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 208, 211 childhood. See child

Index • 221 children’s literature, 3, 4, 17, 20, 25, 37, 40, 54, 57, 63, 122, 129n5, 130n7, 141, 143, 145, 153, 201 Chiostri, Carlo, 136, 148, 153 Chirico de, Giorgio, 2, 7, 94–95, 98, 101, 104 Cianchi, Emilio, 30 Ciliegia. See Master Cherry cinema. See film Clair, Jean, 78, 82 clone, 150, 206 Cocteau, Jean, 138 code, computer, 2, 206, 209 Collodi, Carlo, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24–29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 63–70, 72, 75, 88, 109–117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 129–131nn5–7, 132n15, 136, 139, 140, 144, 145, 146, 147–148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 201, 206, 209, 211, 213n5, 214n18 comedian, 136, 166, 181 Comédie Française, 102, 103 comedy, 3, 7, 11, 84, 104, 138, 139, 150, 166, 167, 168, 169, 183, 187, 190, 203, 204, 207, 211 Comencini, Luigi, 3, 11, 166, 168–169 comic opera. See opera comics, 125 Commedia dell’Arte, 21, 29, 40, 49, 53, 57, 96, 98, 116, 132n15 communism, 34, 96 Communist Party (Italian), 94 Conder, Charles, 84 Consolo, Salvatore, 10–13, 163, 175 Copeland, Charles, 131n7 Corra, Bruno. See Ginanni Corradini, Bruno Correggio, Antonio, 38 Couturier, E., 87 Craig, Edward Gordon, 7, 94, 95–96, 104 creature, 4, 5, 13, 50, 54, 56, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 81, 82, 139, 140, 164, 203, 207; artificial, 202, 203, 208, 209, 210, 212; mechanical, 211; virtual, 2, 203, 206, 208, 209. See also Dr Frankenstein’s monster Cricket. See Talking Cricket; Jiminy Cricket Cubism, 142, 144

cybernetics, 2 cyberspace, 202 cyborg, 2, 5, 135, 202 Dada, 6, 82, 83, 84, 94, 138, 144 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 137 Dante. See Alighieri, Dante Dante of Castiglione, 30 Daumier, Honoré, 85 De Amicis, Edmondo, 3, 130n7 Decadentism, 56 Deed, André. See Chapais, Henri André Delestre, J.B., 78, 79–81 De Libero, Libero, 10, 137 Delibes, Léo, 4, 52, 55 Della Porta, Bartolomeo, 18 Depero, Fortunato, 2, 135, 138 De Sica, Vittorio, 148 Dick, Helmut, 129n5 Dickens, Charles, 64 digital. See age; metamorphosis; Pinocchio director. See film-maker Disney, Walt, 9, 11, 121, 123, 124–125, 146, 147–148, 154, 165, 167–168, 169, 203, 214n18 doll, 8, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 83, 84, 88, 91n40, 93, 98, 100, 101, 103, 137, 139; mechanical, 1, 50, 52, 54, 55; voodoo, 83, 88 Donati, Danilo, 182, 185 Doré, Gustave, 20 Duchamp, Marcel, 94 dummy, 1, 7, 8, 93–96, 97, 98, 102, 103, 104, 137 Durand, Gilbert, 27 Ébance. See Hébert Ébé. See Hébert Ébon. See Hébert Ébouille. See Hébert education, 9, 14, 18, 20, 66, 81, 110, 113, 118, 120, 125–126, 132n15, 141, 145, 146, 147, 151, 179, 188, 201, 203, 205, 210, 211 electricity, 1, 137 England, 35, 39, 64, 68 English, 20, 35, 40, 88, 131n7, 198– 199n48, 204 Enlightenment, 53, 203, 205–206 Ennery d’, Adolphe, 30 Ensor, James, 99 Ernst, Max, 7, 88 Esopino. See Folgore, Luciano Eugene, 171n10, 192

