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Haría Remonato
PINOCCHIO FROM ITALY TO RUSSIA, OR THE LITERARY JOURNEY OF AN ICONIC PUPPET
As is well known, in 1935 the famous Soviet writer Aleksey Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1883-1945) wrote the fairytale Zolotoj klyuchik, ili Priklyucheniya Buratino (The Little Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino) inspired by Collodi's Pinocchio (1883), that he read and loved some years earlier. Considering the substantial relationships between the two works, the present paper aims at analysing them from two main points of view: a) the different connotations attributed to animal and human characters; b) the authentic nature of the "implied reader" (W. Iser) in the two texts, regardless of the moralistic or ideological contexts in which they were respectively conceived. Are they really to be considered as "fairy tales for children"? To what kind of child are they addressed?
Keywords: Pinocchio, The Little Golden Key, Burattino, Collodi, A. Tolstoy, animals vs. human characters, "implied reader", fairy tale, children
To invest on children requires attention, spirit of service, a constant effort to be, for them, the hundred things they need: a mate to grow, to play and to discover with, an entertainer, an expert, the power that gives them the tools they need, the adult that provokes them, revealing to them new horizons, new directions of movement.
We are the steps of the staircase that children climb.1
Rodari 1992, 32
Ilaria Remonato Verone University, Italy
DOI: 10.31860/2304-5817-2022-1-21-154-198
As is well known, Pinocchio's character appeared for the first time in La storia di un burattino (The Story of a Puppet) by Carlo Collodi (pseudonym of the Florentine writer and journalist Carlo Lorenzini, 1826-1890). The adventures of the famous marionette were first published in serial form in the children's weekly magazine "Giornale per i bambini" ("Children's Magazine")2 from 7th July to 27th October 1881 (Fig. 1). Initially they consisted of eight episodes that ended with the death of the protagonist, whom the "Assassins" had hung on the Great Oak. The author sent to the director of the magazine the first pages of his fairy tale with this ironic note: "I send you this children's story, do what you want with it; but if you print it, pay me well, so that I feel keen to continue it" [Castellani Pollidori 1983, XIV]. In the following months, also thanks to several children's letters addressed to the editorial staff, the writer was really induced to widen and continue the work, and new episodes came out in the magazine until 25th January 1883. Then the whole text was published as a single book in February 1883 with the definitive title The Adventures of Pinocchio. The Story of a Puppet3.
Originally a fairy tale written, as some scholars claimed, to quickly earn some money and pay off gambling debts [Bertacchini 1993, 238242; Raggi 2016, 218], it became a work that is currently considered one of the absolute masterpieces of worlds literature for children. In fact, along the thirty-six chapters that compose the full-length edition of the novel, the vicissitudes of a puppet carved from a special piece of wood unfold. The animated marionette is reckless, he tells lies and is naturally prone to disobedience; at times he is fickle and rebellious, but he is endowed with a heart of gold and an immense imagination. From its first publication Pinocchio has known ever-growing success, also favoured by the popularity of its numerous theatrical and cinematographic reductions4. To this day, the fable has been published in 261 versions and it has been translated into 240 different languages5. The stylistic vivacity and the smoothness of Collodi's language, rich in fulminating inventions, still nowadays make relevant a story in which the humanity of the characters is skilfully intertwined with the visionary transfiguration of a poor and rural Italy. The lexical elements coming from Tuscan vernacular, as well as the presence of proverbs and idioms in the protagonists' incisive jokes have contributed to the vitality of the text also from the point of view of its formal structure, i. e. as a literary document of an era. In line with his previous works, the writer abandons himself to a free, playful and allusive composition, which tends to disrupt any realistic or consequential logic parameter. As a satirical journalist with educational purposes, Lorenzini already had extensive experience
Figure 1. Original frontpage of Le avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un burattino in sigle volume, Firenze: Fabbri edition, 1883
in children's literature6, but in this work, despite the moralistic approach typical of the contemporary pedagogical context7, he chooses to act in a new way. "My little readers", he writes at the beginning of the narrative, as to reassure of his intentions. However, in a careful analysis we can observe that the author changes the rules and creates something surprising: a fairy tale in some respects "realistic", in which Pinocchio's first antagonist is not an ogre, but a Carabineer. As has emerged from several recent studies [Vagnoni 2007; Bertacchini 2015; Marcheschi 2016], Collodi was a writer who passionately loved theatre8, animals and the timeless dimension of playing (let us consider the metaphorical connotations of the "Land of Toys" in the novel, but also his passion for gambling in real life: [see Bertacchini 1993, 43-44]). The puppet, created by the author in the wake of the marionettes of the Italian Theatre of Art, is carved from an extremely hard wood9, that despite its ordinary aspect is intrinsically anomalous. The choice of the name itself seems to announce the initiatory journey of the character, his transition through
significant trials from inert to living matter: 'Pinocchio' (or 'pignocco') is the Tuscan dialectal form for 'pinolo' (or pignolo, pine nut), that is the edible seed of the pine tree contained in the pine cone. In the natural world this type of seed has got a soft core enclosed in a wooden skin. As various scholars remarked, this concrete image recalls, on the symbolic level, the idea of a germ full of future potential [Carosi 2001, 25]. In fact, the puppet's adventures, his encounters, his raids and errors along the way generate the moral commitment that in the end transforms his vegetable physicality, giving universal value to the character.
As is also well known, among the readers fascinated by Pinocchio's story in the Russian cultural context the writer Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1883-1945) stood out, as he composed his own version of the fairy tale, Zolotoj klyuchik, Hi Priklyucheniya Buratino (The Little Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino) in 1935. It was published at first in serial form in the children's magazine "Pionerskaya Pravda" ("The Pioneer Truth")10. Collodi's work had been translated into Russian for the first time in 1906 and had aroused a lot of interest, so much that in the first twenty-five years of the century several other Russian translations of it were produced. A. Tolstoy himself collaborated on a translationadaptation of the novel that came out only in Berlin in 192411. His deep knowledge of Pinocchio and the explicit links with the text were highlighted by the writer in the preface to the volume edition of The Little Golden Key (1936) (Fig. 2), which can be interpreted as an affectionate captatio benevolentiae addressed to his readers:
Когда я был маленький — очень, очень давно, — я читал одну книжку: она называлась «Пиноккио или похождения деревянной куклы» (деревянная кукла по-итальянски — буратино).
Я часто рассказывал моим товарищам, девочкам и мальчикам, занимательные приключения Буратино. Но так как книжка потерялась, то я рассказывал каждый раз по-разному, выдумывал такие похождения, каких в книге совсем и не было.
Теперь, через много много лет, я припомнил моего старого друга Буратино и надумал рассказать вам, девочки и мальчики, необычайную историю про этого деревянного человечка [Tolstoy 1948, 59]1).
1)When I was little — a long, long time ago — I read a booklet: it was called "Pinocchio or the Adventures of a Wooden Marionette" (a wooden marionette in Italian is called "burattino"). I often told my friends, girls and boys, about Burattino's amusing adventures. But as the book had been lost, each time I told the story in a different way, inventing such adventures that in the book were not present at all. Now, after a long, long time, I remembered my old friend Pinocchio, and it came up to my mind to tell you, girls and boys, the extraordinary story of this little wooden man (my translation — I. R.).
Figure 2. Original cover of the 1936 volume edition of Zolotoj klyuchik, ili Priklyucheniya Buratino
As for the plot and the main characters, apart from some details until Pinocchio's gold coins are stolen by the Fox and the Cat, A. Tolstoy's work coincides with Collodi's text (chapter XIX of Pinocchio and chapter XVI of Zolotoj klyuchik). From that point onwards, instead, the adventures of Buratino and his companions considerably differ from Pinocchio's, firstly for the presence and the search for the coveted "little golden key", secondly for the fact that the protagonist does not turn into a real child in the end, but he (happily) remains a puppet. The Soviet writer articulates his own narrative, born as a hybrid of the Italian source, on six days, adding some characters and parallelisms with motifs from fairy tales of the Russian popular tradition. The little golden key hides a secret, it opens a small door12 beyond which happiness lies. This concrete and symbolic threshold is hidden behind the painted pot in father Carlo's little room, which echoes Collodi's illusionist image, with the difference that in the Russian text the fireplace and the pot are not directly painted on the wall, but on a piece of old canvas:
La casa di Geppetto era una stanzina terrena, che pigliava luce da un sottoscala. La mobilia non poteva essere prn semplice: una seggiola cattiva, un letto poco buono e un tavolino tutto rovinato. Nella parete di fondo si vedeva un caminetto col fuoco acceso; ma il fuoco era dipinto, e accanto al fuoco c'era dipinta una pentola che bolliva allegramente e mandava fuori una nuvola di fumo, che pareva fumo davvero.
Appena entrato in casa, Geppetto prese subito gli attrezzi e si pose a intagliare e a fabbricare il suo burattino [Collodi 1995, 367]2).
Карло жил в каморке под лестницей, где у него ничего не было, кроме красивого очага — в стене против двери.
Но красивый очаг, и огонь в очаге, и котелок, кипящий на огне, были не настоящие — нарисованы на куске старого холста.
Карло вошел в каморку, сел на единственный стул у безногого стола и, повертев так и эдак полено, начал ножом вырезать из него куклу [Tolstoy 1948, 66]3).
A. Tolstoy's description of the shabby room appears more laconic and concise, but the colourful detail of the painted canvas, which recalls theatrical backdrops with its trompe l'oeil inconsistency, creates an intense contrast with the poverty of the surrounding environment. Later on in the story, the painting will be pierced with the nose by a hungry Burattino, evoking a shift from everyday life to literary fantastic: as Manganelli writes, "the function of this singular painting seems twofold: on one hand it is the story of a house that does not exist, but that lets itself be invented; a platonic house, in which everything is everlasting, but not touchable. On the other, that subtle fiction is reassuring; ...this painting is a game: the fire does not heat nor burn, the pot does not feed and does not require sacrifices of 'talking pieces of wood'. The non-existent is both elusive and consoling" [Manganelli 2002, 28]. In
2)Little as Geppetto's house was, it was neat and comfortable. It was a small room on the ground floor, with a tiny window under the stairway. The furniture could not have been much simpler: a very old chair, a rickety old bed, and a tumble-down table. A fireplace full of burning logs was painted on the wall opposite the door. Over the fire, there was painted a pot full of something which kept boiling happily away and sending up clouds of what looked like real steam. As soon as he reached home, Geppetto took his tools and began to cut and shape the wood into a Marionette.
3)Carlo lived in a small, shabby room under the staircase, where there wasn't anything apart a beautiful fireplace on the wall opposite the door. But the beautiful fireplace, and the fire in it, and the pot boiling on the fire were not real, they were painted on a piece of old canvas. Carlo entered the small room, sat on the only chair by the footless table and, after having turned the log this and the either way, he started to cut a marionette out of it with a knife.
