A Review: Pt. I P.C. Wren The Beau Geste Trilogy
June 23, 2009
A Contribution To The Erbzine Library Project
The Beau Ideal Trilogy Of
P.C. Wren
Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur, Beau Ideal
Review by R.E. Prindle
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Review of Beau Geste
Part III: Review Of Beau Sabreur
Part IV: Review Of Beau Ideal
P.C. Wren
For hundreds of years after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain the Moslems raided the European c0asts of the Mediterranean abducting men, women and children as slaves while also preying on shipping. The newly formed United States sought unsuccessfully to suppress this Moslem piracy. ‘Millions for defense but not one penny for tribute.’ If you remember that one from school.
Finally in 1830 France invaded, conquered and occupied what is now known as Algeria ending the Barbary Pirates.
An army corps was formed and named the Legion Etrangere in French, French Foreign Legion in English to pacify Algeria. Over the next hundred years the Legion was used for peaceful penetration into the Sahara and Sahel to form the French West African Empire.
In an astonishing turn around the Moslem power evaporated while the French easily became the masters of the bulge of Africa. The military superiority was to last until post-WWII when exhausted by two world wars accompanied by a moral collapse as the best and brightest died on the battlefields leaving nothing but singers and dancers to live off the fat of the land. The French were militarily capable but morally bankrupt. The Moslems reasserted themselves in the fifties forcing the French out of Algeria while beginning the invasion of France by peaceful penetration. A neat reversal of fortunes. Thus the conquest of Europe interrupted by the Spanish expulsion began again.
Immediately after the French invasion of Algeria the deserts of Africa beame a playground of Europeans. The lure of the desert held a strange appeal for them. Perahaps devoid of romance in their homelands the desert with its now no longer dangerous but exotic inhabitants replaced the fairies and elves displaced by the scientific revolution. The Euroamerican romance with ‘noble savages’ and ‘inferior races’ may very well be caused by the void created by the scientific revolution. Euroamericans hoped to find or create those emotional or psychological needs lost in the advance of civilization. This may explain to some extent the White worship of people of color whose ‘natural’ uninhibited behavior they profess to admire and imitate. Witness the tatooing and body piercing in imitation of the Africans who themselves appear to have to given it up.
The French having conquered Algeria had to establish an army corps dedicated to perpetual warfare. That unit was the Legion Etrangere or French Foreign Legion. The duty in the Sahara amid an enemy population was so execrable that only men without hope, that is criminals and outcasts with no other options need have applied.
In 1831 then, a year after the conquest and annexation of Algeria as an actual Department of France the French Foreign Legion was created by Louis Philippe the new Bourgeois King of France.
The Legend of the Legion apparently grew very quickly. the first legion novel is thought to be that of the English writer Ouida. She published her novel Under Two Flags in the 1860s. It was a great success ultimately being made into a movie. Alongside the Legion novels were a number of novels that dealt with the desert in a very romantic way.
The genre of novel could only have developed after the French conquest of Algeria after 1830 and a little later with the pacification of the Moslems. If not pacification at least intimidation. Astonishingly the centuries intervening between Roman Africa and the conquest of Algeria vanished from the consciousness of Europeans. In only a hundred years (well, a hundred twenty-five years) a brief interlude, Europeans were in turn expelled from North Africa with their tremendous superiority shattered and in ruins. That brief century now appears like a fairy story without real substance. A hundred years of struggle and dieing ant then- poof! But the stories were great.
Fans of Jules Verne have a very good story- The Barsac Mission- that undoubteldy was an influence of P.C. Wren. The work has only been translated recently issued in two volumes as Into The Niger Bend and The City Of The Sahara by Americor. Some consider the novel science fiction.
The publishers are escapist types who have retreated to Mattituck N.Y. at the most extreme end of Long Island. Unfortunately, as with many of Verne’s books the Barsac has been bowlderized to reflect current Liberal tastes. The translator I.O. Evans coyly expresses it this way: I have also taken the liberty, found necessary by most of Verne’s other translators, of abbreviating or omitting a few passage of minor interest. (cough, cough)
Another wonderful Sahara novel written at the same time as the Barsac is Robert Hichens’ The Garden Of Allah. Hichens was an influence on Burroughs. The novel was very well known at least through my youth. I knew people with whom Hichens’ reputation was very great although I imagine there are few who would recognize his name today.
And then ERB himself devoted a number of pages to the romance of the desert. In The Return Of Tarzan it will be remembered that Tarzan was despatched to Algeria as a French secret agent just along the lines of Wren’s De Beaujolais. The Lad And The Lion is of course a complete Sahara novel that appears to have had an influence on Wren. Korak the Killer of The Son Of Tarzan operated on the margins of the desert while the Sahara plays a frequent part in a lot of the Tarzan novels.
There is no question that E.M. Hull’s The Sheik was a major influence on Wren as he actually parodies Mrs. Hull’s novel virutally by name.
With Wren the myth of the Sahara and the Legion comes into full bloom.
If one has read only Beau Geste one has read an amazingly good story but to understand Wren’s intent it is necessary to read Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal in sequence. By the time Wren wrote, the handwriting was on the wall. The Western will had already been sapped. The beau ideals that had inspired Western men since the days of the Arthurian epics was fading from the Western consciousness being replaced by the effete homosexual ‘ideals’ of today. The strength and confidence that allowed Western man to subjugate the world was becoming just a memory. Wren in his way is either commemorating the ideals or seeking to reverse the decline.
The three novels are concerned with the fortunes of two families, one English, the other American. Wren has a wonderful feel for the difference between the English and the American characters, not to mention the French. His command of American dialect and hobo slang is virtually alone worth reading the trilogy.
The first volume, Beau Geste based on Wilkie Collins The Moonstone (a so-so read) concerns the early history of the Geste brothers, Beau, Digby and John and the story of Fort Zinderneuf away out there almost beyond a hobo’s imagination.
FFL 1939: Life Magazine
.
The novel does introduce the two American hoboes, Hank and Buddy, serving in the Legion. Wren kills off Michael and Digby Geste in this first novel putting the load on John.
In the second novel of the trilogy, Beau Sabreur (The good sword or swordsman) John returns to Africa to try to locate Hank and Buddy who were lost in the drifting sands after saving his life.
In this manner Wren introduces the American family of which Hank is a member. Hank and his friend Buddy were the two men lost in the desert that John Geste is seeking. Both men lying in the desert near death in different locations were rescued by the Bedouins. As luck would have it Hank managed to work his way up to Sheik acquiring Buddy as his vizier. They introduce superior Western discipline and tactics into their tribe giving them dominance in the desert. Hank then comes to the attention of the French as the new Mahdi. De Beaujolais is sent to coopt the new Mahdi. Through a series of adventures De Beaujolais meets and falls in love with Hank’s sister Mary who is traveling with her other brother Otis Vanbrugh. They as well as Hank are fleeing from a brutish father.
At stories end the whole cast Henri De Beaujolais who had wed Mary, Otis, Hank, Buddy, John Geste and his wife Isobel, who plays a large part, are back at the ranch in Texas facing the old brute of a father down while trying to free Hank’s other sister from thralldom to the old brute so she can marry Buddy and begin a life of her own. Hold on, now, Wren must have been studying Burroughs because he’s got a number of twists up his sleeve, or perhaps, tricks.