222 • Index Eugenio. See Eugene Europe, 64, 65, 75, 94, 135, 144, 168; as federation, 35; its values, 101 Evola, Julius, 138 Fabbri, Paolo, 204, 205 fable, 20, 21, 138, 140, 141, 143, 147, 148, 178, 185, 189, 204, 208 Fairy. See Blue Fairy fairy tale, 18, 20, 28, 31, 36, 83, 112, 113, 118, 149, 150, 152, 184, 202, 203 Fanfani, Amintore, 94, 97 fantasy, 3, 8, 17, 18, 23, 31, 39, 50, 93, 103, 113, 115, 128, 139, 148, 189, 203, 204, 206, 207, 209, 212 Farinata degli Uberti, 30 fascism, 10, 94, 96, 97, 141, 147, 148, 159 Fata Turchina. See Blue Fairy Far, Isabella. See de Chirico, Giorgio father, 4, 5, 9, 11, 19, 28, 37, 40, 41, 42, 50, 51, 52, 54, 56, 68, 69, 88, 94, 98, 145, 148–149, 151, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168–169, 171n10, 177, 178, 180, 185, 189, 191, 192, 193, 204, 211. See also Pinocchio Fell, Jill, 5–6, 75 Fellini, Federico, 12, 175, 176 Fiedler, Leslie, 130n7 film, 2, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 123, 124, 132n15, 139, 140, 143, 144, 147, 148, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 199n48, 206, 207; filmmaker, 3, 12, 168, 170, 175, 176, 179, 182, 188 Fiozzi, Aldo, 138 fireplace, 8, 9, 66, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113–115, 116, 121, 122, 140, 190 Fleres, Ugo, 125 Fo, Dario, 2, 7–8, 93–105 Folgore, Luciano, 2, 3, 9–10, 135–154, 155n17, 159n58 folklore, 51, 118 Foregger, Nikolai, 6 Formaggina, 151–152 Forster, Edward M., 178 Foster, Hal, 144 Fox and Cat, 19, 27, 31, 37, 40, 42, 65, 67, 146, 164, 171n10, 180, 183, 187, 191, 202 Fox Keller, Evelyn, 212 Fra Angelico. See Beato Angelico France, 28, 35, 38, 39, 40, 42, 64, 76, 85, 86, 142

Frank, Yasha, 125 Frankenstein, Victor, 2, 5, 50, 54, 63–68, 70, 207. See also monster Fréchet, Patrick, 79 Freher, Dionysius, 6, 86 French, 21, 35, 40, 41, 78, 85, 86, 98, 143, 144, 153 Freud, Sigmund, 105, 207, 210 Futurism, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 94, 104, 135, 136–140, 141–142, 143, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154, 203 Gainsborough, Thomas, 112 Galatea, 57 game, computer, 202, 206 Gant. See Antamoro, Giulio Gargantua, 85 gatto, il e la volpe. See Cat and Fox Gazurmah, 5 Gentle Jack, 20, 25, 26, 27, 31, 34, 36, 39, 42 George St, 94, 97 Geppetto. See Old Joe Germany, 64, 135 Gervais, André Charles, 85, 86, 90–91n40 Getty, John Paul, Research Institute and Library, 9–10, 135, 141, 148, 153 Giacobbe, Francesco, 142 Giacometti, Alberto, 2, 6, 78, 82, 84 Giangio, 65, 69, 193 Giannettino, 18, 28, 33, 42 Giannone, Pietro, 35 Gilbert, W.S., 57 Ginanni Corradini, Bruno, 136 girl. See child Giuffré, Carlo, 180 Godmother. See Blue Fairy golem, 7, 88, 207 Goya, Francisco, 98 Gramsci, Antonio, 155n17 Grandville, J.J., 20–21, 22, 31, 32, 34, 42 Great Britain, 64 Greco, Franco Carmelo, 93 Greek, 66 Greimas, Algirdas J., 12, 180 Gribouille. See Gentle Jack Grimm, Jacob, 51 Grimm, Wilhelm, 51 Grosz, George, 97 grotesque, 77, 82, 96, 103, 136, 139 Guardone, Giannetto, 11, 148, 165–166, 168 Guerrini, Olindo, 41 Guillaume, Ferdinand, 11, 139, 166