The Little Golden Key the plot is interwoven with magical elements, pursuits and coups de théâtre. There are certainly a moral and a formative process accomplished in the final part, but without the paternalistic insistence on "becoming a respectable boy" that marks Pinocchio's pages and events. As Hellman observes, to make the story more suitable for Soviet children's audience the author amplifies the amount of word games and humorous effects of the Italian original [Hellman 2013, 358]. This choice reflects A. Tolstoy's general attitude towards Collodi's work: the desire to propose a synthetic version of it from the narrative point of view (twenty-nine vs. thirty-six chapters), devoid of rhetoric and, consequently, more dynamic. Even though Burattino does not change in his basic character traits, the new-born friendship and "team work" with other marionettes like Mal'vina and Pierrot reveal some new aspects of his personality. In fact, if at the beginning he is depicted as a slothful daredevil and a wastrel, in the frantic final part of the fable he behaves as a sort of brave hero13, able to be lucid and to guide his mates towards a shared goal. By standing by each other's side, Burattino, his dad Carlo and their friends will find a wonderful puppet theatre rich of colours, sounds and sceneries behind the small door. At the end of Zolotoj klyuchik, then, we witness the triumph of creative freedom and of the theatre world, evoked in an unprecedented version self-managed by the marionettes that enhances even more its phantasmagorical and imaginative potential:
Широкие лучи с танцующими в них пылинками освещали круглую комнату из желтоватого мрамора. Посреди нее стоял чудной красоты кукольный театр. На занавесе его блестел золотой зигзаг молнии.
С боков занавеса поднимались две квадратные башни, раскрашенные так, будто они были сложены из маленьких кирпичиков. Высокие крыши из зеленой жести ярко блестели. <... >
Никто, даже папа Карло, никогда не видывал такой красивой декорации.
На сцене был сад. На маленьких деревьях с золотыми и серебряными листьями пели заводные скворцы величиной с ноготь. На одном дереве висели яблоки, каждое из них не больше гречишного зерна. Под деревьями прохаживались павлины и, приподнимаясь на цыпочках, клевали яблоки. На лужайке прыгали и бодались два козленка, а в воздухе летали бабочки, едва заметные глазу [Tolstoy 1948, 131, 132]4).
4)The wide beams of light with specks of dust dancing within them illuminated a round room of yellowish marble. In the middle of it there was a magnificent puppet theatre. On its curtain was shining a golden zigzag of lightning. Two square towers stood at the sides of the curtain, and they looked like they were made of little bricks. Tall roofs made of green
Considering the Italian translations of A. Tolstoy's povest'14, we can talk about a metaphorical "circular route" of Pinocchio/Burattino's image — from Italy to Russia and backwards — of a literary dialogue between these two works. In fact, even though they were conceived in quite different social and cultural contexts, they show close affinities both on the thematic and on the contemporary theory of reception plans. As Efendiyeva remarks,
One can say that in the Twentieth century Pinocchio as a popular literary character has firmly entered the consciousness of Russian and foreign readers. A variety of translations of Collodi's fairy tale, realized at different stages of the history of Russian literature, make it possible to see how they reflect and refract Russian-Italian cultural ties, and how elements of Italian national culture penetrate Russian culture, forming in it a special sense of "aesthetic responsiveness" [Efendiyeva 2020, 75].
A detailed comparative analysis of the two texts, already dealt with in other studies [Petrovskij 2006; Chernysheva 2007; Giovannoli 2013, 172-262; Ascenzi, Caroli, Sani 2018; Poddubnaya 2020], is not the aim of the present work. Starting from the ways animal and human figures are represented in both fairy tales, on the basis of the well-known theory of Wolfgang Iser (1926-2007) we propose to delineate the image of the "implied reader" that emerges between the lines, investigating the mechanisms of literary reception. Contemporary pedagogical research, in fact, considers reading as one of the main sources of "cultural supply", and aims to highlight the educational potential of the text as such [Negri 2012; Mascia 2020]. Keeping in mind the due differences between the works in question and between the didactic-educational settings which prevailed in late Nineteenth-century Italy and in Stalinist USSR of the '30s, we will try to understand to which type of child they were addressed, and whether they were really conceived and intended only for children.
Animals vs. human figures
Since it belongs to the fairy tales genre, one of the elements that characterizes Pinocchio's textual fabric is the thick presence of animals
tinplate shone brightly. <...> No one, not even Papa Carlo, had ever seen such a beautiful scenery. There was a garden on the stage. On small trees with golden and silver leaves sang wind up starlings the size of a nail. There were apples on one tree, each no more than a buckwheat. Peacocks would walk under the trees and pick apples on tiptoes. On the lawn, two caps jumped and punched, and butterflies flew in the air, barely noticeable to the eye.
in the roles of characters. Most of them have human — and in some cases also magical — attributes, in fact they talk to the protagonist, and they interact with him along the narrative path. In tune with many folk tales coming from popular tradition, vices and virtues of human beings are allegorically expressed through animals. From the White Blackbird to the Hawk, from the Big Pigeon to the Tuna, from the Mastiff Dog Alidoro to the Dolphin, from the Snail to the Owl, the Firefly and the Poodle Dog Medoro15, animals advise and help concretely Pinocchio in his wanderings in search of parental figures [Tinelli 2017, 15-90]. Despite the pedantic and paternalist tone which is unpopular today, even the Talking Cricket, who represents the restless puppet's voice of consciousness, has the beneficial intention of avoiding him future suffering:
— Non ti fidare, ragazzo mio, di quelli che promettono di farti ricco dalla mattina alla sera. Per il solito o sono matti o imbroglioni! Dai retta a me, ritorna indietro.
— E io, invece, voglio andare avanti.
— L'ora e tarda!...
— Voglio andare avanti.
— La nottata e scura...
— Voglio andare avanti.
— La strada e pericolosa...
— Voglio andare avanti.
— Ricordati che i ragazzi che vogliono fare di loro capriccio e a modo loro, prima o poi se ne pentono.
— Le solite storie. Buona notte, Grillo.
— Buona notte, Pinocchio, e che il cielo ti salvi dalla guazza e dagli assassini!
Appena dette queste ultime parole, il Grillo-parlante si spense a un tratto, come si spenge un lume soffiandoci sopra, e la strada rimase piu buia di prima [Collodi 1995, 403-404]5).
Among the characters depicted with considerably negative connotations in the text the Fox and the Cat16 stand out, two anthropomorphic animals posing as invalids who have become the cheaters and false
5)— Don't listen to those who promise you wealth overnight, my boy. As a rule they are either fools or swindlers! Listen to me and go home. — But I want to go on. — The hour is late! — I want to go on. — The night is very dark... — I want to go on. — The road is dangerous. — I want to go on. — Remember that boys who insist on having their own way, sooner or later will repent. — The same nonsense. Good night, Cricket. — Good night, Pinocchio, and may Heaven preserve you from the Assassins. There was silence for a minute and the light of the Talking Cricket disappeared suddenly, just as if someone had snuffed it out. Once again the road was plunged in darkness.
friends par excellence in collective imagination. In the evocation of the donkey, instead, — who appears in the double version of beast of burden and small donkey for the circus show — we can find overshadowed violence and man's oppression of animals, that in the poverty of that time were the norm. Although it contains a series of transfigured references to the daily life of late Nineteenth-century Italy, (consider, for example, non-school Thursdays)17, Pinocchio is an atemporal fable. On the whole, between cues taken from reality and deviations in the fantastic, the twenty-six animal characters present in Collodi's work, — belonging to the earth, to the air and to the water — have educational functions. Let us think, as an example, about the little Dormouse's admonitions in the Land of Toys: "Oramai e destino. Oramai e scritto nei decreti della sapienza, che tutti quei ragazzi svogliati che, pigliando a noia i libri, le scuole e i maestri, passano le loro giornate in balocchi, in giochi e in divertimenti, debbano finire prima o poi col trasformarsi in tanti piccoli somari"6) [Collodi 1995,490]. If on one hand animal characters appear wise, "moralists" and at times (ironically) judgmental, on the other the marvellous expressive creativity of the writer transforms them into the ethical and spiritual consciousness of the narrative, especially if compared with human figures. The animals present in the text can be divided in warning (or symbolic) animals, antagonists and rescuers, but above all they become living metaphors in the picaresque journey made of encounters, defeats and inner yields that Pinocchio accomplishes [Tinelli 2017, 18]. In particular, most part of the antagonist animals — consider the Gorilla-judge and the mastiff dogs-gendarmes — are clearly evoked as human allegories or caricatures. Also their colours assume symbolic values in the work: black represents mourning and disgrace, light blue (or, better, turquoise) recalls peace of mind, white traditionally alludes to purity and red to passion [Barsotti 2012, 4]. As Andreoli remarks, "the animals' theme in the sense of non-human beings has also in this book such an enormous relevance that one is surprised, but it is an extraordinary stunt for the language of fairy tales" [Andreoli 2019, 211]. In other words, to employ animals in this way may suggest, on the part of the author, a denunciation of the educational absence of human beings, of the errors and omissions of those adults who supposedly had to set an example for children18. Excluding father Geppetto and the Fairy with Turquoise Hair, the human figures that appear in the text have a deformed
6)It is destiny now. It is now written in the decrees of wisdom that all those lazy boys who, taking to boredom books, schools and teachers, spend their days in toys, games and entertainment, have to end up sooner or later turning into many small donkeys.
aspect and negative connotations: in fact, the adults that Pinocchio meets are in many cases concretely disguised or ambiguous. Bad characters are never the ones who present themselves as such: Mangiafuoco — "Fire-Eater" — is a grumpy big man with a heart of gold, while the Carabineers, the Innkeeper, the farmer and The Little Man driving his carriage and singing in the dark are depicted in a negative manner. If at the beginning the bearded puppeteer wants to burn the wooden marionette, the Carabineers unjustly arrest first Geppetto, and later on in the story Pinocchio, too. Besides, the Green Fisherman who looks like a monster tries to fry up the puppet, while the unctuous and terrible Little Man tricks kids into selling them. Finally, the master of the chickens, the circus director and the horticulturist Giangio do not hesitate to exploit animals to the point of exhaustion [Tinelli 2017, 36-39]. As Ballerio observes,
What the story shows, even if the moral discourse does not say it, is that the moral and social order to which Pinocchio should conform is not immutable by nature or by divine decree, because it only lasts as long as men impose it through violence and deceit. This can throw a sinister light on the moral discourse carried out by the author and his characters [Ballerio 2018, 180].
Collodi's critique, if one interprets it in this way, does not even spare children: Pinocchio's schoolmates, in fact, have a derisory and aggressive attitude towards the diversity and the diligence of the wooden puppet. At a careful investigation, we can conclude that in the work there is a constant opposition, a sort of reversal of roles, in which the real 'beasts' actually become human beings. Even Geppetto and the Fairy with Turquoise Hair, who love Pinocchio like a son and forgive his escapes and mischief, represent parenting models sui generis, or at least ambiguous, if compared to traditional family views of the time. On the level of symbolic resonances, therefore, we can observe that in the text uncanny elements19 are expressed more consistently in human figures, from which also come the fear and punishments at the basis of the educational parameters of the period [Andreoli 2019, 192-193]. Similarly to many fairy tales of the European tradition, in Pinocchio abound mystery, an ill-concealed and pervasive violence, loneliness and the image of death, which is thickly present in Collodi's topography. It is no coincidence that on the publishing market children have been offered reduced and, above all, "sweetened" versions of the original novel, in some cases of dubious quality.
