The article mentions that 'most' translations soften the book. It looks like the recent Penguin edition attempts to present the original tone in English and there are several much more contemporary translations from the late 19th century which apparently don't attempt to pull back. I'm tempted to give it a shot, maybe see if the kids can handle it.
I re-read Pinocchio with my (bilingual) kids a couple years ago, and I think this article is spot on for some things: it is a bit more weird then I remembered, the Italian reads almost contemporary (except for a few turn of phrases and odd terms), and it has a strong pacing.
Also, definitely likely you will remember some abridged version or Disneys'.
I'm not convinced of the argument that it's making fun of contemporary children books: Pinocchio regularly misbehaves and gets punished for it, which seems pretty much in line with contemporary books.
It's so creepy that my kids didn't want to hear it (being read to them) with all the burning and stuff. However they also didn't want to listen to the classic fairy tales by Grimm and Andersen which are super creepy as well. Just think of burning witches or some Anderson fairy tale I remember where one guy is put into a bag and thrown into the river. It's not that I deliberately wanted to read the most creepy stories to them but there's a creepy undertone to even the most famous and "harmless" ones, think of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and so on.
Some of these things described as "weirder" really aren't. For example, Pinocchio burning his feet off and getting them replaced by Gepetto - this is a comical example of things implied by the story premise.
We have a child carved of wood, a flesh and blood child burns off their feet is a tragedy, but carved of wood we make new feet, hah hah!
Not saying this particular incident is to be expected exactly, but events of this type are to be expected from any competent writer who has taken up the premise. Especially as it is structured as a picaresque fairy tale, it would be weird if this kind of thing didn't happen.
Also - The fairy, originally a corpse - why is a dead revenant of some sort bringing a puppet to life any weirder than a magical fairy? That's not weirder, just different than we've been told.
The children’s literature that was written prior to about 1900 is generally darker, more violent and threatening than what came after. Struwwelpeter anyone?
We decided at some point that these themes were no longer fit for children despite generations having been raised with it. That’s probably the Victorian era, when childhood is said to have been “invented.”
> Blue Fairy — first introduced as a literal child-corpse with turquoise hair
He may have run out of ideas and tried to fill in a story with a dark mood in mind (speculation). The thing is that this is not that uncommon in many fantasy novels. Anyone remembers "The Color of Her Panties" by Piers Anthony? I read it, it is very cheesy (also silly, in particular when you as target audience are, say, 10 years old or something like that) but not necessarily mega-creepy either. But then you also begin to wonder ... is it just "good fun" to pick such a title? But then it is not the only instance and you begin to find more oddities. Naturally this depends on the author; some authors never run into such issues, others run into such issues.
I only saw the Pinocchio cartoon, that anime-style animation, on TV. That version was harmless from what I remember. Never read the books, but I am not so surprised about books being darker. Anyone knows the Grimm brothers? They lived from 1785–1863 and 1786–1859 respectively. I clearly remember that some of those drawings were really dark. It's a bit like dark horror stories if you look at it today - here is a summary:
It starts with "There are some fairy tales that are just not meant for kids.".
Some of the pictures by Grimm or illustrators are quite scary, such as the
bleeding or weeping out of eyes ... is gross. Possibly these were more for adults, or adults who did not care, such as Pinocchio - perhaps. A puppet that has a growing body part ... that in itself is already super-weird. Are we certain the nose was meant? Is Pinocchio ... a prison item???
It would (maybe?) sound like an inappropriate book for children.
Yes, in the 2nd half of the 20th century.
Not so in either 19th and 21st centuries.
In 19th century Italian (but maybe also other countries') children had to grow quickly to cope with life and work brutalities.
They often had no mother, died while giving them birth, and started working at 7 or 8 to help their families.
In 20th century, instead, they have been constantly exposed to either real life violence and harshness (like war) or fiction brutality from movies, cartoons and video games.
Nope, Pinocchio is not that weird. It is when compared to an idyllic and peaceful world that has never existed but in our wishful thinking minds.
When I was a child in India, the fairy tale books that you could get easily were a bunch of Eastern European ones: Russian, Karelian, that sort of thing. And they were full of crazy stuff, man. The cossacks were constantly getting their heads cut off and this and that. I went back to India a year ago, and one of the things I made sure to bring back were my copies of those books (and the Journey to the West translations that I read as a child - also easily available at the time) along with the stories by the Brothers Grimm.