Index • 223 Hamlet, 36 Harlequin, 21, 29, 30, 33–34, 41, 49, 114, 132n15, 171n10, 186–187 Hays M., Matilda, 35, 40 hearth (see fireplace) Hébert, Monsieur, 6, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 88 Hebrew, 66 Heidegger, Martin, 3, 13, 205 Hetzel, Pierre-Jules, 20, 21 Hjelmslev, Louis, 12, 170 Hoffmann, E.T.A., 2, 4, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58 Holland. See Netherlands, The Holy Mary. See Madonna Holy Virgin. See Madonna Horwitz, Jane, 195n9, 198n48 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 3 Iavarone, Franco, 182 identity, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 33, 50, 67, 81, 88, 93, 94, 95, 102, 104, 105, 112, 117, 120, 121, 131, 145, 148, 149, 150, 151, 184, 202, 205, 209; mechanical or robotic, 10, 31, 144, 146, 150, 152, 154; of a nation, 129n5; of a puppet or mannequin, 88, 95, 102, 104, 105. See also Pinocchio imagination. See fantasy Impala. See Melampo inanimate, 4, 9, 50, 52, 54, 99, 115, 118, 122, 128, 143, 180, 205, 207, 208 Incerpi, Leonello, 153 industrialization, 3, 4, 5, 33, 64, 135, 136 industry: as an advancement, 4; before the advent of, 64, 137; its constraints, 3, 33, 97; and society, 32, 136 See also Revolution, Industrial inorganic, 205, 207 intelligence, artificial, 132n15, 209, 212 Ireland, 64 irony, 3, 7, 97, 98, 100, 101, 138, 139, 140, 145, 147, 159n58 Italian, 41, 98, 112, 132n15, 179–180, 198–199n48 Italian Communist Party. See Communist Party (Italian) Italy, 4, 5, 10, 11, 18, 21, 24, 28, 33, 35, 38, 58, 64, 65, 66, 94, 97, 112, 120–121, 132n15, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 147, 148, 159n58, 163, 166, 168, 169, 185, 189, 201; and migration, 11, 167; and its society, 147, 148, 184, 209; Unification of,

2, 3, 64, 66, 69, 121, 124, 148, 201, 209; ‘Young Italy’, 24, 34 Jakobson, Roman, 11, 165 Janco, Marcel, 83 Jannarone, Kimberly, 86 Japan, 130n7, 163 Jarry, Alfred, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80–88 Jarry, Charlotte, 77 Jiminy Cricket, 167. See also Talking Cricket Joe. See Old Joe Kantor, Tadeusz, 2–3, 7, 94, 95–96, 102, 104 Kentridge, William, 77 Kezich, Tullio, 195n9 Klee, Paul, 6, 82, 84 Kleist von, Heinrich, 94 Kletke, Hermann, 51 Klopp, Charles, 5, 63 Kristeva, Julia, 85 Lacan, Jacques, 31, 207 La Fontaine de, Jean, 21 Lampwick. See Candle-Wick Land of Toys, 30, 119, 145, 151, 171n10, 173, 178, 179, 183, 185, 187, 192, 193 Latin, 66 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 21 Lavers, Annette, 213n5 Law, William, 6, 85–86 Lawson, Susan, 9, 117 Lawson Lucas, Ann, 4, 49, 58n5, 113, 115, 116 Léger, Fernand, 6 Leibniz, Gottfried, 210 Le Monnier, Felice, 38 Leprince de Beaumont, Jeanne-Marie, 20 Leroux, Pierre, 41 Levi, Primo, 105 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 11, 163, 165, 168–169, 170, 176, 177 Liszt, Franz, 23 Little Girl. See Blue Fairy Little Man, 65, 119, 140, 180, 183, 193, 202 Little Red Riding Hood, 150, 151 Lollobrigida, Gina, 168, 169 Lorenzini, Carlo. See Collodi, Carlo Lorenzini, Paolo, 11, 147, 167, 168 Louis-Philippe, King, 85 Lucian, 58n5