Except for the old and cruel rat Shushara, new relevant characters belonging to the animal world do not appear in the first part of Zolotoj
klyuchik, compared to Pinocchio, but we can note a constant tendency to substitute them. For example, the White Blackbird (Chapter XII) becomes an Old Crow in A. Tolstoy's work (Ch. IX), instead of the Talking Cricket's shadow (Ch. XIII) there is a Talking Owl (Ch. X), in the place of the Falcon (Ch. XVI) four hundred ants free Burattino from the rope (Ch. XIII), and so on. The Fox and the Cat, called respectively Alice and Basil20, have the same negative connotations of Collodi's version, however, after having stolen the golden coins, they ally with the evil Karabas Barabas to find Burattino and the little golden key. In this way, they will share with him also the ultimate destiny of remaining dry-mouthed in the rain. In the second half of the text, instead, in tune with the substantial changes in the plot, a rich series of new animal-characters appear. Without too many moralistic comments or educational purposes, these animals find themselves on the protagonist's path and help him get out of trouble, often by carrying him away. From the Swan to the Grey Hare, from the forest animals that nourish and protect Mal'vina to the doctors — the famous doctor Owl, the nurse-Toad and the "charlatan" Grasshopper21 — from the four tailors (a Crayfish with a gloomy air, a grey Woodpecker, a big Beetle and a Female Little Mouse) to "the frogs with a large mouth", several echoes of Russian folk tales emerge between the lines. In accordance with Propp's well-known functions, let us think about the manifold "trials" to which the hero was subjected, about the aids of magical and/or demonic nature, about the wisdom of certain animal figures and about the mysterious presence of the little golden key, which recalls Koschei the Immortal's22 golden egg and needle. Mal'vina, that in Zolotoj klyuchik keeps the attribute of turquoise hair, but is a sweet and well-mannered marionette devoid of maternal attributes, has a special relationship with forest animals — among which appear a mole, caterpillars, insects, butterflies and even a hoopoe-hairdresser23 — and with the elegant Poodle Dog Artemon, who magically rush to her requests for help. It is no coincidence that in the last years of his life A. Tolstoy worked on a collection of Russian popular fairy tales, which came out posthumously in 194624. Going back to The Little Golden Key, the old and harmless turtle Tortilla of Aesopian and Krylovian memory is the most significant addition25. She is the most long-lived and authoritative animal of the pond, into which Burattino is thrown by the Dobermans-cops, and she decides, urged by the other inhabitants of the aquatic microcosm, to entrust him with the precious object lost by Karabas. Unlike most other animal-characters present in the text — almost forty in total — Tortilla talks to Burattino in a chanting, almost
formulaic way, reproaching him more than once for his laziness and credulity:
— Ах ты, безмозглый, доверчивый мальчишка с коротенькими мыслями, — сказала Тортила, — сидеть бы тебе дома да прилежно учиться. Занесло тебя в Страну Дураков.
— Так я же хотел же добыть побольше золотых монет для папы Карло... Я очччень хороший и благоразумный мальчик...
— Деньги твои украли кот и лиса, — сказала черепаха. — Они пробегали мимо пруда, остановились попить, и я слышала, как они хвастались, что выкопали твои деньги, и как подрались из-за них... Ох ты, безмозглый, доверчивый дурачок с коротенькими мыслями... [Tolstoy 1948, 96]7).
At a general level, in A. Tolstoy's fairy tale animals also have predominantly positive values, especially if we consider the dark undertones associated to human figures, which, by the way, are numerically inferior. It is worth underlining that in the Russian version almost all animal-characters, even those less important in the developing of the story, appear with their own names and tempers. Apart from the barrel organ player Carlo — a reinterpretation of Geppetto in homage to Collodi — there are the Innkeeper, the dark rubber-faced Duremar who catches leeches for a living and, above all, Karabas Barabas, Mangiafuoco's wicked counterpart. Compared to the dreamlike light and shade effects of Pinocchio, these characters are depicted in a less ambiguous way, and they contribute do delineate a clear, Manichean opposition between Good and Evil. The image of death, so pervasive in Collodi's text, is frequently attenuated or removed from Burattino's path, that on the whole looks more linear from the psychological point of view. The effects of "lightness" and thematic simplification are achieved by the author through the adoption of a clear, concise style, characterized by vivid, colourful dialogues and by insightful intertextual references. It is no coincidence that for what concerns the linguistic expressions typical of spoken language and the many realia present in the text, in his analysis of the archetypal structure of the povest' Lipovetsky wrote about an "aura
7)— Oh you brainless, trusting little boy with little thoughts, — said Tortilla, — you should have stayed at home and studied hard. Instead you ended up in the Land of Fools. — But I just wanted to get more gold coins for Papa Carlo... I'm a verrry good and sensible boy... — Your money was stolen by the Cat and the Fox, — said the turtle. — They ran by the pond, they stopped to drink, and I heard how they bragged about digging up your money, and how they fought over it... Oh, you brainless, trusting little fool with little thoughts...
of the objects" common to Russian literature of modernist ancestry, traditionally rich in symbols, allusions and hidden quotations [Lipovetsky 2003; Ainsley Morse 2016,1-64]. The success of the fairy tale and of its cinematographic transpositions has generated a flourishing subculture around it in the Soviet era, making it a cult object still nowadays26. If Tuscan idioms, vernacular expressions and similes are recurring elements in the formal texture of Pinocchio, even in the Russian version stand out proverbs, biting jokes and passages full of literary refinement, as the description of the new-born Burattino's thoughts: «Не нужно забывать, что Буратино шел всего первый день от рождения. Мысли у него были маленькие-маленькие, коротенькие-коротенькие, пустяковые-пустяковые», "Let's not forget that Buratino was only on his first birthday. His thoughts were little-little, short-short, trifling-trifling" [Tolstoy 1948, 67]. The emotional impact of dialogues and of characters' retorts is conveyed by the writer through the syntactic inversion of sentences, a frequent employ of diminutives and the repetitive presence of particles and interjections [Rytsel'ska 2018, 93-106]. The protagonists' exchanges are distinguished by the usage of a linguistic register taken from everyday life, with words and idiomatic expressions coming from spoken language. The frequency of repetitions and the choice of an individual style — a sort of idiolect — in which the single figures talk give dynamism to the textual fabric27. In both works, then, the wooden puppets' encounter with animals and with their inner impulses appears similar, and, ultimately, positive. While in Pinocchio we can talk about a typical "fairy tale zoomorphism", with animals mostly being simple, coming from the courtyard and more human than anything, in Zolotoj klyuchik a lot of them are derived from Russian folk culture. That is why they live free in the woods and only some of them have anthropomorphic traits; in general, they are vividly characterized, and they tend to assume a magical and saving role for the marionettes. In this sense, their role in the story is more important than in Pinocchio's one, because they particularly contribute to the final victory of Good over Evil:
Буратино взобрался по смолистому стволу на вершину итальянской сосны, одиноко стоявшей на поле, и оттуда закричал, завыл, запищал во всю глотку:
— Звери, птицы, насекомые! Наших бьют! Спасайте ни в чем не виноватых деревянных человечков!.. <... >
Первыми на помощь прилетели стрижи, — бреющим полетом начали стричь воздух перед носом у бульдогов. Псы напрасно щелкали зубами, — стриж не муха: как серая молния — ж-жик мимо носа. <...>
На помощь Артемону шли жабы. Они тащили двух ужей, ослепших от старости. Ужам все равно нужно было помирать — либо под гнилым пнем, либо в желудке у цапли. Жабы уговорили их погибнуть геройской смертью. <...>
На помощь Артемону шло семейство ежей: сам еж, ежиха, ежова теща, две ежовы незамужние тетки и маленькие еженята. Летели, гудели толстые черно-бархатные шмели в золотых плащах, шипели крыльями свирепые шершни. Ползли жужелицы и кусачие жуки с длинными усами.
Все звери, птицы и насекомые самоотверженно накинулись на ненавистных полицейских собак [Tolstoy 1948, 103, 104, 105]8).
Among animals and humans in the fables puppets are placed, and they can be considered as intermediate figures between the two cat-egories28. Pinocchio, in particular, belongs at the same time to the vegetal world (he is made of wood), to the animal one (he turns into a little donkey) and to human community (for his behaviour and for his final edifying transformation into a real child). Constantly suspended between death and salvation during his adventures, the marionette often runs or runs away from danger, and he is characterized by an extreme speed, so that he is compared several times to a hare, a wild horse and a lizard29 [Gasparini 1997, 87-106]. Anyway, until the end of his wanderings he keeps within himself the warm core of the wooden puppet, with his challenges and his bewitching vitality. As Giovannoli writes,
Pinocchio's author initially referred to Burattino, a character that, in Italian Comedy of Art of the Seventeenth century, was one of the figures interpreted by the mask 'Zanni'. It was a character who sifted flour moving in a broken, slouchy way (the name Burattino was in turn taken over by the Buratini, or those who by trade sifted flour). Therefore, from the technical point of view Pinocchio would be an automatic marionette, a puppet without his strings;
8)Burattino climbed a tar barrel to the top of an Italian pine alone on the pitch, and from there he screamed, he screamed, he threw down his throat: — Animals, birds, insects! Our people get hit! Save little innocent wooden men!... <...> First to the rescue came the trimmings, that with their flight grazing the ground began to cut through the air in front of the bulldogs. The dogs snapped their teeth in vain, trimmings aren't flies: they darted like grey lightning bolts past the dogs' noses. <...> Then Toads came to help Artemon. They were dragging two grass snakes blind from old age, who had to die anyway, — either under the rotten stump or in the stomach of an egret. The toads persuaded them to die a hero's death. <...> A Hedgehog Family also came to help Artemon: the male hedgehog, his wife, his mother-in-law, two single aunts and many little hedgehogs. Fat, black and velvet bumblebees flew and whistled in their golden coats, the fierce hornets roared. The golden beetles came crawling with other bugs and biters with long moustaches. All the animals, birds and insects selflessly attacked the hated police dogs.
he is de facto an animated wooden puppet for the definition attributed to him by Collodi with a precise reason, and not by mistake [Giovannoli 2013,160].
On a pragmatic level, even though Pinocchio and Burattino are described by the authors from the beginning as 'puppets', morphologically they cannot be so, as the latter are usually maneuvered with fingers. Not even marionettes, to be fair, is an entirely appropriate definition, because the protagonists do not move through strings. In a more generic way, thanks to the fairy tale context they could be considered as "animated wooden puppets" [Eller 2021, 8], originally carved to keep company and amuse. In the course of the narrative Pinocchio becomes a conscious human being through a series of mixed experiences: this strange creature reflects the growth path of each child, along which metamorphosis plays a meaningful role [on this topic see Carosi 2001, 208-216; Manganelli 2002, 168-173]. The same can be said of Burattino30, a "middle being" that openly refuses the educational impositions of the human world and remains a wooden puppet, learning from his naivety and mistakes. At a more in-depth analysis, in his resourceful and easy-going attitude emerge some echoes of the velikij kombinator (The Great Combinator) Ostap Bender, protagonist of the well-known Russian satirical novel Dvenadt-sat' stul'yev (The Twelve Chairs) by Il'ya Il'f e Yevgeni Petrov (1928)31, and of certain "street characters" from the Odesskiye rasskazy (Tales of Odessa) by Isaac Babel' (1931). According to Lipovetsky, by his nature Burattino belongs to the tricksters' category, he is a little scamp who tends to go against the social order, and is therefore not akin to the canonical heroes of socialist realism:
He is the most unimportant character of Soviet culture; it has nothing to do with any social or ideological model. It is significant that, having entered the canon of social realism, Tolstoy's fairy tale does not fit in a socially realistic proto-story as described by K. Clark: Burattino's social gains are not repaid for by his growing "consciousness". Contrary to the social realist canon, he remains "a spontaneous individual" as a literary hero [Lipovetsky 2003, 265].
