So, you all know the 1880’s classic children’s story of the long-nosed wooden puppet, Pinocchio, written by Italian author Carlo Collodi. Brief recap: Geppetto carves a marionette out of a piece of wood and claims it as his child; it is clear from the beginning that this puppet, named Pinocchio, is a rascal. He is sent to school, but is easily led off-track by a variety of distractions, such as a marionette theatre (& its director, Mangiafuoco), as well as the conniving duo Fox & Cat. He is helped out of several tight situations by the Fairy with Turquoise Hair as well as The Talking Cricket who reappears at conspicuous times throughout the story (Famous Scene: when the Fairy asks Pinocchio about his adventures, his nose begins to grow as he relates to her a string of lies. The Fairy tells him: “Lies, my boy, are easily recognised because there are two kinds: There are lies with short legs and lies with long noses: Yours, to the point, are the kind with the long nose.”). The Fairy repeatedly warns Pinocchio about the consequences of reckless behavior; nevertheless, he continues to get lured to places such as the City of Catchfools and the Land of Play, where he gets himself in a variety of fixes (like being transformed into a donkey). Ultimately, Pinocchio ends up saving Geppetto from the belly of The Terrible Dogfish after he’s been swallowed; father and son are reunited after a long separation. One day, as Pinocchio is on his way to town to buy himself a new suit, he is met by a snail who tells him that the Fairy with Turquoise Hair is sick; Pinocchio immediately gives the snail all of the money he has (forty copper coins), and that night, while he is sleeping, he is transformed into a real boy. Furthermore, when he wakes up, he has a new suit and is shocked to find forty gold coins by his bed, attributed to the Fairy as a reward for Pinocchio’s commendable actions.
I myself grew up with Pinocchio’s Russian counterpart: Buratino. In the 1930’s, Russian author Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy reimagined Collodi’s masterpiece. Although Tolstoy had read about the original adventures of Pinocchio a long time before, he had lost the book and forgotten many of the details. In an attempt to come up with an entertaining bedside story for his own children, Tolstoy came up with the tale of the long-nosed wooden puppet, Buratino. There are many similarities between the two stories, but also marked differences.
Buratino is carved by a man named Papa Carlo (probably in reference to the author of Pinocchio). His nose is always long; he resists attempts to have it shortened. When Buratino (which means “wooden doll” in Italian) is sent off to school, he is distracted by a marionette theatre, which is run by the evil, long-bearded director Karabas Barabas. Buratino disrupts the show and befriends Karabas’s mistreated puppets (including a blue-haired puppet named Malvina). For this, Karabas is livid and imprisons him; however, he politely releases Buratino when he accidentally discovers, by means of conversation, that the old house Buratino’s father Papa Carlo lives in contains a secret door for which Karabas has been searching his whole life. Karabas once had the Golden Key to this door, but he lost it. The rest of the book chronicles Buratino’s adventures searching for the Golden Key. Throughout, Alice the Fox & Basilio the Cat attempt to swindle Buratino out of his pocket money using a variety of ploys (such as taking him to the Land of Fools). Meanwhile, Karabas’s puppet crew have run away from their evil director, and they help Buratino out of a fix (far from town in a place of great seclusion, Malvina the Blue-Haired marionette attempts to educate Buratino in reading, writing, and arithmetic, with little success). After a few more adventures, ultimately, Buratino is given the Golden Key by a wise old pond turtle named Tortilla, who deems him “worthy” of the honor. Turns out the Golden Key leads to a wonderful, ornate marionette theatre; there Papa Carlo, Buratino & the rest of his puppet friends happily spend the rest of their days. In this story, there is also a Talking Cricket – he lives in Papa Carlo’s house at the entrance to the secret theatre. However, in this version, the wooden puppet Buratino never becomes a “real boy.”
Isn’t it interesting how one character can serve as a bridge between cultures (namely Western Europeans & Slavs)? Buratino is considered a very popular Russian icon today. There is even a fizzy drink named after him
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