While Otis was in Algeria an Arab dancing girl had fallen in love with him who was apparently the queen of the desert. Otis tried to escape her but in exchange for help in recovering John from the penal battalion of the FFL he promised to marry her. Aw shucks, that’s right, you guessed it. Nakhla was in reality his sister. The old brute had fathered her on another dancing girl when he was out making deals in the desert. So we have Nakhla, the same name as the heroine of Burroughs’ The Lad And The Lion, pretty much following the plot line of The Girl From Farris’s. So maybe Wren should also be included in the Farmerian Wold Newton Universe.
So that is the broad overview of the story line that holds the three volumes together. Before I go on to the individula reviews there is one other problem I wrestle with that I would like to to discuss and that is the
Western fascination with primitive life styles.
For a convenient starting point we’ll use H. Rider Haggard, no, cancel that. I’ll go back a little further to the French Wold Newton. I’m reading the Paul Feval Black Coats series and they have some earlier antecedents. Balzac, Dumas, Eugene Sue and Feval all deal with organized crime groups. A Dumas title that I haven’t been able to get is titled The Mohicans Of Paris while Feval makes several reference to crime organizations adopting a sort of ‘red indian’ mentality. What Dumas called Mohicans evolved into the Apaches of late nineteenth century Paris. Anyone who watched TV in the fifties is familiar with French Apache dancing.
Thus while the French were becoming fascinated with the North American Indians and their primitive mentality Haggard was celebrating the primitive African mentality. And then along comes Ouida, Verne, Hichens, Burroughs, Hull and Wren celebrating the ‘free and wild’ life of the desert.
As of the beginning of the nineteenth century, if not before, the Euroamericans evolved into the Scientific Consciousness leaving the rest of the world behind in the mythopoeic or Religious Consciousness. However the transition from one consciousness to the other is not a clean break. Haggard, for instance, never really made the transition while Burroughs did. That may be why Burroughs reads as modern if a trifle old fashioned while Haggard is purely of an anterior psychology- good but just a little stodgy.
Thus, as the White Man spread over the globe, the, what I shall I call it, White Man’s Burden, White Man’s novel appeared. A whole genre of either stated or implied White superiority appeared of which Haggard and Burroughs are the most promient. From these writers the genre went on to the Sheena, Queen Of The Jungle stuff to imitative White Jungle god stories. Conrad sang the colonial era in lyric tones. Kipling told of the Raj of India while inventing the White Man’s Burden which was very real.
Ouida is usually credited with the first FFL novel, Under Two Flags, while Burroughs contributed The Return of Tarzan in which Tarzan goes to Algeria as a French secret agent although not as FFL.
In 1924 P.C. Wren wrought the glamor of the French Foreign Legion with the first novel of his trilogy, Beau Geste, followed by Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal. These novels are also scientific demonstrating the superiority of Euroamerican intelligence over the mythopoeic mentality of the desert tribes. Merely by introducing European military discipline into the tribe Hank and Buddy enable the tribe to defeat all others and dominate the desert. This while Abd El Krim and the Riff dominated Western news instilling admiration for the primitive desert tribes over Western Civilization. I had a tearcher in high school who would get sexually aroused just talking about El Krim.
Thus while the transition from mythopoeic and scientific thinking was not complete if even half evolved the West was presented with various mythopoeic cultures that drew them back from the transition to the Scientific Consciousness. At present, then, the West has a split personality in which they admire the Negro and Arab mentality so much that they denigrate their own scientific side. It doesn’t seem likely that Euroamericans in sufficient numbers will make the transition to Scientific Consciousness quickly enough to preserve Western civilization hence the present bizarre worship of primitive races in North America and Europe. On the other hand the rest of the world seeks to imitate the West in matters that they cannot understand or sustain on their own. If the West is in trouble imagine the actual psychological state of things in China and India.
Now it is time to move on the first of the reviews- Beau Geste.
A Review: Peter Ibbetson by George Du Maurier
May 8, 2009
A Review
The Novels Of George Du Maurier
Peter Ibbetson, Trilby, The Martian
Part IV
Peter Ibbetson
Singers and Dancers and Fine Romancers
What do they know?
What do they know?
-Larry Hosford
Review by R.E. Prindle
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II Review of Trilby
III. Review of The Martian
IV. Review of Peter Ibbetson
Peter Ibbetson is the first of the three novels of George Du Maurier. As elements of the later two novels are contained in embryo in Ibbetson it would seem that Du Maurier had the three novels at least crudely plotted while a fourth dealing with politics but never realized is hinted at. Actually Du Maurier has Ibbetson who writes this ‘autobiography’ write several world changing novels from inside the insane asylum to which he had been committed. In the Martian Barty Josselin wrote several world changing books while ‘possessed’ by an alien intelligence, in a way, not too dissimilar to the situation of Ibbetson. Du Maurier himself comes across, as I have said, as either a half demented lunatic or a stone genius.
He has Ibbetson and the heroine, The Duchess of Towers write in code while they read encrypted books. Du Maurier says that Ibbetson and hence the two following books deal with weighty subjects but in a coded manner that requires attention to understand.
On page 362 of the Modern Library edition he says:
…but more expecially in order to impress you, oh reader, with the full significance of this apocalyptic and somewhat minatory utterance (that may haunt your fever sense during your midnight hours of introspective self-communion), I have done my best, my very best to couch it in the obscurest and most unitelligible phraseology, I could invent. If I have failed to do this, if I have unintentionally made any part of my meaning clear, if I have once deviated by mistake into what might almost appear like sense, mere common-sense- it is the fault of my half French and wholly imperfect education.
So, as Bob Dylan said of the audiences of his Christian tour: Those who were meant to get it, got it, for all others the story is merely a pretty story or perhaps fairy tale. The fairy tale motif is prominent in the form of the fee Tarapatapoum and Prince Charming of the story. Mary, the Duchess of Towers is Tarapatapoum and Peter is Prince Charming. It might be appropriate here to mention that Du Maurier was highly influenced by Charles Nodier the teller of fairy tales of the Romantic period. Interestingly Nodier wrote a story called Trilby. Du Maurier borrowed the name for his novel Trilby while he took the name Little Billee from a poem by Thackeray. A little background that makes that story a little more intelligible.
Those that watch for certain phobias such as anti-Semitism and Eugenics will find this story of Du Maurier’s spolied for them as was Trilby and probably The Martian. One is forced to concede that Du Maurier deals with those problems in a coded way. Whether his meaning is derogatory or not lies with your perception of the problems not with his.
Thus on page 361 just above the previous quote Du Maurier steps from concealment to deliver a fairly open mention of Eugenics. After warning those with qualities and attributes to perpetuate those qualities by marrying wisely, i.e. eugenically, he breaks out with this:
Wherefore, also, beware and be warned in time, ye tenth transmitters of a foolish face, ye reckless begetters of diseased or puny bodies, with hearts and brains to match! Far down the corridors of time shall clubfooted retribution follow in your footsteps, and overtake you at every turn.
Here we have a premonition of Lothrop Stoddards Overman and Underman. The best multiply slowly while the worst rear large families. Why anyone would find fault with the natural inclination to marry well if one’s handsome and intelligent with a similar person is beyond me. Not only is this natural it has little to do with the Eugenics Movement. Where Eugenics falls foul, and rightly so, is in the laws passed to castrate those someone/whoever deemed unworthy to reproduce. This is where the fault of the Eugenics Movement lies. Who is worthy to pass such judgment? Certainly there are obvious cases where neutering would be appropriate and beneficial for society but in my home town, for instance, no different than yours I’m sure, the elite given the opportunity would have had people neutered out of enmity and vindictiveness. that is where the danger lies. There is nothing wrong with handsome and intelligent marrying handsome and intelligent. How may people want a stupid, ugly partner?