Throughout his picaresque adventures, Burattino is portrayed as a positive model of creative and non-conformist behaviour. If he is equally good-hearted and curious, impulsive and lazy, compared to Pinocchio he does not waste time to reflect, cry or complain, and overall he is less prone to self-pity. In the wake of the sadly known bezprizorniki (orphan "street children") crowding the streets of big Soviet cities in the 1920s, the little wooden man has developed the art of getting by, he appears
cunning and resolute and does not seem to be particularly longing for a maternal figure.
The "implied reader" and the reception of the two works
Reading a text is always a dynamic process, which in itself entails interaction, a dialogue between the source and the recipients; nowadays it may also involve different senses32. As Negri observes, this aspect is even more relevant as far as children are concerned, whereas the approach to reading implies "the relationship between the space of the page and the reader's experience, with particular attention to how the book — intended as specific object, texture of verbal, iconic and graphic signs—is received by children's readers" [Negri 2012,8]. Iser maintains that these effects and responses are not exclusive characteristics of the text or of the reader. In fact these two elements interact in a certain way: each literary work represents a potential effect that is achieved during the act of reading, often compared to a 'journey' [Iser 1974, 274]. In other words, a text is a potential semiotic and semantic system, and only the reader, interacting with it, can draw a coherent image, a whole. Readers go through the various perspectives opened by the text, connecting one to the other in different models and points of view, putting form and content into action and experimenting with themselves, too. Meaning, then, according to Iser, is an effect of which the reader makes active experience, not a set of predefined ideas pre-existing to reading [Iser 1974,278-280]. Literary texts, in particular, are characterized by a double and heterogeneous nature, because they exist independently from reading, but only at a potential level; they become acts only when we read them. In this perspective, an authentic literary work is created by the interaction between the text and the reader's imagination, and it becomes a virtual scheme made of white spaces, gaps and indeterminacy, in which the affective component also intervenes. We attempt to understand the materials of a text within a consistent and coherent framework because it is this which allows us to make sense of whatever is unfamiliar to us in it [Iser 1978, 21]. Complementary to the "implied author"33, within each text there is a space for the "implied reader", in which the real readers are free to place themselves or not. The "implied reader" is a textual construction that the actual reader can perceive as constraint, since it corresponds to the role assigned to him/her by the semantic and formal structure of the literary work. The "implied reader" stands as a model for specific readers, it defines a point of view that allows them to rebuild, from time to time, the meaning of the text [Iser 1978, 27-29].
Which "implied reader", what image of a child emerges between the lines of the two works? First of all, it is important to underline that for their poetics both texts are literary fables, they are not of popular origins, although they have some aspects in common with traditional fairy tales of magic [see Lipovetsky 1992]. Both share with the latter the continuous twists in the plot, the presence of absurd elements, the mixture of real and fantastic and the happy ending, which has a compensatory function. These texts have a double reception channel, i.e. they are aimed at both children and adults [Wojchikowska-Wantuch 2019, 67]. From the formal point of view they alternate moral admonitions and linguistic inventions typical of the fairy tale genre and of the puppet theatre with a series of allusions, cultural references and more or less veiled quotations. Each of the two works reflects the educational conceptions of their respective epochs and cultural contexts. For what concerns Pinocchio, as Mascia writes, "in the Nineteenth century children were considered as 'passive subjects', to whom knowledge and correct behaviour should be imparted; their most appreciable virtues were mnemonic ability and obedience" [Mascia 2020, 72-73]. Collodi apparently seems to adhere to the educational principles dominant in his time, but, as has already been said, at a close reading we can notice in his work an ironic underhand criticism of adult figures. Since the famous and parodic incipit, the narrator often intervenes in the story, directly addressing his little readers and commenting the puppet's choices, lies and pranks. In particular, the narrator's voice reprimands with subtle irony his young audience, inviting children not to follow Pinocchio's example. The rhetorical insistence on the positive effects of study and work, on money and on "becoming a good boy", however, contrasts with other leitmotifs that innervate the text. Precisely because of their recurrence these warnings appear "emptied from within", as if they were sheer formulas repeated in deference to late Nineteenth-century pedagogical line. Thanks to the vivacity of the jokes drawn from orality and to the typical linguistic deconstruction of the writer's style, we can speak of an alienating realism, that through moments of pure humour and sweet and sour comedy generates surreal effects34. Elements of dialogue with the readers can also be found in the detailed titles-summaries of the chapters, which contain anticipations and analepses of the events that, as Marcheschi notes, attract and surprise at the same time:
Then, it is as if other spaces of escape were opened within the work: the author-"fish" would seem to give the reader-"fisherman" the hook to get caught, but fleeing immediately after. It's the game of giving and subtracting,
of the fantastic freedom to follow one's creative flair. But it is also a way to surprise, to create further spaces for paradox and parody, that is to say, for modes of writing that had always been the most congenial to Collodi [Marcheschi 1995, 218].
Even today, children who read Pinocchio are attracted by the puppet's curiosity, by his fantasy and rebellious spirit, by his "germinal" and dishevelled nature that highlight his existential hunger [Carosi 2001, 30]. Rule rebellion also means experimentation, in fact the stubborn wooden marionette is moved inwardly on his educational path by impulses and desire much more than by the sermons of the Talking Cricket or the "refrain" on becoming a morally good boy. To the eyes of young contemporary readers Pinocchio is one and original, he fascinates them through his naivety, his whims and his passion for typically childlike dimensions such as uninterrupted playing and the colourful world of marionettes. What really drives them to the process of "filling in the gaps", in Iser's terms, is the possibility to evade, the disobedience and tenacity of the puppet during his escapades. As Wojchikowska-Wantuch underlines, the novel in full version is too long and difficult for pre-school age and so, in fact, the success of the fairy tale among its potential readers par excellence is mainly due to its appearance in reduced versions: "The paradox is that Pinocchio's complete text is inaccessible for children in pre-school age, who would be its main potential addressees. For them it is too long and complex, although, as it seems, children are perfectly capable of identifying with the book's hero. That is why Pinocchio's adaptations are so popular" [Wojchikowska-Wantuch 2019, 66]. In several studies has been pointed out that the image of the little rascal with a heart of gold that permeates the pages — initially not very prone to fatigue and study effort — contains a series of ironic autobiographical references to the writer's childhood. Despite the constant tension created in the narrative by the fear of death and by the punishments/metamorphoses of the character, the implied child reader, today certainly less naif, is fascinated by the puppet's whimsy, lively and enterprising nature. From the beginning to the end, his literary and existential journey takes place through a series of unexpected reversals and incessant drilling from one opposite to another. There is no good purpose that does not turn into mischief, nor a misadventure that is not overturned in escape and salvation [Agamben 2021, 16]. Nowadays, in contact with educational parameters completely different from those in which the work was born, the story has not lost its freshness and inventiveness:
— Aiuto! aiuto! Ohpoverome! Non c'è nessuno che venga a salvarmi?
— Chi vuoi che ti salvi, disgraziato?... — disse in quel buio una vociaccia fessa di chitarra scordata.
— Chi è che parla cosi — domando Pinocchio, sentendosi gelare dallo spavento.
— Sono io! sono un povero Tonno, inghiottito dal Pesce-cane insieme con te. E tu che pesce sei?
— Io non ho che vedere nulla coi pesci. Io sono un burattino. <...>
— Neppure io vorrei esser digerito, — soggiunse il Tonno, — ma io sono abbastanza filosofo e mi consolo pensando che, quando si nasce Tonni, c'è più dignità a morir sott'acqua che sott'olio!...
— Scioccherie! — grido Pinocchio.
— La mia è un'opinione, — replico il Tonno, — e le opinioni, come dicono i Tonni politici, vanno rispettate! <... >
— Chi è che muore?
— Sono io e il mio povero babbo!...
— Questa voce la riconosco! Tu sei Pinocchio!...
— Preciso: e tu?
— Io sono il Tonno, il tuo compagno di prigionia in corpo al Pesce-cane.
— E come hai fatto a scappare?
— Ho imitato il tuo esempio. Tu sei quello che mi hai insegnato la strada, e dopo te, sono fuggito anch'io.
— Tonno mio, tu càpiti proprio a tempo! Ti prego per l'amor che porti ai Tonnini tuoi figliuoli: aiutaci, o siamo perduti.
— Volentieri e con tutto il cuore. Attaccatevi tutt'e due alla mia coda, e lasciatevi guidare. In quattro minuti vi condurro alla riva. <...>
— Amico mio, tu hai salvato il mio babbo! Dunque non ho parole per ringraziarti abbastanza! Permetti almeno che ti dia un bacio in segno di ri-conoscenza eterna!... Il Tonno caccio il muso fuori dall'acqua, e Pinocchio, piegandosi coi ginocchi a terra, gli poso un affettuosissimo bacio sulla boc-ca. A questo tratto di spontanea e vivissima tenerezza, il povero Tonno, che non c'era avvezzo, si senti talmente commosso, che vergognandosi a farsi veder piangere come un bambino, ricaccio il capo sott'acquae spari [Collodi 1995, 508; 509; 517]9).
9)— Help! Help! he cried. — Oh, poor me! Won't someone come to save me? — Who is there to help you, unhappy boy? — said a rough voice, like a guitar out of tune. — Who is talking? — asked Pinocchio, frozen with terror. — It is me, a poor Tuna swallowed by the Dog-Fish at the same time as you. And what kind of a fish are you? — I have nothing to do with fishes. I am a Puppet. <...> — But I don't want to be digested, — But I don't want to be digested, — shouted Pinocchio, starting to sob. — Neither do I, — said the Tuna, — but I am wise enough to think that if one is born a fish, it is more dignified to die under the water than in the frying pan!.. — What nonsense! — cried Pinocchio. — Mine is an opinion, — replied the Tuna, — and opinions, as Tunas employed in politics say, should be respected! <...> — Who is dying? — It is my poor father and me. — I know the voice. You are Pinocchio. — Exactly. And you? — I am the Tuna, your
After all, if the protagonist in the final part decides to change his behaviour, he does it mainly for love, the same that has been shown to him, on every occasion, by Geppetto and the Fairy with Turquoise Hair. The happy ending is connected to the growth and progressive acquisition of self-awareness of the marionette, who begins to think about his own choices. As Tinelli writes, "Pinocchio's adventures represent the story of a journey undertaken in a world of values, on a path of human formation during which every acquired virtue — although always limited and unable to avoid a subsequent fall — is condensed in the spiritual baggage of the protagonist to the point of constituting the formation of a person. It is not only Pinocchio's story, but also the metaphor of the story of each person who as a child becomes a man" [Tinelli 2017, 86]. Towards the end of the narrative the puppet reveals a commitment to be formed from an ethical point of view that is meant to be more fully understood by adult readers, to which are also addressed the complaints and allusions in a satirical key to the Italy of the time (let us think about the allegorical representation of medical science or about the "upside-down" management of justice in the novel).