224 • Index Lucignolo. See Candle-Wick Lugné-Poe, Aurélien, 81, 82 Lumaca. See Snail Luzi. See Pinocchio Maar, Dora, 88 macabre, 56, 75, 77, 81 macchietta (see skit) machine, 1, 2, 6, 9, 10, 135–137, 141, 143, 144, 151; its aesthetic dimension, 2, 9–10, 135–137, 139, 144, 150; cult of (see ‘machinism’); flying, 136, 137; in relation to humans, 138–139, 143, 210 ‘machinism’, 135, 137, 143, 144, 149, 151, 153 machinery, 137 Macchiaioli, school, 3, 8, 9, 112, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 124 Madonna 18, 19, 34, 39, 42, 181; of the Chair, 18, 38, 39, 42; with the Sack, 18 Madrignani, Carlo, 23 Maestro Cherry. See Master Cherry Maestro Ciliegia. See Master Cherry Maestro Geppetto. See Old Joe Mafarka, 5 magic, 13, 32, 50, 53, 55, 56, 57, 82, 84, 85, 88, 120, 129n5, 139, 141, 145, 146, 169, 181, 187, 188, 203, 209–210, 211, 213n5, 214n18 Majakovski, Vladimir, 7, 98 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 84 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 138, 155n17 Manfredi, Nino, 169 manga, 202 Manganelli, Giorgio, 69, 206 Mangiafoco / Mangiafuoco. See Swallowfire; Stromboli manifesto, futurist, 10, 135, 140, 150 mannequin, 7, 8, 93–96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103–105, 137, 139, 141, 150, 153; human, 95, 98, 102, 103; mechanical, 8, 104; wooden, 150 Marcheschi, Daniela, 19, 58n5 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 2, 5, 10, 104, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 150 marionette, 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 49, 53, 57, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 91n40, 93–96, 97, 98–103, 104, 110, 137, 139, 143, 148, 150, 152. See also puppet marionetteer. See puppet-master Martini, Ferdinando, 113

mask, 3, 6, 21, 29–30, 31, 32, 33, 76, 77–78, 81, 82, 83–84, 88, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 102 Masnata, Pino, 10, 140 Master Antonio. See Master Cherry Master Cherry, 19, 38, 40, 42, 52, 53, 69, 145, 164, 168, 178, 208 Master Fire-Eater. See Swallowfire Mazzanti, Enrico, 9, 21, 42, 57, 125, 136, 148, 153 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 3, 17, 24–25, 34–38, 42 McLuhan, Marshall, 140 mechanism, 1, 2, 50, 53, 132, 203, 208, 210, 212 mechanization, 5, 10; of feature, gesture or posture, 32, 148, 149, 150, 203, 211; generative or reproductive, 5, 50, 211; in relation to humans, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 53, 150, 208; as a process, 102; of the universe, 203. See also body; identity; ‘otherness’; puppet; toy media, 10, 12, 140, 141, 142, 151, 153, 165, 202, 204, 206 Medoro, 176, 177, 180, 182, 187, 190, 191, 193, 194 Melampo, 41 Mendès, Catulle, 80 Mercury, 41, 114, 171n10, 178 metal, 3, 54, 137, 138 metamorphosis, 4, 8, 10, 11, 23, 26, 57, 70, 116, 121, 131n7, 150, 151, 163, 165, 167, 168, 169, 177, 178, 180, 183, 193, 203, 209, 210, 211; digital, 2, 14, 202, 205, 212; technological, 203, 205, 206, 209, 213n5. See also Pinocchio Mexico, 163 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 94 Michelangelo. See Buonarroti, Michelangelo Milton, John, 67 Minou Drouet, 213n5 Miró, Joan, 7, 88 Mitchell, Elvis, 194n9, 198n48 modern. See modernity modernity, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 30, 32, 77, 120, 123, 124, 125, 129n5, 130n7, 132n15, 135, 140, 144, 150, 153, 180, 181, 202, 203, 204, 205, 208, 209, 211 Molière, 7, 98, 103 Molteni, Luis, 183 Monet, Claude, 3