Du Maurier had other opinions that have proved more dangerous to society. One was his belief in the virtues of Bohemians, that is say, singers and dancers and fine romancers. On page 284 he says:
There is another society in London and elsewhere, a freemasonry of intellect and culture and hard work- la haute Ashene du talent- men and women whose names are or ought to be household words all over the world; many of them are good friends of ine, both here and abroad; and that society, which was good enough for my mother and father, is quite good enough for me.
Of course, the upper Bohemia of proven talent. But still singers and dancers and fine romancers. And what do they know? Trilby was of the upper Bohemia as was Svengali but Trilby was hypnotized and Svengali but a talented criminal. What can a painter contribute but a pretty picture, what can a singer do but sing his song, I can’t think of the dancing Isadora Duncan or the woman without breaking into laughter. And as for fine romancers, what evil hath Jack Kerouac wrought.
I passed part of my younger years in Bohemia, Beat or Hippie circles, and sincerely regret that Bohemian attitudes have been accepted as the norm for society. Bohemia is fine for Bohemians but fatal for society which requires more discipline and stability. Singers and dancers and fine romancers, wonderful people in their own way, but not builders of empires.
In that sense, the promotion of Bohemianism, Du Maurier was subversive.
But the rules of romancing are in the romance and we’re talking about Du Maurier’s romance of Peter Ibbetson.
Many of the reasons for criticizing Du Maurier are political. The man whether opposed to C0mmunist doctrine or not adimired the Bourgeois State. He admired Louis-Philippe as the Beourgeois king of France. This may sound odd as he also considered himself a Bohemian but then Bohemians are called into existence by a reaction to the Bourgeoisie. Perhaps not so odd. He was able to reconcile such contradictions. Indeed he is accused of having a split personality although I think this is false. Having grown up in both France and England he developed a dual national identity and his problem seems to be reconciling his French identity with his English identity thus his concentration on memory.
In this novel he carefully builds up a set of sacred memories of his childhood. He very carefully introduces us to the people of his childhood. Mimsy Seraskier his little childhood sweetheart. All the sights and sounds and smells. In light of the quote I used telling how he disguises his deeper meaning one has to believe that he is giving us serious theories he has worked out from science and philosophy.
Having recreated his French life for us Peter’s parents die and Ibbetson’s Uncle Ibbetson from England adopts him and takes him back to the Sceptered Isle. Thus he ceases to be the French child Pasquier and becomes the English child Peter Ibbetson. A rather clean and complete break. From this point on his childhood expectations are disappointed with the usual psychological results. He develops a depressed psychology. The cultural displacement prevents him from making friends easily or at all. His Uncle who has a difficult boorish personality is unable to relate to a sensitive boy with a Bohemian artistic temperament. Hence he constantly demeans the boy for not being like himself and has no use for him.
This is all very skillfully handled. We have intimations that bode no good for Peter. The spectre is prison. The hint of a crime enters into the story without anything actually being said. But the sense of foreboding enters Peter’s mind and hence the reader’s. This is done extremely well. It’s a shame the Communists are in control of the media so that they can successfully denigrate any work of art that contradicts or ignores their beliefs. For instance the term bourgeois itself. The word is used universally as a contemptuous epithet even though the Bourgeois State was one of the finest created. Why then contempt? Simply because the Communists must destroy or denigrate any success that they canot hope to surpass. I was raised believing that what was Bourgeois was contemptible without ever knowing what Bourgeois actually meant. It is only through Du Maurier at this late stage in life that I begin to realize what the argument really was and how I came to accept the Communist characterization. I’m ashamed of myself.
Hence all Du Maurier criticism is unjust being simply because it is the antithesis of Communist beliefs. The man as a writer is very skillful, as I have said, a genius. If I were read these novels another couple of times who knows what riches might float up from the pages.
Colonel Ibbetson apprentices Peter to an architect, a Mr Lintot, which, while not unhappy, is well below Peter’s expectations for his fairy Prince Charming self. As a lowly architect he is placed in a position of designing huts for the workers of the very wealthy. The contrast depresses him even further. He has been disappointed in love and friendship and then he is compelled by business exigencies to attend a ball given by a wealthy client. He definitely feels out of place. Psychologically incapable of mixing he stands in a corner.
At this ball the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, The Duchess of Towers, is in attendance. From across the room she seems to give him an interested glance. Peter can only hope, hopelessly. As a reader we have an intimation that something will happen but we can’t be sure how. I couldn’t see. Then he sees her in her carriage parading Rotten Row in Hyde Park. She sees him and once again it seems that she gives him a questioning look.
Then he takes a vacation in France where he encounter her again. After talking for a while he discovers that she is a grown up Mimsey Seraskier, his childhood sweetheart. Thus his French childhood and English adulthood are reunited in her. Wow! There was a surprise the reader should have seen coming. I didn’t. I had no trouble recognizing her from childhood in France but Du Maurier has handled this so skillfully that I am as surprised as was Peter. I tipped my imaginary hat to Du Maurier here.
Perhaps I entered into Du Maurier’s dream world here but now I began to have flashbacks, a notion that I had read this long ago, most likely in high school or some other phantasy existence. I can’t shake the notion but I can’t remember reading the book then at all. Don’t know where I might have come across it. Of course that doesn’t mean an awful lot. If asked if I had ever read a Charles King novel I would have said no but when George McWhorter loaned me a couple to read that he had in Louisville I realized I had read one of them before. Eighth grade. I could put a handle on that but not Peter Ibbetson. Perhaps Du Marurier has hypnotized me. Anyway certain images seem to stick in my mind from a distant past.
It was at this time that Mary, the Duchess if Towers, formerly Mimsy, enters Peter’s dream, in an actual real life way. This is all well done, Peter dreamt he was walking toward an arch when two gnomish people tried to herd him into prison. Mary appears and orders the gnomes to vanish which they do. ‘That’s how you have to handle that.’ She says. And that is very good advice for dreams that Du Maurier gives. As we’ll see Du Maurier has some pretensions to be a psychologist.
She then instructs Peter in the process of ‘dreaming true.’ In such a manner they can actually be together for real in a shared dream. Now, Trilby, while seemingly frivolous, actually displays a good knowledge of hypnotism. More than that it puts Du Maurier in the van of certain psychological knowledge. Hypnotism and psychology go together. Without an understanding of hypnotism one can’t be a good psychologist. If he wasn’t ahead of Freud at this time he was certainly even with him. Remember this is 1891 while Freud didnt’ surface until 1895 and then few would have learned of him. He wrote in German anyway.
Freud was never too developed on auto-suggestion. Emile Coue is usually attributed to be the originator of auto-suggestion yet the technique that Mary gives to Peter is the exact idea of auto-suggestion that Coue is said to have developed twenty or twenty-five years on.
Du Maurier speaks of the sub-conscious which is more correct than the unconscious. He misunderstands the nature of the subconscious giving it almost divine powers but in many ways he is ahead of the game. Now, Ibbetson was published in 1891 which means that Du Maurier was in possession of his knowledge no later than say 1889 while working on it from perhaps 1880 or so on. It will be remembered that Lou Sweetser, Edgar Rice Burroughs mentor in Idaho, was also knowledgable in psychology in 1891 but having just graduated a couple of years earlier from Yale. So Freud is very probably given too much credit for originating what was actually going around. This earlier development of which Du Maurier was part has either been suppressed in Freud’s favor or has been passed over by all psychological historians.
So, Mary gives Peter psychologically accurate information on auto-suggestion so that he can ‘dream true.’ I don’t mean to say that anyone can share another’s dreams which is just about a step too far but by auto-suggestion one can direct and control one’s dreams. Auto-suggestion goes way back anyway. The Poimandre of Hermes c. 300 AD is an actual course in auto-suggestion.