In the early years of the Soviet Union Collodi's work had been banned as belonging to a genre — the fairy tales one — that was strongly unpopular from the educational and ideological perspective. From 1933 on, instead, Pinocchio got a sort of official "rehabilitation", and was considered suitable for kids' education in the wake of a massive campaign in favour of a new literature for Soviet children. Also for this reason A. Tolstoy resumed with enthusiasm his old project of reworking Collodi's text, coming soon to create something original. In Giovan-noli's words, starting from the playful preface already mentioned "the author talks to his young readers from the point of view of an adult who is remembering his own childhood, marked by the memory of a lost book that has been preserved in time thanks to his diverse ways of re-narrating it. The literary expedient of memory passed on orally
companion in the Dog-Fish's stomach. — And how did you escape? — I imitated your example. You are the one who showed me the way, and after you went, I followed. — Tuna, you arrived at the right moment! I implore you, for the love you bear your children, the little Tunnies, to help us, or we are lost! — With great pleasure indeed. Hang onto my tail, both of you, and let me lead you. In a twinkle you will be safe on land. — <...> — Dear friend, you have saved my father! I have not enough words to thank you! Allow me to embrace you as a sign of my eternal gratitude!... The Tuna stuck his nose out of the water and Pinocchio knelt on the sand and kissed him most affectionately on his cheek. At this warm greeting the poor Tuna, who was not used to such tenderness, felt so moved that, being ashamed to be seen weeping like a child, he turned quickly, plunged into the sea, and disappeared.
is employed here by the writer to declare the intention to tell the story in its authenticity now that he has fully recovered the memory of it" [Giovannoli 2013, 187]. Of course it is literary fiction, the prologue is the result of the Soviet writer's imagination, and is in fact an integral part of the text. However, it also serves to highlight the homage and the explicit reference to the Italian author. As we already observed, during the drafting of his literary reworking A. Tolstoy reduced the moralistic and didactic message of Collodi's fable, at the same time adapting to the Russian-Soviet cultural context a number of ideas and references coming from the Italian original background. Scholars are divided: some noted that, on the whole, Zolotoj klyuchik is less gruesome and less stylistically redundant than Pinocchio; it has been evidenced, moreover, that the work is free of the moralism typical of Nineteenth century positivist pedagogy [Wojchik-Dudek 2012, 14-17]. Other researchers interpreted A. Tolstoy's fairy tale as political propaganda, associating it with the canons of socialist realism for the final "collective rebellion" of the marionettes — that would overshadow class struggle, — and also for the prominent position of the author, nicknamed "the Red Duke", in the Soviet Writers' Union. As Wojchikowska-Wantuch writes, however, this type of reading comes from a superficial understanding of the work, connected to a stereotypical reception of Soviet literature [Wojchikowska-Wantuch 2019, 74]. The Little Golden Key contains a series of meanings and symbolic resonances that differentiate it from children's books of literature tout court, and that explain the reasons why the work has become a real cult object in Russia35. The fairy tale had been conceived by the author as a text for multiple addressees, in fact in the revised manuscript for the volume edition was added the subtitle "новый роман для детей и взрослых", "a new novel for children and adults" [Petrovskij 2006, 220; Wojchikowska-Wantuch 2019, 67]. On one hand the most direct implied readers appear to be the new generation of Soviet children, seen as cheerful and strong pioneers, positive builders of a society different from the previous ones, a society in which friendship, progress and a sense of community are the most significant values. On the other hand there are adult recipients able to read between the lines, who can make emerge and interact with their cultural and experiential baggage a series of allusions and references to contemporary reality. In particular, in recent research has been evidenced the presence of a secondary, satirical subtext in the work, which alludes in a parodical way to events and well-known personalities in the Moscow literary and theatrical milieu of the '20s and '30s: for example, in the figure of Burattino would be ironically depicted Gorky,
in the dreamy poet Pierrot — Blok, in Mal'vina one could glimpse either Lyubov' Mendeleeva, Ol'ga Knipper or Mariya Andreeva36, while Karabas Barabas would be a treacherous and caricatural portrait of the theatre director E. V. Mejerkhol'd [Tolstaya 1997; Poddubnaya 2020, 52]. Burattino's character is not monolithically evoked: he is careless and irreverent, and in the footsteps of Pinocchio in some situations he proves lazy, mischievous and unwilling to study and work like any lively child who refuses a too serious and responsible approach. A. Tolstoy's little wooden man seems to enjoy disobeying, he is rebellious and independent, even though his exceptionally long and pointed nose does not stretch, because he does not tell so many lies as Pinocchio. Like any daring street boy he reacts with impatience to the good manners that Mal'vina tries to impose on him, "because Burattino is the prototype of the new Soviet child who must acquire a pragmatic sense to cope with the difficulties of life. He must also love nature, travel, have a sense of adventure and overcome fear, learning to be a leader to guide oneself and others" [Giovannoli 2013, 273]. At the beginning of the narrative Burattino appears inclined to play and transgress naively: he is endowed with a "lightness" that distinguishes him from Pinocchio, who is more mature, because he manifests awareness of the world and a clear distinction between play and school duties [Ascenzi, Caroli, Sani 2018, 232]. Within Collodi's puppet a docile and a rebellious part are opposed, and the Talking Cricket symbolically represents the inner voice of consciousness:
— Chi e che mi chiama? — disse Pinocchio tutto impaurito.
— Sono io! —
Pinocchio si volto, e vide un grosso grillo che saliva lentamente su su per il muro.
— Dimmi, Grillo, e tu chi sei?
— Io sono il Grillo-parlante, e abito in questa stanza da piu di cent'anni. <...>
— Guai a quei ragazzi che si ribellano ai loro genitori, e che abban-donano capricciosamente la casa paterna. Non avranno mai bene in questo mondo; e prima o poi dovranno pentirsene amaramente.
— Canta pure, Grillo mio, come ti pare e piace: ma io so che domani, all'alba, voglio andarmene di qui, perché se rimango qui, avverrá a me quel che avviene a tutti gli altri ragazzi, vale a dire mi manderanno a scuola, e per amore e per forza mi toccherá studiare; e io, a dirtela in confidenza, di studiare non ne ho punto voglia, e mi diverto di piu a correre dietro alle farfalle e a salire su per gli alberi a prendere gli uccellini di nido. <... >
— E se non ti garba di andare a scuola, perché non impari almeno un mestiere tanto da guadagnarti onestamente un pezzo di pane?
— Vuoi che te lo dica? Replico Pinocchio, che cominciava a perdere la pazienza. Fra i mestieri del mondo non ce n'e uno solo che veramente mi vada a genio.
— E questo mestiere sarebbe?
— Quello di mangiare, bere dormire, divertirmi e fare dalla mattina alla sera la vita del vagabondo. <...>
— Povero Pinocchio! mi fai proprio compassione!...
— Perché ti faccio compassione?
— Perché sei un burattino e, quel che e peggio, perché hai la testa di legno [Collodi 1995, 371-373]10).
All rebuke Pinocchio in the story, but he also reproaches himself, he sins and repents, he is intimately good and unruly at the same time. In his figure Good and Evil coexist, so much that from the implied reader's point of view one could think, with the due distinctions, to what Massimo Fusillo has defined as "negative empathy" of a literary character [Fusillo, 2019]. In the Soviet fable, instead, readers can distinguish from the first lines the good from the bad, there are no ambiguous characters. Negative emotions are downplayed through laughter and A. Tolstoy's humorous style [Urnov 1985, 254], and children are offered a fresco in less dark colours of dangers and difficulties in life:
Буратино завертел головой, оглядывая каморку.
— Эй, кто здесь?
— Здесь я, — крри-кри...
Буратино увидел существо, немного похожее на таракана, но с головой, как у кузнечика. Оно сидело на стене над очагом и тихо потрескивало, — крри-кри, — глядело выпуклыми, как из стекла, радужными глазами, шевелило усиками.
10)—Who is calling me? —asked Pinocchio, greatly frightened. —I am! —Pinocchio turned and saw a large cricket crawling slowly up the wall. — Tell me, Cricket, who are you? — I am the Talking Cricket, and I have been living in this room for more than one hundred years. <...> — Woe to boys who refuse to obey their parents and run away from home! They will never be happy in this world, and when they are older, they will be very sorry for it. — Sing on, Cricket mine, as you please. What I know is, that tomorrow, at dawn, I'll leave this place forever. If I stay here the same thing will happen to me which happens to all other boys and girls. They are sent to school, and whether they want to or not, they must study. As for me, let me tell you, I hate to study! It's much more fun, I think, to chase after butterflies, climb trees, and steal birds from nests. <...> — If you do not like going to school, why don't you at least learn a trade, so that you can earn an honest living? — Shall I tell you something? — asked Pinocchio, who was beginning to lose patience. — Of all the trades in the world, there is only one that really suits me. — And what can that be? — That of eating, drinking, sleeping, playing, and wandering around from morning till night. <...> — Poor Pinocchio, I am sorry for you. — Why? — Because you are a Puppet, and, what is much worse, because you have a wooden head.
— Эй, ты кто такой?
— Я — Говорящий Сверчок, — ответило существо, — живу в этой комнате больше ста лет. <...> — Ах, Буратино, Буратино, — проговорил сверчок, — брось баловство, слушайся Карло, без дела не убегай из дома и завтра начни ходить в школу. Вот мой совет. Иначе тебя ждут ужасные опасности и страшные приключения. За твою жизнь я не дам и дохлой сухой мухи.
— Поччччему? — спросил Буратино.
— А вот ты увидишь — поччччему, — ответил Говорящий Сверчок.
— Ах ты, столетняя букашка-таракашка! — крикнул Буратино. — Больше всего на свете я люблю страшные приключения. Завтра чуть свет убегу из дома — лазить по заборам, разорять птичьи гнезда, дразнить мальчишек, таскать за хвосты собак и кошек... Я еще не то придумаю!..
— Жаль мне тебя, жаль, Буратино, прольешь ты горькие слезы.
— Поччччему? — опять спросил Буратино.
— Потому, что у тебя глупая деревянная голова [Tolstoy 1948, 70, 71]11).
The two passages quoted above clearly show the differences between the writers' tones and styles: the flourishing literary richness of Collodi's sentences is opposed to the incisive, almost onomatopoeic lines that recall the comics language in the Russian text. Both protagonists are ironically labelled as "wooden heads" for their laziness, and react in a rebellious way to the Talking Cricket's admonitions, shouting their playful and anarchic desire for freedom. A. Tolstoy's tendency to adapt the characters and the setting of the Italian tale to the imaginary of Russian culture in which he intended to introduce it made it possible to highlight "other" ideas and values, such as friendship and the sense
11) Burattino turned his head, looking around the little room. — Hey, who's in here? — There's me, crri-cri... Burattino saw a creature a little bit like a cockroach, but with a grasshopper head. It sat on the wall above the hearth and quietly cracked, — crri-cri, — it looked out with its rainbow, bulging eyes that seemed like glass, and it waved its small antennae. — Hey, who are you? I'm the Talking Cricket, — answered the creature, — I've been living in this room for over a hundred years. <...> O, Burattino, Burattino, — said the Cricket, — Stop your foolishness, listen to Carlo, don't run away from home without a reason and start going to school tomorrow. Here's my advice. If not, terrible dangers and frightening adventures await you. I wouldn't give a dead dry fly for your life. — Whyyyy on earth? — asked Burattino. — You'll soon see, whyyy — answered the Talking Cricket. — Oh you, a-hundred-year-old cockroach bug! — shouted Buratino. — I love scary adventures more than anything. Tomorrow I'm going to run away from home at dawn: I'll climb fences, tear up bird's nests, tease boys, I'll pull dogs and cats' tails... and I'll think of something else!... — I pity you, Buratino, you will shed bitter tears. — Whyyyy on earth? — asked again Burattino. — Beacause you have a stupid wooden head.
of belonging to a to a collective community. Within this framework, Burattino's search for happiness sharply differs from the individual moral parable of Collodi's hero. In fact, as Caroli writes,
The end of the two narratives differs. The ultimate struggle against Karabas Barabas is very difficult, as is the exit from the Dog-Fish's belly, which gives Pinocchio the opportunity to show his courage. It's the first step towards his change, the transformation in real child and the achievement of a happy life. While in the Italian tale Pinocchio becomes a good boy after having experienced numerous misadventures, in A. Tolstoy's text the little wooden man's re-educational process is equally adventurous, but less painful. The two puppets have a "wooden head", but they are motivated by courage, a sense of solidarity and justice [Ascenzi, Caroli, Sani 2018, 241].