As one does these days, I asked an LLM to help me detect if I had a bowdlerized version, and while I'm sure the stories were already softened in translation, they're still far more 'rowdy' than stories you can easily find today. In the old folk tales, things just happen. Fairness isn't guaranteed; and sometimes a guy makes a deal and gets eaten anyway; and sometimes someone dies for no reason.
I wonder if the changing narrative structure of modern stories is a result of our improved civilization. In a world where you're probably reaching adulthood with your brothers and sisters without encountering any sibling death, a story with 'unfair' death and destruction probably feels out of place. Nonetheless, I sometimes am saddened when I read people talk about stories in media and how they 'glorify' bad behaviour or 'send the wrong message'. A thing I really treasure from childhood is the breadth of storytelling: not all stories were an Aesop's fable.
But perhaps that's not true. I suspect the truth is that with lowered barriers to publishing there are just more stories told. The ones from the past that we know are twice selected: once for cultural value, and once because the writer himself was selected. Today, anyone can write, so it's the same problem as we encounter when we look at personal websites today. Sampled randomly in 2004 you would get interesting ones easily. Today, that is not so easy.
This is most easily visible with foreign media. The Chinese stories I've read are alien and strange and interesting; and the Japanese ones take unexpected turns. But they're going through that selection process as well. So it's probably just a boring selection effect.
Still, I've got the old Grimms. I'm keeping that one as an heirloom.
Those old stories may have been full of crazy stuff, but look at children's programming over the past 30 years. SpongeBob characters, under the ocean, jumping off a diving board into a pool, again, under the ocean. It isn't violent, but it is crazy.
I think that children's authors primarily amuse themselves knowing that it will pass right over the heads of their target audience. It sure seems true of Collodi.
You’d love the original sleeping beauty. It’s got rape, infanticide, cannibalism, all of it.
Oh and of course little red riding hood before they got rid of the cannibalism. And the rape.
Oh and of course the Grimm tale - “How some children played at slaughtering”. Murder, suicide, child abandonment - just… good grief. We live in a safe world today.
Author Philip Pullman published a version of the Grimm fairy tales in 2012. These stories are intended for a modern audience, but in my opinion, Pullman does a good job of preserving a fair amount of the original scariness and general weirdness. Definitely rougher than the Disney versions of these stories. I recommend this volume to anyone with small children.
> In the old folk tales, things just happen. Fairness isn't guaranteed; and sometimes a guy makes a deal and gets eaten anyway; and sometimes someone dies for no reason.
Do you mean in Indian and Eastern European folk tales? Interesting! I should read more of those (I'm familiar with the usual suspects, but I'm sure I'm missing lots).
If I'm ever magically transported to a classic folk tale like Grimm's, this is my survival guide. Not fool-proof, but good enough:
- Always be kind to strangers, especially old men and women.
- Do not make promises lightly, but when you do, always honor them. Especially if you promised something to an animal that can, bizarrely, speak.
- Do not accept gifts from strangers, and do not follow strange old ladies into their homes.
- Always share what you have with others, e.g. food. If a stranger asks for a favor, always say yes and don't ask for anything in return.
- Do not go into the locked room / open the box they told you not to. You'll live a possibly ignorant but long and happy life.
- Do not mock anyone who looks strange or hideous.
- Always respect your parents and do not lie to them.
- (This is the hardest one) Always be the youngest son / daughter.
If you have a collection of children tales from the Grimm brothers... then this is already watered down.
These brothers traveled in Towns and collected the tales that the adult told to each other, e.g. when spinning wool or whatever boring but necessary winter job they had. They called their first collection "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" (children and house tales). The children aimed ones where ... more or less ... okay. Being on the cruel site, of course. But the ones not aimed children could be quite explicit or sexy-hexy --- at least for the times. Small kids probably didn't get most things.
The german wikipedia e.g. writes "Die Texte wurden von Auflage zu Auflage weiter überarbeitet, teilweise „verniedlicht“ und mit christlicher Moral unterfüttert. " which I translate as: the texts were edited from edition to edition, belittled/diminished and bolstered with christian morality" --- the latter probably because most of the editorial work happened in Kassel, which at the time was hugenotic evangelical.
Since the Grimms played a remarkable role in the german language, there is LOTS of academic literate on then, their german words dictionary, their tales collection. So you dive as deep into it as you want.