Peter is becoming more mentally disturbed now that his denied expectations have returned to haunt him in the person of Tarapatapoum/Mimsey/Mary. Once again this is masterfully done. The clouding of his mind is almost visible. Over the years he has generated a deep seated hatred for Colonel Ibbetson even though the Colonel, given his lights, has done relatively well by him. Much of Peter’s discontent is internally generated by his disappointed expectations. The Colonel has hinted that he might be Peter’s father rather than his Uncle. This completely outrages Peter’s cherished understanding of his mother and father. The Colonel according to Peter was one of those guys who claimed to have made every woman he’d ever met. One must bear in mind that Peter is telling the story while the reader is seeing him become increasingly unstable.
While Peter doesn’t admit it to himself he confronts the Colonel with the intention of murdering him. He claims self-defense but the court doesn’t believe it nor does the reader. It’s quite clear the guy was psycho but, once again, Du Maurier handles this so skillfully that one still wonders. Given the death penalty his friends and supporters, the influential Duchess of Towers, get the sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
Then begins Peter’s double life in prison that goes on for twenty years. By day a convict, at night Peter projects hemself into a luxurious dream existence with his love, Mary, the Duchess of Towers. Quite insane but he has now realized his expections if only in fantasy. Now, this novel as well as Du Maurier’s other novels is textually rich. The style is dense while as Du Maurier tells us it is written in more than one key, has encoded messages, so I’m concentrating on only the main thread here. That concerns memory.
While it is possible to subconsciously manage one’s dreams, I do it to a minor extent, of course it is impossible for two people to dream toether and share that dream. This is to venture into the supernatural. Spiritualism and Theosophy both dealing with the supernatural as does all religion including Christianity, were at their peak at this time. Du Maurier has obviously studied them. Just because one utilizes one’s knowledge in certain ways to tell a story doesn’t mean one believes what one writes. Ibbetson is written so well that the writer seems to have fused himself with the character. If I say Du Maurier believes that may not be true but as the same themes are carried through all his novels without a demurrer it seems likely.
Du Maurier seems to be pleading a certain understanding of the subconscious giving it as many or more supernatural powers as Freud himself will later. This might be the appropriate place to speculate on Du Maurier’s influence on Mark Twain. We know Twain was an influence on Burroughs so perhaps both were.
Before he died Twain wrote a book titled the Mysterious Stranger. This was twenty-five years after Peter Ibbetson. Operator 44, the Mysterious Stranger, is a time time traveler who has some sort of backstair connecting years as a sort of memory monitor. Peter and Mary over the years work out a system that allows them to travel back through times even to prehistoric times. Thus Peter is able to sketch from life stone age man hunting mastodons, or Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. They are present at these events but as sort of ghost presences without substance. they have no substance hence cannot affect reality.
This would be a major them in fifties science fiction in which, for instance, a time traveler steps on a grub, then comes back to his present time finding everyone talking a different language. Change one item and you change all others. Du Maurier avoids this problem that he very likely thought of in this clever way.
We can clearly see the future of twentieth century imaginiative writing taking form here. One can probably trace several twentieth century sci-fi themes back to Du Maurier.
Peter and Mary have a magic window through they can call up any scene within their memories. In their dream existence they are dependent on memory they can only re-experience, they cannot generate new experiences. The memory extends back genetically although Du Maurier speaks in terms of reincarnation. Peter hears Mary humming a tune he has never heard before. Mary explains that the tune is a family melody written by an ancestress hundreds of years before. Thus one has this genetic memory persisting through generations. This gives Du Maurier room to expatiate on the persistence of memory through past, present and future.
Du Maurier has worked out an elaborate scheme in which memory unites past, present and future, into a form of immortality. This is actually a religious concept but a very beautiful concept, very attractive in its way.
Peter and Mary had elected to stay at one age- twenty-six to twenty-eight- so for twenty years they retained their youthful form and beauty. Then one night Peter enters the mansion of his dreams through a lumber room to find the way blocked. He knows immediately that Mary has died. He then learns that in attempting to save a child from a train she was herself killed.
Peter goes into an insane rage attacking the prison guards while calling each Colonel Ibbetson. Clearly insane and that’s where the send him. The mad house. Originally he continues to rage so they put him in a straight jacket where he remains until his mind calms enough to allow him to dream. In his dream he returns to a stream in France. Here he believes he can commit suicide in his dream which should be shock enough to stop his heart in real life. Something worth thinking about. Filling his pockets with stones he means to walk in over his head. Then, just ahead he spies the back of a woman sitting on a log. Who else but Mary. She has done what has never been done before, what even Houdini hasn’t been able to do, make it to back to this side.
Now outside their mansion, they are no longer young, but show their age. This is nicely done stuff. Of course I can’t replicate the atmosphere and feel but the Du Maurier feeling is ethereal. As I say I thought he was talking to me and I entered his fantasy without reserve.
Here’s a lot of chat about the happiness on the otherside. When Peter awakes back in the asylum he is calm and sane. He convinces the doctors and is restored to full inmate rights. Once himself again he begins to write those wonderful books that right the world.
One gets the impression that Du Maurier believes he himself is writing those immortal books that will change the world. Time and fashions change. Today he is thought a semi-evil anti- Semite, right wing Bourgeois writer. I don’t know if he’s banned from college reading lists but I’m sure his works are not used in the curriculum. I think he’s probably considered oneof those Dead White Men. Thus a great writer becomes irrelevant.
It’s a pity because from Peter Ibbetson through Trilby to The Martian he has a lot to offer. The Three States of Mind he records are thrilling in themselves, as Burroughs would say, as pure entertainment while on a more thoughtful read there is plenty of nourishment. Taken to another level his psychology is very penetrating. His thought is part of the mind of the times. Rider Haggard shares some of the mystical qualities. The World’s Desire is comparable which can be complemented by his Heart Of The World. The latter may turn out to be prophetic shortly. H.G. Wells’ In The Days Of The Comet fits into this genre also. Another very good book. Of course Burroughs’ The Eternal Lover and Kipling and Haggard’s collaboration of Love Eternal. Kipling’s Finest Story In The World might also fit in as well, I’m sure there are many others of the period of which I’m not aware. I haven’t read Marie Corelli but she is often mentioned in this context. You can actually slip Conan Doyle in their also.
Well, heck, you can slip the whole Wold Newton Universe, French and Farmerian in there. While there is small chance any Wold Newton meteor had anything to do with it yet as Farmer notes at about that time a style of writing arose concerned with a certain outlook that was worked by many writers each contributing his bit while feeding off the others as time went by.
I don’t know that Du Maurier is included in the Wold Newton Universe (actually I know he isn’t) but he should be. He was as influential on the group as any other or more so. He originated many of the themes.
Was Burroughs influenced by him? I think so. There was no way ERB could have missed Trilby. No possible way. If he read Trilby and the other two only once which is probable any influence was probably subliminable. ERB was not of the opinion that a book could change the world, so he disguised his more serious thoughts just as Du Maurier did his. He liked to talk about things though.
Singers and dancers. What do they know? What do they know? In the end does it really matter what they know. Time moves on, generations change, as they change the same ideas come around expressed in a different manner. They have their day then are replaced. The footprint in the concrete does remain. Genius will out.
