A Century Old

As popular as ever, Pinocchio has a special birthday party

One hundred years ago, Carlo Loren-zini found himself light on cash and heavy on gambling debts. Driven to action, the 54-year-old civil servant-turned-writer concocted a tale about a wooden marionette and sold the first chapter to a children's newspaper, reportedly describing the story as "a little nonsense." By the 15th installment, the author was no longer harried by financial troubles and decided to seal his hero's fate by having him hanged by a devious fox and cat. But popular outrage quickly compelled him to create a lovely blue fairy who resurrected the boy puppet and guided his adventures through 21 more chapters.

The saga of Pinocchio became immortalized in more than 80 languages; fans of the marionette, whose nose grew when he told a lie, claim that no other book except the Bible has been read in so many tongues. No one knows how many copies have been sold, but the total is in the tens of millions. There have been 256 editions in Italian alone, printed by 72 different publishers, and more than 100 English editions.

Eight full-length Pinocchio feature films, including Walt Disney's 1940 epic, have been shown to audiences around the world, and countless scholarly dissertations have ruminated, sometimes woodenly, on the puppet.

Some Catholic theologians have even compared the puppet's return to life after his hanging to Christ's resurrection. Marxist writers predictably have hailed Pinocchio as a metaphorical hero in the proletarian struggle against capitalistic oppression. Psychologists have mused worriedly about the sexual symbolism of the wooden boy's protruding proboscis.

To pay homage to their classic, Italians last week celebrated the centennial of Pinocchio in the tiny Tuscan village of Collodi (pop. 1,800), where Author Loren-zini spent much of his childhood and whose name he later took as part of his nom de plume, Carlo Collodi. More than 12,000 visitors besieged the picturesque hillside village to tour "Pinocchio Park," a mini-Disneyland featuring outdoor sculptures and mosaics by Italian artists depicting characters out of the 19th century fable like Geppetto the Carpenter and the laughing serpent. Sated with free ice cream, schoolchildren were toted by donkeys past the "Inn of the Red Crawfish";--where the fox and cat plotted against Pinocchio--built by Architect Giovanni Michelucci as the entrance to the park. In other cities and villages across Italy film shows, art exhibits and seminars are extolling the magic of the story, while the Italian Soccer Federation adopted Pinocchio as its emblem for European Cup matches.

The fairy tale carries special significance for the people of Collodi.

Though he lived and died in Florence, Lorenzini was captivated by his mother's home village on Monte a Pescia. Its rustic beauty was an ideal setting, as Pinocchio once explained to the talking cricket, in which "to chase butterflies, to climb trees and take little birds from their nests." Says Professor Rolando Anzilotti, president of the Carlo Collodi Foundation that promotes the lore of Pinocchio: "The book reflects the flavor of a country town where a child first opens his eyes to the world."

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