When I was a pre-teen I found a book of Indian fairytales in a library. It was a translation, it was thick, the stories were few pages each, easy to read and beautifully illustrated. The content however was terrifying. So much violence, greed, poverty and suffering. The retribution when it was dispensed was as satisfying as it was over-the-top cruel. Eye-gouging was like an entry level option.
It was very long time ago, don't remember any details, but I still shudder remembering it.
Lies of P is a fantastic video game (soulslike) that felt to me like a dark take on the Pinocchio story at first, but now maybe seems more in line with the original material. A lot of the references carry through.
It's not entirely correct that the government "chose Tuscan" as the language to push. The literary tradition was already rooted into a vulgata that happened to be mostly similar to the languages spoken in the areas between Roma and Firenze - unsurprisingly so, considering they had traditionally been the wealthiest parts of the country for centuries. In this context of broad intellectual agreement on the fundamentals, Alessandro Manzoni then published a few works that explicitly tried to formalize the language, sprinkling northern inflections on top of the traditional core. These works were later used as the model by authorities, who forced them on the national curriculum.
I’ve never seen the Disney film. As a child I hated that story. My own children have no love for it either. If I was to guess, I’d say that there isn’t much of a character in that story to get behind and to empathize with as a child. Pinocchio is a selfish little shit. I can’t like him. As an adult I feel for his father’s desperation but even then I could never understand the story’s popularity appeal.
I love exactly what you hate about it. I would not read it to a small child, but I would dearly recommend it to a 10- to 15-year-old. I reread it as an adult and loved it.
Pinocchio is mean, undisciplined, hedonistic, disrespectful, naive, and, of course, a liar. As soon as he is created, he runs away and behaves selfishly and impulsively.
Then he pays for each flaw with scars. The story shows him learning these lessons on his own wooden skin.
It is a moral story in the deepest sense. It shows what feels to me almost like "forbidden" knowledge. There is no magical thinking in it; it is not trying to preach "Doing bad things is bad, full stop". Instead, the author shows realistic consequences and the full messiness of being in the world. It shows exactly how naivety can result in exploitation (the Fox and the Cat stealing from him after promising him easy riches), laziness in humiliation (skipping school and ending up forced to perform for strangers; he loses his agency and is released only by Mangiafuoco's arbitrary mercy), vanity in manipulation (he is steered by praise, attention, and promises of fame), dishonesty in isolation (his lies literally disfiguring him in front of others, making him ridiculous and impossible to hide), and hedonism in literal dehumanization (Pleasure Island turning boys into donkeys).
It is quite rare for a children's book to be so honest about all the vile things in the world, and to show so directly that these things exist and that their consequences are not clean or neat either.
It also shows how we learn as humans. We do not start out good or bad and stay that way; we are not born "finished". We start as little monsters, full of impulses and feelings we cannot control or do not yet know how to interpret. Yet we learn by acting on them and seeing where they lead us. We are messy creatures, and Pinocchio makes it visible. I believe reading it made me a more robust person with a more sophisticated view of the world.
Interesting read, wouldn't have thought this of Pinocchio. Sadly, when I was learning Italian, I was reading more sophisticated things like Il Fu Mattia Pascal, with quite superficial understanding.
If you want a film version that is more faithful to the original book, I suggest you watch the 2019 Garrone movie [0]. There's Benigni in It, but this time he plays Geppetto and he's not as insufferable as he can be. And the rest of the cast is very good too (many beloved comedians including the late Gigi Proietti).
I have no idea if this stayed only in Italy or if it has been translated to other languages.
the bit about the simple language is interesting, since one of my strongest memories of reading the english translation of the book as a kid is that I learnt two new words from it, "alabaster" and "temple" (as in the side of the head).
Russian/Soviet version of Pinocchio called “Buratino” is much nicer. Pinocchio is very individualistic and moralising, everything is a moral lesson or a bible reference. Buratino is very light and kind, main hero learns valuable lessons and defeats main bad guy with his friends, frees them from slavery and they end up getting their own theatre.
Like many other children’s books whxih stood the test of time, those we assume are written for children are more a cautionary tales for adults that children also tend to like as they (still) are lacking understanding of notions such as humility, compassion and all the abstract stuff we now know forms after age 10-12.
The good Tom and Jerry episodes are completely devoid of tact and care, yet marvellous as entertainment .