A Review
Thuvia, Maid Of Mars
by
Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Part III-C
Review by R.E. Prindle
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Civilization And Its Malcontents
Let us say that for the fifty years or so before the 1920s there was a growing sense of societal malaise. This malaise was reflected most notably in the creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ psychological projection, Tarzan Of The Apes. One has to account for the immediate acceptation by society of such an absurdity. Tarzan, in fact, completely rejected civilization for the life of the romantic ‘unrestrained freedom’ of the jungle. The noble savage in fact.
Thus in a metaphor Burroughs reflected the malaise of his time so brilliantly that his creation was accepted as virtually a real person. Writers like Grant and Stoddard put the same theme into more scholarly terms. As noted, contrary to Richard Slotkin’s idea, Grant had little or no influence on Burroughs while the slightly later Lothrop Stoddard whose three relevant works appeared only from 1920 to 1922 could have had no influence on Burroughs’ formative years. It seems probable that Burroughs did read Stoddard and was influenced by his work but only after his ideas were fully formed. Even then The Revolt Against Civilization appeared after Burroughs had examined some of the same problems in his rejected manuscript, Under The Red Flag of 1919.
The problem of the malcontents and their war on civilization was examined by a number of writers during the twenties and thirties so why Slotkin singled out Burroughs, Grant and Stoddard isn’t as clear as it might be. Postwar German cinema was intensely concerned with the matter as why should it not? Germany was under asault by what Stoddard called the Underman. Nor need Slotkin think Stoddard was alone. I’m sure there were dozens of forgotten books prophesying the end of the world by one means or another including the Undermen of Communism.
The Underman, or the Communist, was not even a term unique to Stoddard. Gustave Le Bon, the French scholar on whose work Sigmund Freud based his study Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego wrote prolifically on the psychological foundations of the Underman. Freud based his book on Le Bon’s 1895 study The Psychology Of Crowds. Unless I’m mistaken he based his 1930 study Civilization And Its Discontents on Le Bon’s 1921 book The World In Revolt: A Psychological Study Of Our Times.
On the cinematic side the problem was examined in the great silent films The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and Fritz Lang’s 1922 film Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler. Lang would follow that ten years later with the sound film The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse.
Even though Buroughs’ Under The Red Flag was rejected in 1919 he persisted, rewriting and extending the text into the 1926 story, The Moon Maid. This story reflects a possible reading of The Revolt Against Civilization but such a reading was much more evident in 1934’s Tarzan And The Lion Man.
The development of the problem was evident to all these writers which it seems to have escaped Slotkin who attributes the recognition of societal evolution to mere ‘racism’ in the writers. One thinks that perhaps Slotkin is too involved in his own agenda.
Rider Haggard enunciated the problem quite clearly in his 1888 novel Allan Quatermain in which Quatermain grouses about the ‘strict limits’ of civilization compared to the ‘natural’ life of the African Zulus. It might almost seem that the idea of Tarzan arose in Burroughs’ mind from that observation. In fact science was undermining all the comforting beliefs that mankind had been settled in for a hundred thousand years. During that long period characterized by the mental mode of what is called mythopoeic thinking man’s mind devoid of true knowledge projected a vision of reality that resulted in the notion of God. Thus reasoning from insufficient knowledge man’s mind came up with an erroneous result. You can’t get out of a mind what isn’t in it; all education is suggestion.
As Freud was to say, man’s settled view of reality received its three great shocks when Galileo disproved the geocentric notion of the universe, Darwin disproved the uniqueness of man’s position in the animal kingdom and he, Freud, displaced the conscious mind with his vision of the unconscious mind. Once again Le Bon was there ahead of him.
Thus as the nineteenth century opened and progressed the bases of mankind’s notions of reality were shattered leaving him emotionally and intellectually bereft of foundations of belief. Adrift without an anchor.
As if that were not bad enough the great cataclysm that ushered in the modern era, The French Revolution, was based on the the absolute notion that not only were all men created equal but remained equal in all aspects of their existence. The advance of civilization would toss this certainty into the trash can of history also.
As civilization placed greater and greater demands on the intelligence and self-discipline of men and women the incontestable gap between those less intelligent and those more intelligent became more and more obvious. Thus as the century progressed the notion of the Overman and the Underman began to become clear.
At the same time the first tentative efforts at measuring the intellectual potential of the individual began to become possible. Of course the basic inequality of men and women in its physical aspect had always been apparent. Some men were naturally stronger and better muscled than others. But, even that was changing. The science of physical culture was making it possible for the 98 lb. weakling to develop himself into a man mountain. Thus artifically developed srongmen like the Great Sandow ushered in the golden age of the strong man topped off by Charles Atlas who guaranteed he could turn you into a man mountain if you followed his program.
There was the promise that you could dethrone that bully and kick sand back in his face. On the other side Francis Galton was originating the first primitive tests to measure intelligence potential. Burroughs would have seen both proponents during his miraculous summer of 1893 at the Chicago Columbian Exposition. I mean to say that both facts entered his mind where they could be digested and emerge later. Nothing can come out of your mind that didn’t go in it.
And then after the turn of the century Binet devised he first actual IQ test. Thus, just as Sandow and Atlas could measure the size of muscles, the psychologists became able to measure the intelligence potential. Those with high IQs were set up; those with low IQs were cooked. The upshot was that all men were not created equal nor could they ever attain intellectual equality.
To a very large extent what became the Communist Party recognized the inequality while demanding equality against reason. Recognizing subconsciously, perhaps, that men could never be intellectual equals rather than try the futile task of raising the less fortunate they sought to destroy education which brings out the inequality but doesn’t create it. No matter what happens there are always going to be the more intelligent just as there will always be the physically stronger. As Le Bon points out, if you needed to hear it, nature don’t know from equality.
Thus the Communist Party devised the well sounding slogan- From each according to his ability; to each according to his need. Good plan for the needy, slavery for the able. The needy were organized beginning their struggle to achieve superiority by collective action. This was accomplished in Russia in 1917. The battle was joined.
Just as individuals are created with different capabilities so are peoples and races. Some can achieve and some can’t. Slotkin who must be a Communist thus takes offence at what he perceives to be, and is, an attitude of White Supremacy in Burroughs, Grant and Stoddard. While I am aware there are those who will disagree with White superiority it is nevertheless not an attitude but an evolutionary fact. That is the reason Communists have Darwin under attack. While Darwin doesn’t say it, it is the inevitable result of his studies. Just as it was necessary for the Undermen to destroy education in the hopes of creating intellectual equality so it became necessary to destroy White achievement of the last five hundred years. The whites must be demonized and made to feel evil and inferior morally. That is the import of Slotkin’s Gunfighter Nation.
At that level all three writers are guilty. As has been stated in Canadian courts- Truth is not a defense. So there’s nothing to discuss. Might is right and whoever has the might will prevail.
It is a fact that all three writers were anti-Communists so it may be assumed that whatever Communists believe, they didn’t. And why should they? Might may be right but it can still be nonsense. Communism is a flawed ideology based on a false premiss. It always fails wherever it is introduced. Failure is not evidence of a bad plan in Communist eyes. One just continues to shovel sand against the tide and pray. So succeed or fail they always think they can succeed by the same flawed ideology. The fault for failure lies elsewhere.
In that sense Burroughs was wasting his time assailing this religion of failure with his Under The Red Flag and its successor The Moon Maid. The only people who would applaud his effort would be we non-Communists but he could never convince anyone with Communist leanings. Of course that wasn’t well understood at the time.
If Burroughs were accused of not believing in equality that would be true. Not only are John Carter and Tarzan superior to any contemporaries on two worlds but Burroughs has a whole hierarchy of value. John Carter is the Warlord of Mars ruling from the top city of Mars, Helium. The races of Mars pretty much reflect those of Earth and their relative stations. The main exception is the ruling Red race. As Whites do and have existed on Mars in Burroughs stories while at one time being the dominant race perhaps the Red race is some sort of amalgam of the various Eropean immigrants of the United States. I believe the Green Men represent the American Indian. Both roam the great plains while being essentially savages.
