399
captain of the brigades, and former political commentator, that he take Charles
Perrault’s “Mother Goose” and turn it into proper Italian. For an intellectual who
followed every hysterical outbreak of philosophy, each turnabout in the politics of
the day, this commission might have come as a profound letdown, even an embarrassment. He needed to work. But “Mother Goose” was no Marxist treatise; nothing
like the subtle masterpieces produced by so many of those great names populating
his native Tuscany (Niccolò Machiavelli, Giuseppe Giusti, etc.). This man was
plagued by a dead-end schoolbook mentality beset by simple fables, an absence of
the slightest nuance or controversy, thoroughly inoffensive standard fare. He knew
his anonymity was on the verge of a guarantee. For a man so deeply in love with life,
and his native landscapes, he had hoped for an epiphany and the fortune of good
timing to give it loft.
Looking more deeply, as he obviously did, Charles Perrault’s (1628–1703)
“Mother Goose” did not lack for complexity, actually. “Mère l’Oye” dates back to
1695, titled, Histoires ou contes du temps passés, avec des moralités -Contes de ma
mère l’Oye. Collodi would have divined in its sweeping echoes a combining of
genres that were ancient and would, in time, lead to morality plays, opera, ballet,
film—an entire panoply of human emotions from cradled nursery rhymes to the
grave. It was serious. The author of “Little Red Riding Hood,” of “Sleeping Beauty,”
“Puss in Boots,” “Bluebeard,” and “Donkeyskin,” among other stories, had firmly
established the dark undersides of childhood. It was not Perrault’s subtlety that
interested the schoolmarms and librarians of late nineteenth-century Italy. But it
clearly interested and helped form Collodi’s nuanced ecological epic. The sprawling, rusticated charm and philosophical echoes of Tuscany were, in his mind, the
perfect epicenter to engender something we had never before experienced as readers
and happy co-conspirators.
Within six years, Collodi had found his true vein as an author and by July 7,
1881, the many memorable creatures of his “Storia di un Burattino” (“Tale of a
Puppet”) were ready to be launched in a magazine devoted specifically for children,
the Giornale per i bambini.
44.2 The Tuscan Mirrors
There is an anecdote—it may be true, or not—that Collodi was unconvinced about
the quality of his tale of a puppet and told the publisher that it was a “childish piece”
and only hoped that, were the enterprise to move forward, he be paid sufficiently so
as to incite him to continue with the concept, the characters, the story line, notwithstanding his own uncertainty about the outcome. By all appearances the story was
not unappreciated and by 1883 Collodi had finished, and Felice Paggi had published
the entire novel. Dying suddenly in Florence in 1890, one month shy of the age of
64, Lorenzini would never know that his little puppet would enjoy hundreds of editions, translations into over 260 languages and dialects, whole industries created
around him, the entire literary world changed forever.
44.2 The Tuscan Mirrors
captain of the brigades, and former political commentator, that he take Charles
Perrault’s “Mother Goose” and turn it into proper Italian. For an intellectual who
followed every hysterical outbreak of philosophy, each turnabout in the politics of
the day, this commission might have come as a profound letdown, even an embarrassment. He needed to work. But “Mother Goose” was no Marxist treatise; nothing
like the subtle masterpieces produced by so many of those great names populating
his native Tuscany (Niccolò Machiavelli, Giuseppe Giusti, etc.). This man was
plagued by a dead-end schoolbook mentality beset by simple fables, an absence of
the slightest nuance or controversy, thoroughly inoffensive standard fare. He knew
his anonymity was on the verge of a guarantee. For a man so deeply in love with life,
and his native landscapes, he had hoped for an epiphany and the fortune of good
timing to give it loft.
Looking more deeply, as he obviously did, Charles Perrault’s (1628–1703)
“Mother Goose” did not lack for complexity, actually. “Mère l’Oye” dates back to
1695, titled, Histoires ou contes du temps passés, avec des moralités -Contes de ma
mère l’Oye. Collodi would have divined in its sweeping echoes a combining of
genres that were ancient and would, in time, lead to morality plays, opera, ballet,
film—an entire panoply of human emotions from cradled nursery rhymes to the
grave. It was serious. The author of “Little Red Riding Hood,” of “Sleeping Beauty,”
“Puss in Boots,” “Bluebeard,” and “Donkeyskin,” among other stories, had firmly
established the dark undersides of childhood. It was not Perrault’s subtlety that
interested the schoolmarms and librarians of late nineteenth-century Italy. But it
clearly interested and helped form Collodi’s nuanced ecological epic. The sprawling, rusticated charm and philosophical echoes of Tuscany were, in his mind, the
perfect epicenter to engender something we had never before experienced as readers
and happy co-conspirators.
Within six years, Collodi had found his true vein as an author and by July 7,
1881, the many memorable creatures of his “Storia di un Burattino” (“Tale of a
Puppet”) were ready to be launched in a magazine devoted specifically for children,
the Giornale per i bambini.
44.2 The Tuscan Mirrors
There is an anecdote—it may be true, or not—that Collodi was unconvinced about
the quality of his tale of a puppet and told the publisher that it was a “childish piece”
and only hoped that, were the enterprise to move forward, he be paid sufficiently so
as to incite him to continue with the concept, the characters, the story line, notwithstanding his own uncertainty about the outcome. By all appearances the story was
not unappreciated and by 1883 Collodi had finished, and Felice Paggi had published
the entire novel. Dying suddenly in Florence in 1890, one month shy of the age of
64, Lorenzini would never know that his little puppet would enjoy hundreds of editions, translations into over 260 languages and dialects, whole industries created
around him, the entire literary world changed forever.
44.2 The Tuscan Mirrors