Index • 225 Monsieur Ubu. See Ubu monster, 2, 4, 5, 7, 50, 67, 68, 76, 81, 88, 95, 96, 114, 137; as created by Dr Frankenstein, 2, 4, 5, 50, 54, 63, 64, 67, 68, 69, 70 Monstro, 167 Morasso, Mario, 137 Moreau, Gustave, 84 Morghen, Raffaello Sanzio, 38 Morin, Charles, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81 Morin, Henry, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81 Morrissey, Thomas, 110, 129–130n5, 131n7 Mugabe, Grace, 77 Mugabe, Robert, 77 Mumford, Lewis, 1 Munchausen, Baron, 58n5 Mussolini, Benito, 148 myth, 1, 4, 10–11, 12, 13, 27, 30, 51, 57, 76, 88, 118, 121, 132n15, 140, 163, 165, 170, 175–177, 202, 204, 205, 207, 208, 210, 213n5. See also Pinocchio natural, the, 13 nature. See identity Nemesis, 31 Netherlands, The, 129n5 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 104 Noh, 77, 78 nonsense, 136, 138, 139, 144, 145, 146, 149 North Pole, 64 novella, 112 Numa, 18 Nutcracker, 54 Offenbach, Jacques, 2, 4, 55, 56 Offray de la Mettrie, Julien, 1 Old Joe, 9, 19, 24, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 63, 66, 68, 69, 109, 110, 115, 128, 145, 149, 152, 164, 166, 167, 168–169, 178, 180, 185, 187, 190–91, 192, 193, 194, 203, 206, 207, 208, 209–210, 211 Olympia, 50–51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58 Omino di Burro. See Little Man opera, 4, 23, 30, 41, 50, 55, 56, 57; comic, 57 organic, 203, 205, 207 Orwell, George, 147 Orzali, Giuseppe, 19 ‘otherness’, 2, 12, 101; mechanical, 10, 146 Paese dei Balocchi. See Land of Toys

Paggi, Alessandro, 20–21, 113 Paggi, Felice, 20–21, 113 Paladini, Vinicio, 6, 135, 139 Pani, Corrado, 184 Pannaggi, Ivo, 6, 135, 139 Paracelsus, 54 Parronaud, Vincent. See Winshluss Pascoli, Giovanni, 179 P.C.I. (Partito Comunista Italiano). See Communist Party (Italian) pedagogy. See education Perdiguier, Agricol, 40 Perella, Nicolas J., 121, 130n7 Père Ébé. See Hébert Père Hébert. See Hébert Père Ubu. See Ubu Perrault, Charles, 20, 21, 113 Perrot, Jean, 3, 15, 17, 58n5 Persian, 66 Petrolini, Ettore, 9, 136, 155n17 P.H. See Hébert Piatti bookshop, 21 Picasso, Pablo, 83, 144 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 13, 203 Pinkus, Karen, 141 Pinocchio, 1–14, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31–33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57–58, 63–70, 78, 88, 109–125, 128, 129–131nn5–7, 132n15, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143–154, 159n58, 163–170, 171n10, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184–185, 186, 187, 188–189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 198n48, 201–212, 213; his adventures, 31, 40, 42, 67, 149, 151, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 171n10, 175, 177, 185, 187, 203, 204, 211; his body, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, 24, 52, 53, 70, 109, 135, 136, 139, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 201, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 211, 212; as a boy, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 27, 42, 57, 68, 70, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 130n7, 139, 143, 146, 150, 151, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 173, 178, 180, 186, 189, 190, 192, 194n9, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 209, 210, 211, 213n5; in digital format, 3, 13, 14, 201, 206–210, 212; as a donkey, 69, 145, 146, 165, 167, 168, 183, 193; his identity, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 50, 58, 110, 112,

226 • Index 117, 120, 124, 125, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 205, 208, 210, 211; his metamorphoses, 26, 31, 70, 112, 116, 139, 143, 145, 146, 151, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 178, 180, 189, 192, 193, 203, 205, 213; his myth, 164–165, 169, 170, 176–177, 204, 205, 207, 213n5; his nose, 3, 6, 10, 14, 29, 30, 32, 53, 88, 131, 136, 145, 149–152, 154, 159n58, 191, 192, 206; post-Pinocchio, 129, 147–148, 154; as a puppet, 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 19, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 42, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57–58, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 88, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 119, 125, 129n5, 131n7, 132n15, 136, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 158, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 173, 180, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194n9, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209–210, 211, 213n5; as a son, 57, 151, 164, 169, 181, 190 Piovani, Nicola, 12, 187 Pip, 23, 113–114 Pirandello, Luigi, 8, 102, 105 Pirovano, Mario, 101 Pizarro, Camille, 3 Pizzi, Katia, 1, 9–10, 135 Pizzi, Nilla, 153 Plato, 3, 13, 204, 205, 206 Polidor. See Guillaume, Ferdinand Poe, Edgar Allan, 31, 139 Poquelin, Jean-Baptiste. See Molière posthuman, 2, 204 postmodern, 2, 33, 129n5, 154 Prampolini, Enrico, 135, 139, 142, 144, 150, 151 prosthesis, 149, 152, 181, 208 Pulcinella. See Punchinello Punch and Judy, 77 Punchinello, 30, 49, 114, 132n15, 186–187 puppet, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 24, 28, 29, 30, 34, 39, 41, 42, 49, 50, 58, 63, 66, 67, 69, 75, 76, 77, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 91n40, 93, 94, 96–98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 109, 112, 114, 119, 129, 131, 132n15, 138, 139, 143, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 163, 164, 165, 168, 169, 180, 186,