Tarzan though always spoken of as being White is described as a bronze giant. Bronze is a fairly dark metal so that Tarzan and the Red men of Mars may be more or less identical in color.
Tarzan is the man-god so there are none superior or even equal to him. Below him come the English who are the cream of mankind. Perhaps slightly below the English are the French and then the rest of the Whites. Tarzan himself is psychologically an animal having been raised by the Apes. Not your ordinary gorilla or Chimp but a species intermediate between Gorilla and the Negro. Slotkin hasn’t read enough Burroughs to make an intelligent comment but the undeniable attitude of Burroughs is enough for Slotkin to condemn him as an unregenerate bigot. The reader may believe as he likes. I have stated my opinion eslewhere and that is enough. Whether any of these opinions of Burroughs influenced American soldiers at My Lai is open to question. The burden of proof is on Slotkin and he hasn’t provided it.
Along with the Undermen however, speaking through Tarzan, Burroughs is heartily discontented with civilization.
The spectacle of Chicago of the 1890s as a dirty unpleasant place haunts Burroughs. In contrast to the great White City of the Columbian Expo was what was afterwards known as the Black City of everyday Chicago. The contrast was so strong and so offensive to the Undermen that within a year of the Expo’s closing the entire White City was burned to the ground with the exception of one building. Hence perhaps the decayed crimson and gold ruins of Opar and the crimson and gold twin cities of Helium. One wonders what effect the sight of the ruin of the White City had on Burroughs when he revisited the site sometime after his miraculous summer of ’93. The mind creates nothing from nothing so there must have been models of the great cities of ERB’s imagination.
There are points at which Burroughs and Communism have quite similar views. It will be remembered that Burroughs only reluctantly married and throughout his life expressed discontent with the institution. To some extent or other ERB must have been an advocate of free love. Communists would have heartily approved of ERB’s women who went nude except for certain ‘adornments.’ Communists of course want women to be accesible to any man who wants them at any time while they have always advocated bare breasts.
In many ways when the Communists appropriated Tarzan for the MGM movies it took but slight changes to make Tarzan conform to their ideals. The MGM Tarzan and Jane were not married. While Burroughs’ Tarzan was a highly educated on-again off-again sophisticate the MGM Tarzan was a stupid illiterate oaf and one who rejected the attributes of civilization high up there in the Cloud Cuckoo Land of the Mutia Plateau.
On the essentials though Burroughs rejected the demands of the Underman as The Moon Maid clearly shows. There was very little in Stoddard’s The Revolt Against Civilization that Burroughs would have disagreed with. At the same time there was probably very little he didn’t already believe although he had never codified his information as Stoddard had. Slotkin’s contention that Burroughs was influenced by either Grant or Stoddard is surely wrong. ERB had already taken hs positions before either men had begun to write.
Each writer was, in his own way, an advocate of White Supremacy. It now become clear that White Supremacy has nothing to do with a fringe element in Liberal ideology. All Whites are White Supremacists in that ideology unless they reject ‘White skin privilege’ whatever that is. Ayers and Dorhn explain in their recent Race Course In White Supremacy. Interestingly constructed title. Nor as Slotkin would have it is the attitude based on mere racial pride and bigotry but on a solid record of achievement unattained by any other people. The quesiton is not was it right for some people to rule or be supreme because in the nature of things some people will rule and be supreme but which of the peoples are most qualified to be supreme.
All people have had equal opportunity so that one can only conclude that the race has gone to the most qualified participant. In the contest the Whites unified the other peoples against them as must inevitably be the consequence of being the top people. As they say, getting there is the easy part; staying there is the hard part.
Slotkin merely represents the envious losers, the Undermen. who clutch at any firebrand to burn the White House down. Who is most to be admired and emulated? Builders or destroyers?
Finis of Thuvia, Maid Of Mars Review
Edgar Rice Burroughs On Mars
A Review
Thuvia, Maid Of Mars
Part II
by
R.E. Prindle
Apparently at this time in his life ERB’s mind was focused on hypnotism. The raison d’ etre of the novel seems to be his explanation of hypnotism and some of its effects. He certainly makes a fascinating story of the phenomenon. In fact the whole story concerns hypnotism with a few embellishments to get Carthoris and Thuvia to Lothar and once he’d exhausted the possibilities of his hypnotic theme he ended the story and even then he ends on a wild hypnotic note.
Thuvia was his fourth Mars novel and his first without John Carter. The hero is Carthoris the son of John Carter and Dejah Thoris. ERB’s father, George T. had died about a year previous to the writing. This novel was written shortly after The Lad And The Lion. As it includes a scene of psychological rebirth it may be a declaration of independence from his father, severing the relationship more denfinitely than did Lad.
On entering the land of the Lotharians Carthoris passes through a cave quite similar to the birth canal. There are Banths, Martian lions, before and one huge one behind him. Those before seem to vanish while the one large Banth remained behind him; that would be the memory of his father and the past. Carthoris placed himself in a posture of defense in the dark but the charging Banth passed to his side missing him much as a ghost from the past might do. Thus ERB seems to dispense with the Old Looney aboard ship in The Lad And The Lion who did represent ERB’s dad.
Thuvia had been kidnapped by a disappointed suitor who had her taken to Aanthor, one of the innumerable dead cities lining the shores of the vanished seas. There she was captured by the Green Men who fled through the cave to Lothar. There Carthoris and Thuvia are delivered to the scene of the action by ERB.
Carthoris then finds Thuvia in the possession of the Green Men who are waging a gigantic battle against the Phantom Bowmen of Lothar, themselves aided by large prides of both phantom and real Banths.
Piles of Green Men killed by little arrows lie about amongst legions of Bowmen who have been cut down, and still they stream through the city gates. Carthoris who has gotten to the side of Thuvia and she marvel at the carnage. They turn to watch the defeated Green Men flee. When they look back they are astonished to see that the dead Bowmen have all disappeared while the dead Green Men no longer have phantom arrows sticking in them. The pair are at a loss for an explanation. The Banths however were real and were now gorging themselves on the remains of the Greenies.
As a nice touch ERB has Thuvia essentially hypnotize the Banths. Rather than fear them as Carthoris does she merely makes a low melodic warbling sound that so charms the Banths that they come fawning before her.
This may seem improbable or even impossible and yet I have seen it done but with house cats. What can be done with one size cat I’m sure can be done with all sizes. The effect was quite astonishing with the woman I saw do it but the result was exactly as ERB describes it. Apparently he’d seen it done too. ERB thus establishes the ability of Thuvia that will be even more important soon.
Thus they gain access to the city of Lothar by passing through the Banths with safety. As a nice touch ERB gives Lothar an exotic round gate that rolls back into a slot. Perhaps he had seen a house with such a door somewhere. Once inside they meet the Lotharian Jav who begins to unfold the story while unfolding the hypnotic power of the mind.
If ERB had read H. Rider Haggard’s Cleopatra that deals quite extensively with hypnotism in a scenario somewhat similar to this one Haggard may have been another source for Thuvia. Quite possibly ERB had ingested and digested his earlier reading so that he wasn’t aware of how close he was to the originals. After all, anyone who could learn of Numa, the Roman King, from his Jr. High studies and think he had invented the name Numa for the king of beasts twenty years later, which he says is what happened, probably could think he was inventing his details himself.