Children are capable of understanding cruelty, pain, death, suffering, in young age, overprotectiveness is why we have many >20 y/o people who can't speak for themselves and are overly shy.
43 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 56.5 ms ] threadAlso, definitely likely you will remember some abridged version or Disneys'.
I'm not convinced of the argument that it's making fun of contemporary children books: Pinocchio regularly misbehaves and gets punished for it, which seems pretty much in line with contemporary books.
We have a child carved of wood, a flesh and blood child burns off their feet is a tragedy, but carved of wood we make new feet, hah hah!
Not saying this particular incident is to be expected exactly, but events of this type are to be expected from any competent writer who has taken up the premise. Especially as it is structured as a picaresque fairy tale, it would be weird if this kind of thing didn't happen.
Also - The fairy, originally a corpse - why is a dead revenant of some sort bringing a puppet to life any weirder than a magical fairy? That's not weirder, just different than we've been told.
We decided at some point that these themes were no longer fit for children despite generations having been raised with it. That’s probably the Victorian era, when childhood is said to have been “invented.”
He may have run out of ideas and tried to fill in a story with a dark mood in mind (speculation). The thing is that this is not that uncommon in many fantasy novels. Anyone remembers "The Color of Her Panties" by Piers Anthony? I read it, it is very cheesy (also silly, in particular when you as target audience are, say, 10 years old or something like that) but not necessarily mega-creepy either. But then you also begin to wonder ... is it just "good fun" to pick such a title? But then it is not the only instance and you begin to find more oddities. Naturally this depends on the author; some authors never run into such issues, others run into such issues.
I only saw the Pinocchio cartoon, that anime-style animation, on TV. That version was harmless from what I remember. Never read the books, but I am not so surprised about books being darker. Anyone knows the Grimm brothers? They lived from 1785–1863 and 1786–1859 respectively. I clearly remember that some of those drawings were really dark. It's a bit like dark horror stories if you look at it today - here is a summary:
https://discover.hubpages.com/literature/Grimms-Fairy-Tales-...
It starts with "There are some fairy tales that are just not meant for kids.".
Some of the pictures by Grimm or illustrators are quite scary, such as the bleeding or weeping out of eyes ... is gross. Possibly these were more for adults, or adults who did not care, such as Pinocchio - perhaps. A puppet that has a growing body part ... that in itself is already super-weird. Are we certain the nose was meant? Is Pinocchio ... a prison item???
In 19th century Italian (but maybe also other countries') children had to grow quickly to cope with life and work brutalities. They often had no mother, died while giving them birth, and started working at 7 or 8 to help their families.
In 20th century, instead, they have been constantly exposed to either real life violence and harshness (like war) or fiction brutality from movies, cartoons and video games.
Nope, Pinocchio is not that weird. It is when compared to an idyllic and peaceful world that has never existed but in our wishful thinking minds.
As one does these days, I asked an LLM to help me detect if I had a bowdlerized version, and while I'm sure the stories were already softened in translation, they're still far more 'rowdy' than stories you can easily find today. In the old folk tales, things just happen. Fairness isn't guaranteed; and sometimes a guy makes a deal and gets eaten anyway; and sometimes someone dies for no reason.
I wonder if the changing narrative structure of modern stories is a result of our improved civilization. In a world where you're probably reaching adulthood with your brothers and sisters without encountering any sibling death, a story with 'unfair' death and destruction probably feels out of place. Nonetheless, I sometimes am saddened when I read people talk about stories in media and how they 'glorify' bad behaviour or 'send the wrong message'. A thing I really treasure from childhood is the breadth of storytelling: not all stories were an Aesop's fable.
But perhaps that's not true. I suspect the truth is that with lowered barriers to publishing there are just more stories told. The ones from the past that we know are twice selected: once for cultural value, and once because the writer himself was selected. Today, anyone can write, so it's the same problem as we encounter when we look at personal websites today. Sampled randomly in 2004 you would get interesting ones easily. Today, that is not so easy.
This is most easily visible with foreign media. The Chinese stories I've read are alien and strange and interesting; and the Japanese ones take unexpected turns. But they're going through that selection process as well. So it's probably just a boring selection effect.
Still, I've got the old Grimms. I'm keeping that one as an heirloom.
I think that children's authors primarily amuse themselves knowing that it will pass right over the heads of their target audience. It sure seems true of Collodi.
Oh and of course little red riding hood before they got rid of the cannibalism. And the rape.
