匹诺曹——最恐怖的童话？其实是儿童对成人世界的恐惧

"I saw the Disney film at a very early age," says del Toro, "and it's one of the scariest films I've ever seen." The original book is scarier still. The novel is one of the strangest and most disturbing classics in children's literature.

“我小时候就看过迪士尼的《匹诺曹》。”托罗说，“这是我看过最恐怖的电影之一。”而原著小说《木偶奇遇记》更可怕。这部小说可以说是儿童文学中最不可思议、最令人不安的经典作品之一。

Anyone who knows Pinocchio only from his screen incarnations should beware. Geppetto is poorer than he is in the film: he has a fire painted on the wall because he can't afford the fuel for a real one. The Blue Fairy is a ghostly Little Girl who speaks "without moving her lips... in a faint voice that seemed to come from the other world". And the Cat and the Fox string Pinocchio up from an oak tree. "The noose, growing tighter around his neck all the time, was choking him, He could feel death approaching..."

任何只通过银幕形象了解匹诺曹的人，在读原著时都要小心别被吓到了。书中的杰佩托比他在电影中更穷：他因为买不起燃料，在墙上画了一团火焰。蓝仙女是一个幽灵般的小女孩，她说话时“嘴唇不动..……发出一种似乎来自另一个世界的微弱声音。”猫和狐狸把匹诺曹吊在橡树上。“绞索在他脖子上越套越紧，让他窒息，他能感觉到死亡正在向他逼近……”

The Adventures of Pinocchio's end is decidedly dark. Geppetto and the newly-human Pinocchio keep the marionette around. Lying there like a puppet corpse, the story closes with Pinocchio laughing that he could have ever been a lump of wood.

《木偶奇遇记》的结尾无疑是黑暗的。杰佩托和新生为人的匹诺曹仍然把那具木偶身体带在身边。故事结尾，匹诺曹像个木偶一样僵卧着，笑着说自己或许永远是一堆木头。

To make matters even grimmer, this could have been the end of the story. The author, Carlo Collodi born in Florence in 1826 had planned to leave his hapless hero dangling from the noose, and it wasn't until readers begged for further instalments that the serial was resumed four months later.

更糟糕的是，本书作者卡洛·科洛迪（于1826年出生于佛罗伦萨）原定的故事结尾是匹诺曹会被绞死。直到读者不断恳求继续连载，这部连载才于四个月后重新出版。

One reading even argues that Pinocchio is a Christ figure, because Geppetto is a carpenter whose name is a diminutive of Giuseppe, or Joseph, and the Blue Fairy's colour scheme matches the blue mantle traditionally worn by the Virgin Mary. It is echoed in Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio when the living puppet gazes at a crucifix and muses, "He's made of wood, too. Why does everyone like him, not me?"

甚至有一种解读认为，匹诺曹的形象象征着基督。因为杰佩托是一名木匠，正如耶稣在俗世的父亲木匠约瑟一样，而他的名字也正是“朱塞佩”或“约瑟”的昵称；而蓝仙女的配色与圣母玛利亚穿的传统蓝色斗篷相匹配。托罗版《匹诺曹》呼应了这种观点。片中，匹诺曹凝视着十字架，沉思道：“他也是木头做的。为什么大家都喜欢他，却不喜欢我？”

The overriding theme for del Toro is the unfairness of children being bossed about by adults. In Collodi's novel, Pinocchio is punished every time he is disobedient, and ultimately learns to do what he is told. "We tried to very pointedly avoid that," says del Toro. "I really wanted to make a disobedient Pinocchio, and make disobedience a virtue. I wanted everybody to change but him. I was being contrarian in a way, but it was more truthful to what I felt as a kid. I felt all this domestication was daunting and scary."

托罗的电影中，首要的主题是体现儿童被成人呼来喝去的不公平。在科洛迪的小说中，匹诺曹每次不听话都会受到惩罚，最终他学会了言听计从。“我们试图避免这一点。”托罗说。“我想塑造一个不听话的匹诺曹，把不听话变成一种美德。我希望电影中每个人都改变，除了他。在某种程度上，我是在逆势而为，但这更真实地反映了我小时候的感受。我觉得所有这些驯化过程都令人畏惧和害怕。”

"I think it's fear of the adult world," says del Toro, "this idea that you are thrown into a world of adult values that are not only hard to understand but eventually prove false. That's how I came to feel as a kid. All the things adults told you, they didn't understand themselves." As fantastical as these episodes are, the fear they evoke, the feeling of being lost and powerless in a grown-up society where nothing makes sense, is more recognisable than the relatively orderly and logical yarns in most children's books.

“我认为这是对成人世界的恐惧。”托罗说，“你被灌输了成人世界的价值观，这种价值观不仅难以理解，而且最终也会被证明是错误的。这就是我小时候的感受。大人们告诉你的所有事情，通常他们自己都不明白。”尽管这些情节荒诞不经，但比起大多数儿童读物中相对有序和合乎逻辑的情节，它们所引发的恐惧、在一个毫无意义的成年社会中迷失和无助的感觉更容易辨认。

Everyone knows that Pinocchio wants to be a real boy, but a key reason why he has been so adored for almost 150 years is that he is always as real as anyone in literature. Rather than being an intrepid, noble hero, Pinocchio is rude, selfish, naive, curious, forgetful, easily swayed by temptation, slow to learn from his mistakes, upset when things go wrong, but kind and capable of bravery. Wooden or not, he couldn't be much more human than that.

众所周知，匹诺曹想成为一个真正的男孩，但他在近150年来一直深受崇拜的关键原因是，他就像人类一样真实。匹诺曹不是一个勇敢、高尚的英雄，而是一个粗鲁、自私、天真、好奇、健忘、易受诱惑、不善于从错误中吸取教训、遇事心烦意乱，但也勇敢善良的角色。不管他是不是木头，他都太像个人类了。

You might wonder why fairy tales that so many kids adore today have such dark origins, but the reality is that most of them were never really intended to delight children.

你可能想知道，为何今天深受众多孩子崇拜的童话故事有着如此黑暗的起源？但事实是：它们中的大多数从来不是为了取悦孩子而生。

The Brothers Grimm, for example, never set out to write fairy tales or bedtime stories; their work started a mission to anthologize German folklore for scholars of German culture. The original folk tales, and their many variations, had been told around the fire for centuries—but the audience was usually adults or older children.

例如，格林兄弟从未打算写童话或睡前故事；他们的工作起初是为德国文化学者整理德国民间传说。这些民间故事，以及它们的各种变体，已经围绕着火堆流传了几个世纪——但观众通常是成年人或大龄孩子。

You’ll notice that many of these tales also had a moral or lesson to impart, regardless of how backwards they might seem by today’s standards. The late psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, for one, argued that the creepy stuff helps children to grow emotionally, by allowing them to grapple with fears that are a part of growing up.

你会注意到，许多这样的故事也有寓意或教训要传授，尽管其中的某些内容已经很落后。已故心理学家布鲁诺·贝特尔海姆认为，这些令人毛骨悚然的东西有助于儿童的情感成长，让他们与成长过程中的恐惧作斗争。