Once upon a time
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— C'era una volta....
“Once upon a time…”
The book opens with the oldest fairy-tale phrase — and then refuses it.
The most familiar four words a story can begin with — <i>c’era una volta</i>, ‘there was one time.’ Collodi lays the phrase down like a trap: every child knows what is supposed to come next. The pause on the four dots is the storyteller enjoying, in advance, the answer he is about to overturn.
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Pinocchio 1.1 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/pinocchio/1.1/