Pinocchio and Burattino are in their own way explorers and adventurers, in their figures prevails an everyday life fantastic, with the pot painted on the wall and the leitmotiv of street kids, who tend to wander and to have fights with other children. The two little wooden men move in a world, in many respects drawn from the real one: it is their genetic diversity that makes it fairy-tale. They are both stringless puppets, so they are different from human beings, but also from real marionettes. Between the pages of the two texts the protagonists are always running somewhere, they run away and are chased, they fight, they risk being devoured and devour in their turn: hunger is a powerful and recurring image in their narratives37. All these aspects appear in line with the classical development of the literary road adventure. If Pinocchio is characterized by a constant inner monologue which accompanies his path of initiation and also becomes a metaphor of free will, Burattino, as we already observed, is pragmatic and bold, he does not think or despair much, but tends to act. Both characters must go towards their respective destiny, towards the satisfaction of the wonderful curiosity typical of childhood, dealing on various occasions with adults' insensitivity or sadism.
The evolution of the reception of the two works tells us a lot about the socio-cultural phases that have occurred in their respective contexts of reference38. Each generation of readers, in fact, implements something and draws from a text different meanings, which are linked to their own experiences and cultural background. If in the late nineteenth century the addressees, especially adults, could grasp and "decipher" specific references and allusions to the surrounding reality, today Pinoc-chio is considered as a paradigmatic model of work of art with a multi-generational and multimedia fruition, which is also re-semantized
through languages other than the literary one [Marazzi 2018, 148]. As Faeti writes, on the whole Collodi's fairy tale may be read allegorically as an entire "library about the Italians", with a rich gallery of characters, moods, vices and little quirks coming from post-unification Italy. At the same time, though, the figure of the puppet, with his loneliness and frenzy, has become a universal archetype of the imaginary [Faeti 2018, 259]. The success and popularity of Pinocchio among children and adults, on different reading plans, reached their peak in the first decades of the Twentieth century, even if adequate critical analyses from the stylistic and formal point of view have been conducted, especially since the 1980s. Previously, in fact, in our country the intellectual reception was affected by the preconceptions towards journalism and children's literature, considered as minor genres. As Ballerio underlines, on the whole contemporary readers of Collodi's work — whose approach to the text is often mediated or influenced by Walt Disney's well-known film transposition (1940) — express positive views for what concerns the protagonist and the linguistic inventions. However, they tend to find moralistic admonitions obsolete, and they also wonder whether the novel is really suitable for children, given the violence that pervades it:
other readers keep a more open mind — they admit that at least for some children the book may be suitable — and still others recognize that violence has always been an element of children's narratives. The majority, in any case, still insists on violence, and considers it a good reason not to read the original Pinocchio to children. In this sense, it seems to me that what the story exemplifies, beyond what the moral discourse refers to, acts very widely and profoundly on the reception of contemporary readers, because it touches a theme with respect to which their attitude towards childhood deeply differs from the prevailing one of the Nineteenth-century public [Ballerio 2018, 182].
Since its first publication in the 1930s A. Tolstoy's povest' enjoyed success and positive reviews in the Soviet Union and in the satellite countries of the former socialist bloc, but its mass popularity is mainly connected to some subsequent film transpositions39 (Fig. 3). In the early years after the fall of the USSR, instead, the reception of the work was negatively conditioned from its previous interpretation in a political-propagandist light and from the preconception, currently in many respects debunked, of its adherence to the canons of socialist realism [Wojchikowska-Wantuch 2019, 80]. It has been observed, for example, that in the character of Karabas Barabas — the tyrannical director of the puppet theatre — would be stigmatized metaphorically imperialism and the NEP capitalism that exploit the oppressed masses
Figure 3. Photogram from the Soviet musical film Priklyucheniya Bu-ratino (1975)
(i.e. the marionettes, that in the final part rebel and run away ripping their strings) [Giovannoli 2013, 97-98]. Anyway, the celebration of the Soviet Union as the country of freedom and equality is not present in the text itself, but was added in the endings of some theatrical productions that enjoyed great success, among which a version of 1936, another one staged in 1938 and the 1939 one written by the same author40. Beyond the heavy influence of the Stalinist cultural context, in The Little Golden Key there is much more, and in fact today the fable is republished, read and loved in Russia, especially since some jokes and expressions taken from the tale have entered proverbs and sayings used in everyday language. As some scholars noted, the most popular of them have also been re-proposed by contemporary mass media see [Budaev, Chudinov, Nakhimova 2019]. Similarly to Pinocchio, Zolotoj klyuchik has endured the passage of time and has become part of the reference cultural models, occupying a leading position in the Soviet and then Russian children's literature, while despite the several translations and reissues Collodi's novel is currently less well known [Efendiyeva 2020, 76]. Since the first publication of the fairy tales, the wooden features of Pinocchio and Burattino have indelibly impressed in collective imagination also through the interpretations of great illustrators, and, more recently, through the animated works realized by international masters of modern graphic and visual arts. Their re-interpretations have contributed to the timeless fascination of the characters and to their iconic
status [Grilli 2016, 109-111]. There is no doubt that the high quality and the creativity of many visual artworks have positively influenced the popularity and the contemporary reception of both texts41.
Thanks to their evocative power, Pinocchio and Zolotoj klyuchik are regarded as transgenerational fables; they still appear to us as witty and compelling narratives, in which the lively and airy tone of writing is fed by a subtle humour and by the lexical and idiomatic peculiarities of language. The two authors take us, as readers, inside the silences of the text: what transformed the two puppets into universal archetypes of the imaginary are not the paternalistic moral rules, the admonitions or the idea of an education based on fear. It is not even the sheer exaltation of friendship and collective efforts. What captures present-day readers — children and adults as well — are the transgression, the tendency to follow one's own impulses, the desire for something new and different, the rebellion against the rules and the charm of a fantastic, magical and metamorphic world in which playing games and the theatre have central role. In this regard, the symbolic value of the theatre found behind the little door and then self-managed by the marionettes at the end of A. Tolstoy's tale is emblematic: in fact, the coveted goal of so many adventures for Burattino and his friends is not the transformation into human beings, but the assertion of their autonomy and dignity as puppets. These are cheerful works and, especially in the case of Pinocchio, also painful, because they make us reflect on the necessary end of childhood, that can live again only if it is told. They were composed by writers who knew, through their own experience, that the world is not always suitable for children. Hence the dual fascination of their texts, in which an adult author talks to children and at the same time he tells adults about his childhood. As the well-known Italian songwriter Giorgio Gaber sang, "Don't teach children / don't teach them your morals / it is so tired and sick / it may do harm / <...> Do not show them / A known path / But if you really want to / Teach them only the magic of life"42. Going back to Gianni Rodari's image in the epigraph of this work, the reading of Pinocchio's and Burattino's fairy-tale Bildungsroman gives us the possibility even today, detaching us for a moment from the chaos and the frenetic multimedia rhythm of our everyday lives, to be the steps of the staircase that each child should climb.
Notes
1 (My translation, I. R.). Unless otherwise specified, all the English translations in the present work are mine.
2 On the story of the first Italian periodical for children published in Rome and
on its innovative character see [Loparco 2016].
3 See [Collodi 1883]. As is known, the novel had five reissues meticulously reviewed by the author already before his untimely death (1890). The work achieved its greatest success and circulation in the first two decades of the Twentieth century [Castellani Pollidori 1983, XLVIII].
4 Among the several cinematographic transpositions of Pinocchio, we men-
tion for their popularity and for their refined soundtracks the world-famous animation film realized by Walt Disney in 1940 and, in the Italian context, the television series directed by Luigi Comencini (1972), the film version by Roberto Benigni (2002) and the most recent one by Matteo Garrone (2019). In our view, thanks to the accurate make-up and costumes, this last transposition brings to the surface the Gothic-oneiric substrate, Pinocchio's loneliness and the dark night tones in which the events take place. For these reasons, it may be considered one of the most akin to the atmosphere of the original novel; (on it see: https://www.mymovies.it/film/2019/pinocchio/).
5 The proliferation of new editions, translations and reductions of Pinocchio
was also favoured by the expiry of Lorenzini's copyright in 1940. The number of translations to date refers to a research carried out recently by Noemi Veneziani and the American translation agency 7 Brands Inc, according to which Collodi's work is currently the best-selling Italian children's book in the world, and ranks second among the most translated works see [Veneziani 2021,13-18] and https://thetranslationcompany.com/news/blog/ language-news/worlds-translated-books/. In our country have also been published various editions of Pinocchio in dialects and three in Latin see [Eller 2021, 8].
6 As is widely known, six years before writing Pinocchio Collodi had translated
into Italian and edited with success a collection of fairy tales by Perrault: [Collodi 1876]. This work had enthralled him in the world of magic fairy tales. He also wrote some funny and innovative school textbooks for children with naughty, but very lifelike protagonists as Giannettino e Minuzzolo see [Ascenzi, Sani 2018, 123-169]. The first to be published was Giannettino. Libro per i ragazzi (Giannettino. A Book for Children, 1877), in which using a simple, enjoyable language Collodi told children's stories connected to some notions and didactic narratives. The same cheeky kid appeared later also in some following Grammar, Geography and Maths textbooks produced by the author. Minuzzolo. Secondo libro di lettura (Minuzzolo. The Second Reading Book, 1878) was focused instead on the adventures of a young boy, and was aimed at increasing children's love for reading.
7 Some examples of this approach were the ideas of children traditionally seen as "empty bags" to be filled above all with a rigid moral distinction between Good and Evil, with obedience to parents and teachers, and with the norms of a socially and ethically accepted "correct behaviour". Fear and punishment for transgression were at the basis of this Positivistic educational
approach, which was aimed at raising good future citizens of the Italian state [see Caroli, Ascenzi, Sani 2018, 209-210]. Most of children's books of the time were imbued with these views, and were consequently full of edifying stories and paternalistic recommendations on how to behave well at school and at home. See, for example, Pietro Thouar's works (1809-1861): the Florentine writer was a very popular author for school in the second half of the Nineteenth century. It is not without malice that, during the fight on the beach between Pinocchio and his schoolmates, one of the books thrown into the sea is precisely Thouar's Tales [Collodi 1995, ch. XXVII, 460].
8 Lorenzini was a theatre critic, a frequent visitor and connoisseur of the scenes, and wrote on the subject for various journals (the satirical weekly «Il Lampione», «L'Italia musicale», and so on). Besides, in 1853 he founded a new magazine entirely devoted to the theatre world, «Lo Scaramuccia», on which he published theatrical chronicles and satirical pamphlets, carrying out at the same time certain cultural battles or controversies see [Bertacchini 1993, 39-60; Ascenzi, Sani 2018, 150-152].