187, 188, 193, 194, 202, 203, 204– 205, 206, 208; animated, anthropomorphic or human, 42, 76, 81, 94, 97, 101, 104, 137, 152, 154, 204; artificial, 204, 205, 208; hand operated, 76, 86, 102; puppetmaster, 4, 19, 29, 33, 49, 84, 85, 87, 90–91n40, 99, 114, 119, 167, 182; mechanical or robotic, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 97, 101, 104, 139, 141, 143, 144, 146, 150, 153, 203, 206, 208, 211; puppetry, 83, 86, 132n15, 205; with or without strings, 4, 49–50, 82, 96, 99–100, 102, 103, 104, 132n15, 167, 204, 210, 211; Ubu, 75, 76, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88; virtual, 206; made of wood, 19, 32, 49, 82–83, 110, 112, 114, 115, 140, 148, 150, 152, 164, 165, 190, 194, 199, 205, 208, 211. See also Pinocchio; theatre puppeteer. See puppet-master Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre, 84 Pygmalion, 4, 57 Pyman, James, 125 Queen of Hearts, 151 Queen Melusina, 151 Rabelais, François, 85, 139 radio, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153 R.A.I. (Radio Audizioni Italiane). See television Rame, Franca, 97, 100, 103 Raphael, 18, 38, 39, 42 Raspe, Rudolf Erich, 58n5 reality, virtual, 206 Red Lobster Inn, 185, 191 Red Riding Hood. See Little Red Riding Hood Rembadi Mongiardini, Gemma, 10, 148–149, 153 Renaissance, 1, 95, 101 Revolution, Industrial, 53, 64, 136 Ringmaster, 180, 183, 193, 202 Risorgimento, 58, 64, 124 Riva, Massimo, 13–14, 201 robot, 3, 32, 33, 130n7, 138–139, 143–144, 148, 149, 150 Roi Ubu. See Ubu Romanticism, 4, 34, 35, 37, 39, 53, 54, 64, 67, 204 Ronconi, Luca, 97

Index • 227 Rosenbaum, Jonathan, 195n9 Rossi Stuart, Kim, 184 Rossini, Gioacchino, 8, 100, 104 Rosso di San Secondo, Pier Maria, 95 Rostow Kuznets, Lois, 130–131n7 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 204 Russia, 64, 94, 135, 142, 163

Surrealism, 2, 7, 68, 84, 88 Svevo, Italo, 105 Swallowfire, 28, 41, 49, 66, 67, 69, 114, 145, 167, 171n10, 173, 180, 182, 183, 185, 191, 202 Switzerland, 64 Symbolism, 6, 7, 82, 85, 86

