The Invention of Solitude

cannot remember it at all. As in Pavlov ’ s experiments with dogs (which, at the simplest possible level, demonstrate the way in which the mind can make a connec tion between two dissimilar things, eventually forget the first thing, and thereby turn one thing into another thing), something has happened, although we are at a loss to say what it is. What A. is struggling to express, perhaps, is that for some time now none of the terms has been missing for him. Wherever his eye or mind seems to stop, he discovers another connection, another bridge to carry him to yet another place, and even in the solitude of his room, the world has been rushing in on him at a dizzying speed, as if it were all sud denly converging in him and happening to him at once. Coincidence: to fall on with; to occupy the same place in time or space. The mind, therefore, as that which contains more than itself. As in the phrase from Augustine: “ But where is the part of it which it does not itself contain? ”
     
    Second return to the belly of the whale.
    “ When he recovered his senses the Marionette could not remem ber where he was. Around him all was darkness, a darkness so deep and so black that for a moment he thought he had been dipped head first into an inkwell. ”
    This is Collodi ’ s description of Pinocchio ’ s arrival in the belly of the shark. It would have been one thing to write it in the ordinary way: “ a darkness as black as ink ” —as a trite literary flourish to be forgotten the moment it is read. But something different is happen ing here, something that transcends the question of good or bad writing (and this is manifestly not bad writing). Take careful note: Collodi makes no comparisons in this passage; there is no “ as if, ” no “ like, ” nothing to equate or contrast one thing with another. The image of absolute darkness immediately gives way to an image of an inkwell. Pinocchio has just entered the belly of the shark. He does not know yet that Gepetto is also there. Everything, at least for this brief moment, has been lost. Pinocchio is surrounded by the darkness of solitude. And it is in this darkness, where the puppet will eventually find the courage to save his father and thereby bring about his transformation into a real boy, that the essential creative act of the book takes place.
    By plunging his marionette into the darkness of the shark, Collodi is telling us, he is dipping his pen into the darkness of his inkwell. Pinocchio, after all, is only made of wood. Collodi is using him as the instrument (literally, the pen) to write the story of himself. This is not to indulge in primitive psychologizing. Collodi could not have achieved what he does in Pinocchio unless the book was for him a book of memory. He was over fifty years old when he sat down to write it, recently retired from an undistinguished career in government service, which had been marked, according to his nephew, “ neither by zeal nor by punctuality nor by subordination. ” No less than Proust ’ s novel in search of lost time, his story is a search for his lost childhood. Even the name he chose to write under was an evocation of the past. His real name was Carlo Loren-zini. Collodi was the name of the small town where his mother had been born and where he spent his holidays as a young child. About this childhood, a few facts are available. He was atelier of tall tales, admired by his friends for his ability to fascinate them with stories. According to his brother Ippolito, “ He did it so well and with such mimickry that half the world took delight and the children listened to him with their mouths agape. ” In an autobiographical sketch written late in life, long after the completion of Pinocchio, Collodi leaves little doubt that he conceived of himself as the puppet ’ s double. He portrays himself as a prankster and a clown—eating cherries in class and stuffing the pits into a schoolmate ’ s pockets, catching flies and putting them into someone else ’ s ears, painting Figures on the clothes of the boy in front of him: in general, creating havoc for everyone. Whether or not this is true is beside the point.
    Pinocchio was Collodi ’ s surrogate, and after the puppet had been created, Collodi saw himself as Pinocchio. The puppet had become the image of himself as a child. To dip the puppet into the inkwell, therefore, was to use his creation to write the story of himself. For it is only in the darkness of solitude that