9 In the course of the narrative there are several references to the hardness and
strength of the wood of which Pinocchio is made: let us think about the kicks he gives to his rough classmates, more painful than human ones, about his foot that fits in the door of the Fairy with Turquoise Hair's house without breaking, or about the many occasions in which the puppet does not drown and is not devoured thanks to the firm texture of the material.
10 Aleksey Tolstoy, recovering after a heart attack, wrote in a letter to Gorky on
13th February 1835: "I' m working on Pinocchio. At the beginning I only wanted to rewrite in Russian Collodi's content. But then I gave up on it, it was coming out a bit boring and bland. With Marshak's approval, now I'm writing on the same subject in my own way" [Kryukova 1989, 202]. The publication of the fairy tale on the children's magazine "Pionerskaya Pravda" began on 7th November 1935, anniversary of the October Revolution according to the Gregorian calendar adopted in 1918. The first volume edition dates back to a few months later [see Tolstoy, 1936].
11 The first Russian translation of Pinocchio was made by Kamill Danini (or
Camillo Dagnini, 1850-1903), and it was published in Saint Petersburg in 1906 on the children's weekly magazine "Zadushevnoe slovo" ("Sincere Word", No. 1, pp. 14-16) with the title Priklyucheniya derevyannogo malchika (The Adventures of a Wooden Boy). Later this version was published in volume by O. M. Volf with the title PINOKKIO. Prikljucheniya derevyannogo malchika (Saint Petersburg, 1908), and recently it has been re-issued by Eksmo Press (Moscow, 2014). In 1907 a second translation of Collodi's fable came out in Moscow with the title Priklyucheniya Fis-tashki. Zhizneopisanie Petrushki-marionetki (Pistachio's Adventures. The Life of a Petrushka-Marionette), produced by S. E. Pavlovsky and published by I. N. Kushnerev's editing company. In this case the title highlights the references to the popular Russian marionette Petrushka and to the Italian
Comedy of Art. Among other Russian translations of the early Twentieth century is noteworthy the version by the writer Nina Petrovskaya (18781928) with the collaboration of the same Aleksey Tolstoy, that came out only on a Russian émigré magazine in Berlin with the title Priklyucheniya Pinokkio (1924). In the Stalinist era Collodi's novel was highly unpopular for ideological reasons, and in fact a new full Russian translation was only published in 1959. It was carried out by the poet and writer E.G. Kazakevich (1913-1962) with the brilliant illustrations by V. Alfeyevskiy: K. Kollodi, Priklyucheniya Pinokkio. Istoriya derevyannogo chelovechka (The Adventures of Pinocchio. Story of a Wooden Little Man), Moscow, "Detskaya literatura". This renowned translation had twenty-two re-issues, and it is the version in which the vast majority of Soviet readers knew the work for the first time see [Efendiyeva 2020, 77-80]; it was also the most complete and faithful to the original text. Considering the international success of the fable and its various theatrical and cinematographic adaptations, after the fall of the USSR a growing number of Russian translations have been made, among which should be mentioned the recent versions by N. Kray (2017) and M. Volchonsky (2021).
12 The image of the little golden key is recurrent in Russian symbolist poetry
that Tolstoy well knew, as he had probably read Alice in Wonderland (1865) by L. Carroll (1832-1898), in which appears a little golden key that opens a mysterious door hidden behind a curtain see [Aleshina, 2006]. Some critics have also underlined that it may represent a secret reference to the heraldic coat of arms of the Counts Tolstoy, in which the object is present [Poddubnaya, 50].
13 Although he is much more alone in his misfortunes, even Pinocchio is capable
of heroic acts, for example when he proposes to Fire-Eater to die instead of Harlequin or when he guides his father Geppetto out of the terrible Dog-Fish.
14 In the wake of the literary critical in-depth analyses of Collodi's biography
and novel connected to the centenary of its first publication, Zolotoj klyuchik has been translated into Italian twice in the same decade: see [Tolstoy 1981 and Tolstoy 1986, 17-84]. The latter is distinguished by a greater fidelity to the original text, rich in idioms and expressions typical of the spoken language. For an accurate comparison between the two Italian translations and Tolstoy's work see [Giovannoli 2013, 300-328].
15 On the many references underlying the dogs' names in Pinocchio and in other
works by Collodi see [Paccagnini 2018, 63-75].
16 Among the other animals that appear in the narrative, the Dog-Fish is fright-
ening and swallows everything he finds on his path, but almost without a real will to do evil: to dampen his monstrous attributes it is said that he is old and suffers from asthma. As Tinelli observes, his gigantic dimensions and his voracity out of measure detach him from everyday reality, so that his belly may be considered metaphorically as a "figurative place" in Pinocchio's odyssey in search for his father [Tinelli 2017, 83-84].
17 In the novel, Candlewick alludes to non-school Thursdays when he tries to
convince Pinocchio to go with him to the Land of Toys: "In quel paese benedetto non si studia mai. Il giovedi non si fa scuola: e ogni settimana e composta di sei giovedi e di una domenica"12) [Collodi 1995, 479]. It's a detail taken from contemporary reality: in post-unification Italy, in fact, Thursdays were really off because the state, establishing compulsory school attendance (1877), considered that a midweek break was necessary for a balanced physical and psychological development of children. This choice was also due to the fact that many children had to help their families in field-work. The same "Children's Magazine", on which Pinocchio was published for the first time, came out not surprisingly on Thursdays [see Marcheschi 1995, 1008].
18 In this sense, opposing the Positivistic teaching approach of the 1880s to the
contemporary one, Andreoli observes that from the educational point of view Pinocchio "is not only useless, but could be defined as anti-pedagogical" [Andreoli 2019, 195]. There are other mechanisms and background images, directly connected to the author's irony and to his extraordinary formal inventiveness, that have made the fairy tale part of the heritage of collective human imagination.
19 Here we refer to the Freudian concept as an artistic effect within the text. As
Rimondi suggests, "The Unheimliche/Uncanny does not indicate something foreign that suddenly makes its break, but something familiar that emerges from within and should not have done it. It is therefore not a one-way route, from the familiar to the stranger or vice versa, but of a dual, return movement, to which we cannot escape because it concerns our own subjective constitution" [Rimondi 2006, 32].
20 In the name chosen for the Fox, of female gender compared to Collodi's male
character, the direct reference to the common name of the animal in Russian is evident: 'Alisa' contains in fact the word 'lisa', 'fox'. In A. Tolstoy's fable to the negative symbolic values of the two anthropomorphic felines is added the Bat, who charms Burattino shut into punishment and leads him to meet them in the "Land of Fools". In our view, besides, the Duty Mastiff and the Dobermans of the police office that grab the protagonist in the text allude to the atmosphere of violence and sudden arrests of the Stalinist Terror: "Дежурный, все еще рыча, позвонил. Ворвались два добермана-пинчера, сыщики, которые никогда не спали, никому не верили и даже самих себя подозревали в преступных намерениях. Дежурный приказал им доставить опасного преступника живым или мертвым в отделение. Сыщики ответили коротко: —Тяф!", "The Duty Mastiff, still growling, rang a bell. Two Doberman pinschers burst in, they were bloodhounds who never slept, who believed in no one and even suspected themselves of criminal intentions. The duty Mastiff ordered them to bring the dangerous
12)In that blessed country you never study. On Thursdays there is no school: and every week consists of six Thursdays and a Sunday
criminal, dead or alive, to the police station. The bloodhounds replied briefly: Yaf!" [Tolstoy 1948, 92].
21 In Pinocchio the three famous doctors summoned by the Fairy are an owl and
a crow, who are unsure of the puppet's status, with the owl claiming that Pinocchio is alive and the crow claiming that he is dead. The third doctor is the Ghost of the Talking Cricket, who says that the puppet is fine, but has been disobedient and hurt his father [Collodi 1995, ch. XVI, 412-415]. As Marcheschi underlines, in this passage about doctors there are many subtle social and symbolic allusions, especially if we consider that in popular tradition the owl and the crow were birds of ill omen. Collodi re-uses some iconic satirical images coming from his journalistic experience in a ludic and fantastic way [Marcheschi 1995, 978-979].
22 We refer in particular to the well-known collection of Russian folk tales published in eight volumes by A. N. Afanas'ev (1826-1971) between 1855 and 1863. Many themes and images are common to different fairy tales, especially if we consider those with animals and magical elements; however, the grey hare to which Pierrot clings in his escape reminds, in our view, the grey wolf in the fairy tale of Prince Ivan, the Firebird and the Grey Wolf, while the symbolic connotations of the key and its being made of gold recall some leitmotivs present in Vasilisa the Beautiful and Koschei the Immortal: [Afanas'ev 1984, 331—343.].
23 In the text the industrious hoopoe is summoned by Malvina to style her turquoise hair: "Влетел суетливый, пестрый, веселый удод с красным хохолком, который вставал дыбом, когда он чему-нибудь удивлялся. — Кого причесать? — Меня, — сказала Мальвина. — Завейте и причешите, я растрепана... — А где же зеркало? Послушайте, душечка... Тогда пучеглазые жабы сказали: — Мы принесем... Десять жаб зашлепали животами к озеру. Вместо зеркала они приволокли зеркального карпа, такого жирного и сонного, что ему было все равно, куда его тащат под плавники. Карпа поставили на хвост перед Мальвиной. Чтобы он не задыхался, ему в рот лили из чайника воду. Суетливый удод завил и причесал Мальвину. Осторожно взял со стены одну из бабочек и припудрил ею девчонкин нос. — Готово, душечка... И-ффрр!—пестрым клубком вылетел из пещеры", "A busy, fluffy, jolly hoopoe with a red crest, which she stood up when something surprised her, flew over there. — Who do I need to comb? — Me, — said Mal'vina. — Curl and comb my hair, please, I'm dishevelled... — But where is the mirror? What shall we do, sweetheart... Then the bug-eyed toads said: — We'll bring it... Ten toads walked into the lake. Instead of a mirror, they brought a mirror carp, so fat and sleepy, that he didn't care where he was being dragged under his fins. The carp was erected on its tail in front of Mal'vina. To keep him from choking, water from the teapot was poured into his mouth. The busy hoopoe curled up and combed Malvina's hair. Then she carefully took one of the butterflies off the wall and powdered the girl's nose with it. — You
are ready, sweetie... And -ffrr! She flew out from the cave like a colourful ball" [Tolstoy 1948, 107, 108].
24 At the beginning of his literary career, A. Tolstoy had published a collection of
fairy tales entitled Soroch'i skazki (The Magpie's Fairy Tales, 1910); in the Twenties he then composed the children's stories Kak ni v chem ne byvalo (As if nothing had happened) e Rasskaz o kapitane Gatterase, o chuligane Vas'ke Taburetkine i zlom kote Chame (Story about Captain Gatteras, the hooligan Vas'ka Taburetkin and the evil cat Cham). In the last months of his life he was finally involved in the re-edition of a collection of Russian fairy tales with animal characters, which came out posthumously in 1946: see [Tolstoy 1946].
25 As is well known, the turtle is associated to various metaphorical meanings in
fairy tales, myths and cosmogonies of different countries of the world. Similarly to the owl, it is a symbol of wisdom, and also of strength, endurance, eternity and inviolability. In many nations this animal is connected with immortality and the creation of the world, as well as male fertility and gender extension; in other cultural contexts (China and Japan) its characteristic slowness symbolically alludes to patience, diligence and perseverance in achieving a goal.