Salaris, Claudia, 137, 138, 155n17 Sand, George, 2, 3, 17, 20, 21, 24–29, 31, 32, 34–38, 39, 40, 41, 42 Sand, Maurice, 20, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31 Sandman, 50–52, 54, 55, 56, 57 Sanello, Frank, 132n15 Sarto del, Andrea, 18 Sartori, Donato, 102 Sartre, Jean Paul, 105 satire, 7, 8, 29, 31, 81, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 101, 102, 136, 138, 147 Savinio, Alberto, 95, 153 Savonarola, Girolamo, 18 Schlemmer, Oskar, 6, 7, 94, 98, 104 Schmitz, Ettore. See Svevo, Italo Schnapp, Jeffrey, 140–141 Schoonbeek van, Christine, 82, 85 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 104 Schulz, Bruno, 94, 96, 104 Schumann, Peter, 7, 94, 98, 104 Schumann, Robert, 51 Scotland, 64 Segel, Harold B., 75, 81 self , 3, 30, 33, 34, 90n40, 105, 145, 151; mechanical, 31; cult of, 148. See also identity Settimelli, Emilio, 136 Severini, Gino, 142 Sganarelle, 102 Shaw, George Bernard, 57 Shelley, Mary W., 2, 4, 5, 50, 51, 54, 63–68, 70 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 64, 65 Signoret, Henri, 82, 86 Sillybillytrap, 20, 22, 184, 185, 191 skit, 136, 143, 149, 151 slapstick, 136 Snail, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 66, 145 socialist, 35, 37 Sogliuzzo, Richard, 96, 97 Spielberg, Steven, 132n15, 209 Spinazzola, Vittorio, 165, 184 Sprovieri, Giuseppe, 142 Stahl, J.-P. See Pierre-Jules Hetzel Sterne, Laurence, 23 Stravinsky, Igor, 94, 153 Stromboli, 167. See also Swallowfire

Tabucchi, Antonio, 68 Talking Cricket, 20, 21, 68, 180, 181–182, 187, 190, 191, 193, 194 technology, 3, 6, 13, 14, 50, 53, 151, 153– 154, 201–212, 214n18; changes brought about by, 13, 136, 153, 202, 203, 212; cult of, 10, 137, 140, 153; impact on society, 2, 13, 137, 202; mechanical, 10, 135, 137, 210; virtual, 210 television, 9, 10, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 150, 151, 153, 163, 168, 169 Tempesti, Fernando, 24 Tezuka, Osamu, 130n7 theatre, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7–8, 23, 29, 30, 31, 55, 57, 76, 77, 81, 83, 88, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98–99, 100, 101, 102, 104– 105, 116, 132n15, 136, 139, 140, 143, 144, 145, 151, 166; mechanical, 7, 135; puppet, 49, 66, 76, 77, 82, 94, 132n15, 139, 145, 150, 185, 186, 187, 191; variety, 136. See also Commedia dell’Arte theosophy, 86 Thomas, Kevin, 199n48 Thomson, James, 20 Thyestes, King, 31 Titan, 36, 37 Togliatti, Palmiro, 94, 97 Tolomei, Sandro, 168 toy, 4, 50, 54, 55, 95, 119, 131n7, 151, 203, 208, 209; mechanical, 6, 12, 75, 211 Toyland. See Land of Toys transformation. See metamorphosis Traversetti, Bruno, 183 Tunny. See Mercury Turgenev, Ivan, 36 TV. See television Tzara, Tristan, 86, 138 Ubu, 3, 5–7, 10, 75–88; his nose, 76, 77, 78, 80–82, 88. See also puppet uncanny, 14, 50, 82, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211 United States, 11, 94, 129–130n5, 131n7, 147, 163, 167, 168, 169, 177, 189,

228 • Index 194n9, 198n48; critics based in the, 179, 189, 194–195n9, 198–199n48; its currency, 11, 169; imports from the, 147; its press, 198n48. See also America U.R.I. (Unione Radiofonica Italiana). See radio U.S. See United States Vamba. See Bertelli, Luigi Vecchi, Omero. See Folgore, Luciano Verga, Giovanni, 72 Verlaine, Paul, 84 Vico, Giambattista, 3, 13, 204, 205, 208 Victor Emmanuel, King, 97 Vinci da, Leonardo, 1 Virgin Mary. See Madonna virtuality, 209, 210. See also body; creature Vispa Teresa, 144, 149 Vitali, Riccardo, 149

Vittorini, Elio, 105 Weill, Alain, 84, 85 Wells, Herbert George, 139 West, Rebecca, 13, 189 Whitman, Walt, 3 Wilde, Oscar, 76 Wilson, Stephen, 3, 8–9, 109, 111, 117, 119, 123, 127 Winnicott, D.W., 30 Winshluss, 154 Wloszczyna, Susan, 194n9 Worden, Dennis, 125 Wunderlich, Richard, 110, 129–130n5, 131n7 Yeats, W.B., 6, 84 Young, Thomas, 52 Zephyr, 34 Zola, Emile, 3