Oh and of course the Grimm tale - “How some children played at slaughtering”. Murder, suicide, child abandonment - just… good grief. We live in a safe world today.
Do you mean in Indian and Eastern European folk tales? Interesting! I should read more of those (I'm familiar with the usual suspects, but I'm sure I'm missing lots).
If I'm ever magically transported to a classic folk tale like Grimm's, this is my survival guide. Not fool-proof, but good enough:
- Always be kind to strangers, especially old men and women.
- Do not make promises lightly, but when you do, always honor them. Especially if you promised something to an animal that can, bizarrely, speak.
- Do not accept gifts from strangers, and do not follow strange old ladies into their homes.
- Always share what you have with others, e.g. food. If a stranger asks for a favor, always say yes and don't ask for anything in return.
- Do not go into the locked room / open the box they told you not to. You'll live a possibly ignorant but long and happy life.
- Do not mock anyone who looks strange or hideous.
- Always respect your parents and do not lie to them.
- (This is the hardest one) Always be the youngest son / daughter.
These brothers traveled in Towns and collected the tales that the adult told to each other, e.g. when spinning wool or whatever boring but necessary winter job they had. They called their first collection "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" (children and house tales). The children aimed ones where ... more or less ... okay. Being on the cruel site, of course. But the ones not aimed children could be quite explicit or sexy-hexy --- at least for the times. Small kids probably didn't get most things.
The german wikipedia e.g. writes "Die Texte wurden von Auflage zu Auflage weiter überarbeitet, teilweise „verniedlicht“ und mit christlicher Moral unterfüttert. " which I translate as: the texts were edited from edition to edition, belittled/diminished and bolstered with christian morality" --- the latter probably because most of the editorial work happened in Kassel, which at the time was hugenotic evangelical.
Since the Grimms played a remarkable role in the german language, there is LOTS of academic literate on then, their german words dictionary, their tales collection. So you dive as deep into it as you want.
When I was a pre-teen I found a book of Indian fairytales in a library. It was a translation, it was thick, the stories were few pages each, easy to read and beautifully illustrated. The content however was terrifying. So much violence, greed, poverty and suffering. The retribution when it was dispensed was as satisfying as it was over-the-top cruel. Eye-gouging was like an entry level option.
It was very long time ago, don't remember any details, but I still shudder remembering it.
[1] https://liberliber.it/autori/autori-c/carlo-collodi-alias-ca...
Pinocchio is mean, undisciplined, hedonistic, disrespectful, naive, and, of course, a liar. As soon as he is created, he runs away and behaves selfishly and impulsively.
Then he pays for each flaw with scars. The story shows him learning these lessons on his own wooden skin.
It is a moral story in the deepest sense. It shows what feels to me almost like "forbidden" knowledge. There is no magical thinking in it; it is not trying to preach "Doing bad things is bad, full stop". Instead, the author shows realistic consequences and the full messiness of being in the world. It shows exactly how naivety can result in exploitation (the Fox and the Cat stealing from him after promising him easy riches), laziness in humiliation (skipping school and ending up forced to perform for strangers; he loses his agency and is released only by Mangiafuoco's arbitrary mercy), vanity in manipulation (he is steered by praise, attention, and promises of fame), dishonesty in isolation (his lies literally disfiguring him in front of others, making him ridiculous and impossible to hide), and hedonism in literal dehumanization (Pleasure Island turning boys into donkeys).
It is quite rare for a children's book to be so honest about all the vile things in the world, and to show so directly that these things exist and that their consequences are not clean or neat either.
It also shows how we learn as humans. We do not start out good or bad and stay that way; we are not born "finished". We start as little monsters, full of impulses and feelings we cannot control or do not yet know how to interpret. Yet we learn by acting on them and seeing where they lead us. We are messy creatures, and Pinocchio makes it visible. I believe reading it made me a more robust person with a more sophisticated view of the world.
Pinocchio is a selfish brat and that's a central tenet of his redemption arc.
I have no idea if this stayed only in Italy or if it has been translated to other languages.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio_(2019_film)
Hm, that gave me an idea... sounds like a fun way to learn Italian if you already have some basic knowledge?
The good Tom and Jerry episodes are completely devoid of tact and care, yet marvellous as entertainment .
Children are capable of understanding cruelty, pain, death, suffering, in young age, overprotectiveness is why we have many >20 y/o people who can't speak for themselves and are overly shy.