26 The name 'Buratino' has been and continues to be used as branding for
a variety of products and stores marketed to children in Russia and the post-Soviet states: among the most notable of these are the Buratino brand soft drink, which has a caramel taste, and Zolotoj klyuchik ("Golden Key") toffees. Buratino is also the nickname of the TOS-1 multiple launch rocket system, due to the big "nose" of the launcher. A location in the story, besides, Pole chudes (v Strane Durakov), literally "The Field of Wonders" (in the Land of Fools), is used still nowadays as the name of the Russian TV adaptation of the Wheel of Fortune game show. It is worth mentioning that in the 1960s and 1970's the expression "Strana Durakov" was used to ironically stigmatize the Soviet Union.
27 Some jokes and expressions from the text, as happened with other very popular literary works, have entered Russian everyday language as krylatye vyrazheniya (lit. "winged phrases"): we cite among others the expression "работать как папа Карло", "work like dad Carlo", which has become proverbial in Russian and alludes to a continuous work, without any rest. The linguistic dynamism of A. Tolstoy's povest' is by no means easy to reproduce, in fact the two Italian translations made so far do not always manage to recreate the phonetic and onomatopoeic effects of the original, which are closely intertwined, by the way, with cultural references to specific realia of the time.
28 The Polish scholar Zigizmund Bialek defined this type of characters, very
common in children's literature, "subdetskie" ("sub-childlike"), that is to say equipped with the skills of understanding and the reception of the world typical of children [Bialek 1979, 50].
29 As Manganelli observes, several "animal" similes characterize Pinocchio's physical description and movements throughout the narrative [Manganelli 2002, 41]. Moreover, during the humorous scene of their fight in chapter II Geppetto and Mastro Antonio ("Cherry Nose") call each other with the animal epithets "donkey", "mule" and "monkey" [see Collodi 1995, ch. II, 366].
30 As we already remarked, in some of the first Russian versions the Italian word 'burattino' had been translated as 'Petrushka', which is the name of a famous character of Russian popular puppet theatre, and it has also become the technical term to define a puppet, or, more precisely, a wooden marionette.
31 As is known, Il'f and Petrov were also journalists with a remarkable satirical
vein, and as it happened with Pinocchio the brilliant Great Combinator Ostap Bender, brutally killed at the end of the Twelve Chairs, was then "miraculously" (and ironically) resurrected by popular acclaim for the serial publication of the writers' next picaresque novel, The Little Golden Calf (1931).
32 Apart from the sense of sight, further stimulated by the graphic and visual
elements usually found in children's literature, touch, smell and hearing are also involved (let us think about the audiobooks, currently very popular).
33 In Twentieth-century literary criticism the term "implied author" refers to
the "authorial character" that a reader infers from a text; it is usually based on the way a literary work is written, and it is used to distinguish the virtual author of the text from the real one. Distinct both from the author and the narrator, the implied author is the image of the writer produced by a reader as called forth from the text. It may or may not coincide with the author's expressed intentions or known personality traits. The concept was first introduced by the American scholar Wayne C. Booth (1921-2005) in his seminal study The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961).
34 In her studies about the writer, Marcheschi identified at the origin of Loren-
zini's style Sterne's "deconstructionist" inventiveness, characterized by a playful inclination to involve the reader surprising and displacing him at the same time. We can talk about a kind of "structural irreverence" in Collodi's writing, which is tendentially anti-fictional, imbued as it is with intellectual humour and cheerful caricatures of social types. The satirical elements that dot Pinocchio are anything but innocent, they are rooted in journalistic language and also recur in other works of the author [Marcheschi 1995, XXXVI-XXXVIII].
35 In Russia have been published two literary sequels of Burattino's adventures,
but they did not have the same success: the 1941 povest by E. Ja. Danko Pobezhdennyj Karabas (Karabas is defeated), (Moscow, re-issued in 1989), and Vtoraya tayna Zolotogo klyuchika (The Second Secret of the Little Golden Key) by A. B. Kumma and S. V. Runge (Elista, 1988). Besides, in 2009 the Petersburg publishing house "Amfora" released a fantasy novel by
Maks Fray (literary pseudonym of S. Matrynchik and I. Stepin), Klyuch iz zheltogo metalla (The Yellow Metal Key), built on a subtle play of allusions and references to A. Tolstoy's fable.
36 As is known, Lyubov' Mendeleyeva (1881-1939), daughter of the renowned
chemist Dmitriy I. Mendeleyev, was A. A. Blok's (1880-1921) wife, Ol'ga Knipper (1868-1959), famous stage actress of the Moscow Art Theatre, was also A. P. Chekhov's wife, while Mariya Andreyeva (1868-1953), stage actress in Moscow as well, later left acting for a career in theatrical administration. In 1903, besides, she became Maxim Gorky's (1868-1936) common-law wife. All these female figures have in common with Mal'vina a high level of education and refinement, which in the tale is satirically downplayed through the marionette's obsession for personal hygiene and good manners.
37 Pinocchio has a huge hunger, it is a trait that characterizes him along the entire narrative arc: "E intanto la fame cresceva, e cresceva sempre: e il povero Pinocchio non aveva altro sollievo che quello di sbadigliare, e faceva degli sbadigli cosi lunghi, che qualche volta la bocca gli arrivava fino agli orecchi. E dopo avere sbadigliato, sputava, e sentiva che lo stomaco gli andava via. <...> Oh, che brutta malattia che e la fame!", "Meanwhile, hunger was growing, and it was always growing, and poor Pinocchio had no other relief apart from yawning and he yawned so long that sometimes his mouth would reach his ears. And after he yawned, he spat, and he felt his stomach fading away. <...> Oh, what a terrible disease is hunger!" [Collodi 1995, 374, 375]. Even Mangiafuoco is very hungry, and craves for cooking his mutton; the Fox and the Cat devour food at the Red Lobster Inn, as well as the Dog-Fish swallows everything he finds on his path. Many scholars have pointed out that the constant presence of hunger overshadows in the text the peasants' misery in the Italy of the time; also the pervasive recurrence of the money theme represents, on the psychological and symbolic levels, a typical feature of poverty [Gasparini 1997, 60-76; Marcheschi 2015, 7-8]. Mutatis mutandis, in A. Tolstoy's work also Burattino appears endowed with a pantagruelic hunger, and is often in spasmodic search of food; when he has the opportunity to feed, he eats in an immoderate and greedy way, with a full mouth, so much that he is reproached by Mal'vina for his coarse manners. The Fox Alice and the Cat Basil order everything on the stove at the Three Gobies' Inn, while Karabas Barabas, the evil "doctor of puppet science" with some echoes of the famous Russian constructivist director V. E. Mejerkhold (1874-1940), wants to throw Burattino into the fire to cook his roast. In the end, moreover, the despotic director leaves without eating and drinking his own marionettes, causing their rebellion and flight.
38 The translations of the fairy-tales in the two cultural fields and in other countries, as we already observed, have had and still have a significant
connection with their reception: on this topic see [Zanotto, 1990; Malenová et al., 2019 and Efendiyeva, 2020].
39 In addition to positive reviews in various literary magazines, the actual popularity of A. Tolstoy's povest' in the USSR was connected to some film transpositions realized by known directors with the presence of actors loved by Soviet public: we talk first of all about the film Zolotoj klyuchik directed by A. L. Ptushko (1939), and about the animation version Priklyucheniya Buratino (The Adventures of Buratino, 1959), directed by I. P. Ivanov-Vano, D. N. Babichenko e M. A. Botov. Mass success was especially reached by the wonderful Priklyucheniya Buratino (The Adventures of Buratino), a 1975 live-action Soviet-Belarusian children's musical film in two parts produced by Belarus film for television and directed by Leonid Nechayev [See Fig. 3]. In post-Soviet times two other versions were realized: the musical film Noveyshie Priklyucheniya Buratino (The Newest Adventures of Burattino, 1997), directed by D. K. Machmatdinov, and the musical Zolotoj klyuchik by A. I. Igudin (2009). As evidence of the iconic value of the figure in Russian culture, we also note the popularity of another recent production that imagines and proposes a sequel of Burattino's adventures with the title Vozvraschenie Buratino (The Return of Burattino, 2013): see [Hellman 2013, 421-422].
40 About the propagandistic nature of the 1936 theatrical adaptation of A. Tol-
stoy's work, of the theatre staging realized in 1938 by V. M. Baljunas and A. M. Fedorov, on the play written by the same author — A. N. Tolstoy, Zolotoj klyuchik: pesa v 3 dejstviyakh dlya samodeyatelnogo detskogo teatra (The Little Golden Key: Play in three acts for Amateurs' Children's Theatre), Moscow: Detgiz, 1939 — , and about other productions staged in the early 50s see [Risaliti, 1990]. As the Italian scholar claims, the Soviet writer's opportunistic position can be understood in the context of the terrible years of great Stalinist repressions. We already observed that especially in some countries of the former socialist bloc after the fall of the USSR the objective reception of the Little Golden Key was influenced by the negative cliché, now outdated, of its adherence to socialist realism.
41 On this topic see the contemporary artworks and visual reinterpretations of
various kinds inspired by Pinocchio present in Eller, 2021 and in [Catelli, Scattina 2017]. As evidence of the pervasiveness of the fairy tale in contemporary imagination and in everyday life, a Pinocchio Amusement Park has been set up in the hamlet of Collodi, not far from Pescia and Pistoia, in Tuscany (see Parco Policentrico Collodi Pinocchio). It is located in a pine forest and it is arranged as a labyrinth, with interactive didactic activities for schools, URL: https://www.pinocchio.it.
42 The song by Giorgio Gaber (1939-2003) and Alessandro Luporini Non insegnate ai bambini (Don't teach children, 2003) was released posthumously on the album Io non mi sento italiano (I don't feel Italian), URL: https://youtu.be/IVnPotcVkFQ.
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Илария Ремонато
Веронский Государственный Университет; ORCID: 0000-0001-9836-8580
ПИНОККИО ИЗ ИТАЛИИ В РОССИЮ, ИЛИ ЛИТЕРАТУРНОЕ ПУТЕШЕСТВИЕ ЛЕГЕНДАРНОЙ КУКЛЫ
В статье рассматривается история создания советским писателем Алексеем Толстым в 1835 г. сказки «Золотой ключик, или Приключения Буратино», написанной по мотивам книги итальянского журналиста Карло Коллоди «Пиноккио» (1883). Как показано в ряде исследований, А. Н. Толстой был знаком с русским переводом сказки Коллоди. Принимая во внимание существенные связи между этими текстами, в статье предпринимается их сопоставительный анализ. Детально описывается история создания «Пиноккио», раскрывается связь этой сказки с литературной и фольклорной итальянской традицией и творческой биографией Коллоди. В исследовании рассматривается, какие оттенки в изображении героев (животных и людей) преобладают у того и другого писателя, в чем заключается символика «золотого ключика», ставшего центральным сюжетно-смысловым образом в адаптации А. Толстого, как и в связи с чем меняется финал произведения, язык и стиль повествования. Автор статьи характеризует идеологический и педагогический контексты создания этих книг, рассуждает о том, кто является их истинным «имплицитным читателем» (по выражению Вольфганга Изера), высказывая сомнение в том, что Коллоди и Толстой адресовали свои сказки исключительно детской аудитории.
Keywords: Пиноккио, Золотой ключик, Буратино, Карло Коллоди, Алексей Толстой, персонажи-животные против персонажей-людей, «имплицитный читатель», сказка, дети
