A Pinocchio For All Ages

Literally hundreds of translations, adaptations, reworkings, and, in some cases, utter desecrations of Collodi's masterpiece have appeared in the United States since Cassell introduced the Murray translation in 1892. In response to the Pinocchio centennial of 1983, translators produced three major new versions, those of M.L. Rosenthal (1983), James Tehan (1985), and Nicholas J. Perella (1986). Given the ready availability of two very good translations (Murray and Della Chiesa) any new rendering should offer something pretty special in order to justify its existence. Perella's volume is a gem that Pinocchio enthusiasts should cherish.

As a number of recent critics have demonstrated, Pinocchio has suffered some cruel treatment in our country. Collodi's story has been Americanized, moralized, and trivialized by a parade of literary meddlers. As early as 1904, adaptors began to alter or omit words, passages and entire episodes. Collodi's terrible shark il pescecane has been transformed into a whale, a sea monster and a great fish; events such as Pinocchio's killing of the Talking Cricket or the sinister Coachman's biting of a boy-turned-donkey's ear do not appear in many versions. The Disney feature cartoon, as entertaining as it is, bears scant resemblance to Collodi's original. These Pinocchio derivatives often rob the story of its emotional impact and psychological realism.

Both Tehan and Perella show a profound respect for Collodi's humor and wisdom, and both have produced lively, readable translations. Tehan's book features two sets of informative and amusing explanatory notes—one for children and one for adults. Both children and adults are likely to enjoy the translation, and the notes will help adult readers save face when their young listeners confront them with hitherto unanswerable questions.

The Perella volume is unique and important. Published by University of California Press as part of its series of bilingual Italian masterworks, the book is likely more frequently to appear on the shelves of libraries and scholars than on those of general readers. This is too bad because the translation merits a wider circulation. The volume features the definitive Italian text edited by Ornella Castelani Pollidori and Perella's translation arranged on opposing pages and adorned with Enrico Mazzanti's illustrations. Its critical apparatus includes an essay, a preface to the text, a note on illustrators, samples of Chiostro's illustrations, textual notes, and an extensive bibliography. These combine to make the book indispensable to serious students of Pinocchio or Italian literature.

Perella's introduction, innocuously entitled "An Essay on Pinocchio," is a major contribution to Collodi criticism. It surveys critical opinion, places the novel in its Italian context, and describes the techniques that make the book a classic. The thrust of Perella's argument is that Pinocchio is at once a book for children and for adults and that it is both universal and distinctly Italian.

Pinocchio is archetypal and, therefore, suggestive. Motifs such as the journey theme and the search for the father by the motherless child give it a kinship with epics and fairy tales; hence the tendency of serious critics to compare the puppet with heroes such as Odysseus, Aeneas, Christ and Dante. Though strictly speaking neither a fable nor an allegory, the book reminds us of works in these genres and of other works in other genres as well; indeed, asserts Perella, "Collodi frequently and deliberately echoes a wide range of literary and cultural traditions" (5). Beyond that, his themes and echoes are sometimes unconscious so that the novel escapes "any single or reductive interpretation" (6). Perella is right: critics have had and will continue to have a field day with this rich yarn.

Perella goes to great lengths to show us that Pinocchio is very much a nineteenth-century Italian novel and that it incorporates or pointedly rejects elements of both adult and juvenile fiction of the period. Collodi's social realism reminds Perella of prominent novels for adults such as Manzoni's The Betrothed or...