Many strange phenomena appear to the pair on their way to the palace of the despot who was named Tario. They see marching files of Bowmen who appear and disappear. But the Bowmen are not real they are a projection of the mind of Tario who has hypnotized the pair into seeing what isn’t there.
While it is clear that ERB is quite familiar with Homer’s Odyssey it isn’t quite so clear what he knows of Homer’s Iliad or Greek mythology in general. One hesitates to give him too much knowledge and yet elements from the Iliad and Greek mythology seem to materialize before one’s eyes like the Phantom Bowmen of Lothar.
One can’t know whether ERB read the Iliad more than once and whether that once was in the seventh or eighth grade. How much he understood of an early reading like that would be questionable. I first read the Iliad in the seventh grade but got nothing but impressions of the action from it. The gods, goddesses and humans were very confusing. Lot of boy and girl stuff that was well beyond my experience. I have read the book seven times in various translations since. It was only in the fifth, sixth and seventh readings that I began to develop what I would consider any real understanding of Homer’s message.
One of the things I understand is that the Iliad is a story about the power of mind and its limitations. Zeus, of course had the mind of ultimate power that gave him the advantage over mortals and the other gods. Tario in Thuvia has the most powerful mind in Lothar which keeps him in authority over the few permanent emanations in Lothar. But, these are all figments of his or someone’s imagination.
It seems that long generations before the women had all died out leaving only the men who over a period of time would also have died out but they survived by being able to imagine themselves. Here we have a possible reference to Poe’s The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar. In that story Valdemar was a dying man who was first hypnotized and then expired. Being under hypnosis while alive he could not actually die as he was hypnotized alive. This is somewhat the condition of the Lotharians.
Taking hypnosis a step further ERB posits that there are phantom ‘realists’ who believe they can wish themselves into a permanent corporeal existence of which Jav is one. Opposed to them are the phantom ‘etherealists’ represented by Tario who believe they must remain imaginary.
Getting back to Greek mythology in which we do know that ERB was read the ‘realists’ believe that they have to eat so they conjure up ‘ephemeral fruits’ on which to gorge themselves.
Ephemeral fruits make their appearance in the myth of Typhon and Zeus. So there is a possibility that Jav and Tario is a version of that myth. Hera in her squabbles for supremacy with Zeus conjures up the monster Typhon to take on Zeus. Typhon makes mincemeat of Zeus removing his sinews and bones and placing them in a leather bag in a cave in Caria. Sad plight for the Big Fella with the all powerful mind and no sinews. Worse yet, as a god he is immortal so there he and his all powerful mind are in his sack perhaps for all eternity.
While Apollo and Hermes come to the Big Guy’s aid by putting the dry bones back together and reattaching the sinews the nymphs feed Typhon ‘ephemeral fruit’ that looks like the real thing but lacks nourishment. Thus when Zeus is reassembled and ready for action he faces an enfeebled Typhon who this time he easily defeats. Great story when you think about it. So there you have two stories reflected that ERB may or may not have read but having read them probably didn’t consciously remember them as he was writing. I can’t guarantee ERB read those stories but I can state with assurance that ERB just didn’t make this stuff up. He never does; it all has been suggested from someplace. It is not impossible that he heard similar stuff from Baum and the Theosophists in California. ERB does have a retentive memory that provides him with a lot of material.
Thuvia and its successor Martian novel- The Chessmen Of Mars- are an examination of mind and matter. The later Mastermind of Mars and the Synthetic Men Of Mars are examinations of the application of mind to matter. In the Chessmen the mind and body were separate entities. It will be remembered that the Kaldanes were also skilled hypnotists.
Here ERB is interested in a projected reality, in itself a form on insanity in an unbalanced mind. PP 66-67, Ace paperback:
Jav speaking: “(The Banths) that remained about the field were real. Those we loosed as scavengers to devour the bodies of the dead Torquasians. This thing is demanded by the realists among us. I am a realist. Tario is an etherealist.
“The etherealists maintain there is no such thing as matter- that all is mind. They say that none of us exists, except in the imagination of his fellows, other than as an intangible, invisible mentality.
“According to Tario, it is but necessary that we all unite in imagining that there are no dead Torquasians beneath our walls, and there will be none, nor any need for the fierce scavenging banths.”
‘You, then do not hold to Tario’s beliefs?” asked Carthoris.
“In part only,” replied the Lotharian. “I believe, in fact I know, that there are some truly ethereal creatures. Tario is one, I am convinced. He has no existence except in the imaginations of his people.
“Of course, it is the contention of all us realists that all etherealists are but figments of the imagination. They contend that no food is necessary nor do they eat, but anyone of the most rudimentary intelligence must realize that food is a necessity to creatures having actual existence.”
“Yes,” agreed Carthoris, “not having eaten today I can readily agree with you.”
“Ah, pardon me,” exclaimed Jav. “Pray be seated and satisfy your hunger,” and with a wave of his hand he indicated a beautifully laden table that had not been there an instant before he spoke….”It is well,” continued Jav, “that you did not fall into the hands of an etherealist, then indeed, you would have gone hungry.”
An interesting passage laden with humor and a joke or two. On the one hand this is a takeoff on Bishop Berkeley and those who believe that nothing is real but only a figment of our imaginations. They do believe that when you close your eyes the world ceases to exist. I could never follow the argument, and on the other hand the ideas can be construed as a variation on the Theosophical belief that the gods were first ethereal becoming more materialistic as existence descended to man who is most material. Thus Tario is visible air, as it were, as an ethereality while Jav is condensed into, as he believes, permanent air/matter while Carthoris and Thuria are solid matter as humans.
The food Jav produces is ephemeral food. It looks real but having no real substance has no nourishment. As he smirkingly says: It is well that you did not fall into the hands of an etherealist. Then, indeed, you would have gone hungry.” A funny joke. But Jav has hypnotized the pair into seeing the food even though Carthoris is not so hypnotized as to not realize it is not real food. He eats it anyway.
Once in this land where nothing is real but the Banths, one wonders that we don’t have a situation that was replicated later in the movie The Manchurian Candidate. In that movie the hypnotized soldiers imagine they are at a ladies social and actually see American women where Korean people are.
Perhaps Carthoris and Thuvia are standing in an empty field talking to themselves. Perhaps the Lotharians exist only in their own imaginations but have conjured Carthoris and Thuvia out of thin air. Pretty spacy stuff.
As Carthoris is hypnotized he is easily persuaded to do things he wouldn’t ordinarily do such as letting Thuvia be led away alone to Tario. He does and Thuvia meets Tario alone mystyfied that Carthoris would let her out of his sight. Seeing Thuvia the etherealist’s phantom cojones are aroused and he makes an all out assault on Thuvia. As he doesn’t exist, of course, the assault can only have force in Thuvia’s imagination. Just as those little arrows the Torquasians believed were real killed them one wonders what effect a phantom penetration would have on Thuvia. Would she have a little phantom child after a phantom pregnancy?
We’ll never know because she pulls out her thin blade stabbing Tario to his phantom heart. He falls apparently dead seemingly oozing out his lifeblood. But, as we know he is an etherealist hence only a figure of someone’s imagination we know he must be feigning death with phantom blood.
Hearing Thuvia’s screams Carthoris races to the rescue followed by Jav. Jav, who should have known better, is overjoyed confessing his desire to replace Tario. It was almost like a plan. Tario leaps up explaining he always thought Jav did and now he is going to execute him.
