I just finished reading Pinocchio in Italian with what is considered to be the best English translation on the verso, that by Nicolas Perella, an Italian professor at UC Berkeley who just passed away in 2015. If you have never read the real story, either in the original Italian or in a faithful translation; that is, not one that has been edited for children (although those versions have their merit also), I highly recommend that you do so this summer. It is a quick read, easily done in a few sittings.
Of course, what I want to focus on in this post is the fact that Pinocchio was made of wood. It was a piece of wood with particular qualities, however, being especially hard and, more oddly, still having the capacity to grow. This is the reason, implied but not stated explicitly, that a) Pinocchio's nose continues to grow no matter how many times it is trimmed down and, b) that he is able to transform from a puppet to a real boy, although of course this dramatic change is attributed not so much to material conditions but to some kind of magic realism: he becomes a real boy because he has demonstrated real-boy virtues and not those of a puppet, who is (again it is only implied) controlled by others. The development of a self, and an attendant conscience and discipline, are essential to this transformation, although it must be said that even without these fine qualities, Pinocchio is able to run around and talk more than any other marionette made of wood; thus the special nature of the wood is important to the story and is evident from its very beginning.
Allora. Could Pinocchio have been made of stone or metal? I don't see why not, although a different material would call for a somewhat different narrative. It is fair enough to say that wood was the most obvious and common choice for the story's author, Carlo Collodi, being the dominant material of the late 19th century, at least for puppet making, but even today wood, the product of a plant, retains a special quality among products used in building and manufacturing. How often I see ads for furniture made out of 'solid wood', a material that will probably become rarer and more precious as we move into and through the Antrhopocene. What lies on the other side is anyone's guess.
The remarkable qualities of wood figure prominently in the story at multiple junctures. When Pinocchio is forced to swim to escape a ferocious dog, his woodenness allows him to float marvelously. When he is being eaten by a school of ravenous fish, the solidity of his wooden manufacture prevents him from being consumed entirely. True, his wooden feet burn easily in the fire early on in the story, but Geppetto is able to make new ones for him easily because wood, while valuable, is still readily available and perhaps more importantly, easily worked. Imagine if Geppetto had to chisel new feet for Pinocchio out of stone, or if he had to make them, as well as his entire body, out of clay, the material of choice in similar stories from earlier epochs, particularly creation myths. No, the use of wood marks Pinocchio as a denizen of a particular stage in civilization, one that stands mezza strada between ancient clay work and industrial manufacturing.
As such, the tree is never far off or forgotten in the story. To begin, Geppetto picks up not a nicely milled piece of lumber, but a log, complete with bark, which he must shave off with a plane, which strangely causes Pinocchio to giggle rather than to scream in pain, as might have also been the case (such is the beauty of fiction, and even more so of folk and fairy tales, or magic realism). Second, as mentioned previously, the wood remains alive. In fact, Pinocchio is sometimes depicted with not only a nose that continues to grow, like a twig from a branch, but to even sprout a single (and always only one) leaf. This myth continues even today, as a university professor from Texas once explained to me, in the form of very green 4x4s, unseasoned lumber, sprouting when sunk into the ground as fence posts. This professor, who had a delightful cowboy-like quality to him, believed this to be true, having heard about it as a child, but I have yet to confirm an instance of it through my admittedly casual internet searches.
Leather might have some of these qualities. Stone also, although stone presents certain challenges to human beings when it comes to forming person-like relations. Metal, on the other hand, has to go though too much of a transformation for it to retain any kind of 'personality'. I tap this post out now in a room whose interior I have constructed entirely out of pine siding, the knots and grain still plainly evident to me, indicating the tree that it once was, but at the same time not really evoking the tree itself, as is still the case with the benches I wrote about previously.
For a while there was a big boom in publishing the histories of common objects: the history of salt, for example. I don't know if there is one on the history of pine, which obviously is the material that is referenced by the name 'Pinocchio' (which may mean 'pine eye, or 'pine nut' or simply 'made of pine'), but it might be time for someone to write one, and that someone might be me.
Of course, what I want to focus on in this post is the fact that Pinocchio was made of wood. It was a piece of wood with particular qualities, however, being especially hard and, more oddly, still having the capacity to grow. This is the reason, implied but not stated explicitly, that a) Pinocchio's nose continues to grow no matter how many times it is trimmed down and, b) that he is able to transform from a puppet to a real boy, although of course this dramatic change is attributed not so much to material conditions but to some kind of magic realism: he becomes a real boy because he has demonstrated real-boy virtues and not those of a puppet, who is (again it is only implied) controlled by others. The development of a self, and an attendant conscience and discipline, are essential to this transformation, although it must be said that even without these fine qualities, Pinocchio is able to run around and talk more than any other marionette made of wood; thus the special nature of the wood is important to the story and is evident from its very beginning.
Allora. Could Pinocchio have been made of stone or metal? I don't see why not, although a different material would call for a somewhat different narrative. It is fair enough to say that wood was the most obvious and common choice for the story's author, Carlo Collodi, being the dominant material of the late 19th century, at least for puppet making, but even today wood, the product of a plant, retains a special quality among products used in building and manufacturing. How often I see ads for furniture made out of 'solid wood', a material that will probably become rarer and more precious as we move into and through the Antrhopocene. What lies on the other side is anyone's guess.
The remarkable qualities of wood figure prominently in the story at multiple junctures. When Pinocchio is forced to swim to escape a ferocious dog, his woodenness allows him to float marvelously. When he is being eaten by a school of ravenous fish, the solidity of his wooden manufacture prevents him from being consumed entirely. True, his wooden feet burn easily in the fire early on in the story, but Geppetto is able to make new ones for him easily because wood, while valuable, is still readily available and perhaps more importantly, easily worked. Imagine if Geppetto had to chisel new feet for Pinocchio out of stone, or if he had to make them, as well as his entire body, out of clay, the material of choice in similar stories from earlier epochs, particularly creation myths. No, the use of wood marks Pinocchio as a denizen of a particular stage in civilization, one that stands mezza strada between ancient clay work and industrial manufacturing.
As such, the tree is never far off or forgotten in the story. To begin, Geppetto picks up not a nicely milled piece of lumber, but a log, complete with bark, which he must shave off with a plane, which strangely causes Pinocchio to giggle rather than to scream in pain, as might have also been the case (such is the beauty of fiction, and even more so of folk and fairy tales, or magic realism). Second, as mentioned previously, the wood remains alive. In fact, Pinocchio is sometimes depicted with not only a nose that continues to grow, like a twig from a branch, but to even sprout a single (and always only one) leaf. This myth continues even today, as a university professor from Texas once explained to me, in the form of very green 4x4s, unseasoned lumber, sprouting when sunk into the ground as fence posts. This professor, who had a delightful cowboy-like quality to him, believed this to be true, having heard about it as a child, but I have yet to confirm an instance of it through my admittedly casual internet searches.
Leather might have some of these qualities. Stone also, although stone presents certain challenges to human beings when it comes to forming person-like relations. Metal, on the other hand, has to go though too much of a transformation for it to retain any kind of 'personality'. I tap this post out now in a room whose interior I have constructed entirely out of pine siding, the knots and grain still plainly evident to me, indicating the tree that it once was, but at the same time not really evoking the tree itself, as is still the case with the benches I wrote about previously.
For a while there was a big boom in publishing the histories of common objects: the history of salt, for example. I don't know if there is one on the history of pine, which obviously is the material that is referenced by the name 'Pinocchio' (which may mean 'pine eye, or 'pine nut' or simply 'made of pine'), but it might be time for someone to write one, and that someone might be me.
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