Here ERB evades the issue taking a cheap but effective way out. These two guys are actually magicians and should be made to match powers in efforts to do the other in. ERB isn’t up to it so he has Jav cave just awaiting his fate that he could always evade with his hypnotic powers. Now, we’ve all been advised not to trust our senses so whether any of this happened is open to question. Nevertheless a hole opens in the floor, the floor dishes so that all falls into the memory hole. The three are ostensibly history.
They are precipitated into the chamber of the Lotharian god. One might expect this god to be pure essence but instead he is pure matter. As so often is the case a Burroughsian god turns out to be a lion or the Martian Banth. Why Jav should be concerned isn’t clear as he has no real substance and can’t be eaten while with his hypnotic powers he could make the Banth believe it was a mouse.
Carthoris draws his sword but this one’s a piece of cake for Thuvia. Using her own particular hypnotic talents she charms the Banthian god and all four walk out through the Banth’s quarters as chums.
At this point Jav calls into existence old Lothar for us all to see.
Outside the gates of Lothar Jav conceives a desire for Thuvia. Using considerable hypnotic talent he persuades Carthoris that he and Thuvia are heading for the woods. Carthoris walks off alone convinced he is leading Thuvia by the hand. He is soon disillusioned. Returning he finds the realist Jav really mauled by the Banth and dying. Thuvia and the Banth have headed back to Aanthor. Carthoris has no choice but to follow.
B.
Now, what’s been going in addition to this hypnosis stuff is ERB’s ongoing attempt to reconcile his Anima and Animus. He has followed the usual Pyche and Eros storyline of Apuleius’ Golden Ass of Greek mythology. The Anima and Animus get together, circumstances separate them, then during the rest of the novel they try to get together amid difficulties, finally succeeding.
In Lad And The Lion ERB introduced the lion as his totem. Even though a male lion it is associated with his female Anima. At the risk of repeating myself, just in case anybody has been reading this stuff for the last four or five years the cause and evolution of his dilemma progress thusly:
In 1883 or 1884 ERB was terroized on a street corner by a young thug he identifies only as John. Possibly Emma was with him and kept walking abandoning him to his fate. Thus it was suggested to his subconscious that his Anima had abandoned him. John being the terrorist filled the vacancy. Thus ERB had the seemingly impossible anomaly of a male representing his female Anima.
We know this was the result because ERB writes incessantly about it. In the Outlaw of Torn the king’s fencing master, De Vac lures young Prince Norman/Burroughs outside the gate. Norman’s nurse Maud representing his Anima noticing too late rushes to the scene to be struck down dead by De Vac. Thus ERB’s Anima is murdered. How does ERB handle this? In his dream image ERB has De Vac take Norman to London where they live in the attic of a house over the Thames River. The house is a symbol for self, the attic being the mind. Water is a symbol of the female. The house extending out over the water but separated from it indicated the separation from the Anima. To compensate for the impossible situation of a male on the Anima, De Vac improbably dresses as a woman for the three years they live together in their attic. At the end of the novel Norman/Burroughs kills De Vac.
In the succeeding novel The Mucker he associates himself with the Irish thug Billy Byrne. Byrne being paired up with the socialite Barbara Harding is also an impossible match. It would seem probable that ERB’s father and John were two of the components clothing ERB’s Animus. Thus ERB has this very strong feeling about having a dual personality that he talks about constantly.
In Lad And The Lion we have the improbable situation of a powerless ship, representing the self, drifting up and down the Atlantic endlessly, manned by the deaf and dumb Old Looney, the Lad, and a Lion in a cage on deck. That the Old Looney who represents ERB’s father was deaf and dumb probably indicates he wouldn’t listen to ERB and had nothing to say that the Lad/ERB wanted to hear. So, the Lad was brutally abused the whole of his childhood. That’s how ERB saw the Bad Father. It would seem that John Carter represents the Good Father as ERB would have liked him to have been.
With De Vac and John dead the Lion begins to take his place as the male aspect of ERB’s Anima which has now been reoccupied by a female reprsentative. The male lion becomes a permanent aspect of the Anima in 1922s Tarzan And The Golden Lion as Jad-Bal-Ja. In Lad he and the Lion go ashore after the death of the Old Looney, or, in other words, his father, where the lion is loosely associated with the Arab princess Nakhla. Lad was written a short two months before Thuvia.
Now Thuvia wows Carthoris/ERB by charming the raging Banths/lions of the battlefield and the Lotharian God. Thuvia and the god become as one as she walks by his side her fingers twisted in his mane. So the traditional goddess of the male Anima is united with a male god to form ERB’s Anima. The female Anima who moved closer to reassuming her place in Lad now definitely becomes part of ERB’s psyche.
They pass through the tunnel before Carthoris. As ERB exits the tunnel he encounters his doppelganger Kar Komak. This is great stuff actually. Komak is literally a new man. He was the first successful materialization of an hypnotic imaginary man of the Lotharians. That’s likely enough, isn’t it?
He comes running through the scarlet furze, naked, to greet Carthoris. Well, picture that. Nakedness is something else appearing regularly in ERB”s works most notably in Tarzan And The City Of Gold. (See my review.)
The duo then continue on to Aanthor where as they arrive they are met by Torquasians who upset the plans of the men of Dusar who had come back to pick up Thuvia. We know that Carthoris for sure represents ERB because he takes a sword swipe to the forehead that lays him out. Thus the novel has the obligatory bash to the head recalling ERB’s adventure in Toronto.
When the sleeper wakes he finds the dead carcass of Thuvia’s lion lying half across his body. Probably his left half that derives from the ovum. Must have been uncomfortable to say the least. Thus the male half of his Anima is now dead and the female half in possession of the Dusarians. ERB gets her back and as in Psyche and Eros the Anima and Animus we may assume are permanently reunited.
Not quite but that will take us too far afield to discuss it this moment. I deal with the future development of the problem in my reviews of Out There Somewhere (The Return Of The Mucker), Bridge And The Oskaloosa Kid (The Oakdale Affair) and Marcia Of The Doorstep.
A Part 3 will follow that attempts to deal with the bigotry charges against Burroughs. If there is such a thing as guilt concerning the issue, ERB is not guilty, of course.
Tarzan Over Africa
February 23, 2009
Tarzan Over Africa
The Psychological Roots Of Tarzan In The Western Psyche
by
R.E. Prindle
As the strong man exhibits in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call the muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentagles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his intellect into play. He is fond of enigmas, conundrums, hieroglypics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension as praeternatural. His results brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have in truth, the whole air of intuition.
Edgar Allen Poe- The Murders In The Rue Morgue
…he dreams of the sight
of Zulu impis
breaking on the foe
like surf upon the rocks
and his heart rises in rebellion
against the strict limits
of civilized life.
H. Rider Haggard- Allan Quatermain
Yes! I noticed this dichotomy in the Western soul myself at least two thirds of a lifetime ago. I was always puzzled by it. Why in the midst of plenty and seeming perfection should the Western psyche be so discontented with its lot.
Well, time has passed. Two thirds of a lifetime in fact. After much mental lucubration and travail I now find myself in a position not only to understand it myself but to be able, perhaps, to make it clear to others; perhaps hopefully to you who are looking at this screen.
The problem began we are told, by people who ought to know, about one hundred fifty thousand years ago when our species, Homo Sapiens, evolved from its predecessor hominid, which has never been traced being the famous Missing Link, to begin its odyssey through time and space.
We are told that Homo Sapiens originated in Africa and that Black Africans, or what Tarzan would call savages, were the first Homo Sapiens. We are told, once again, that White people mutated from this original Black stock. This may or may not be so. I am in no position to affirm or deny the fact myself but, if so, there was a qualitative difference as well as a quantitative difference that then occurred. In fact, if one were to judge solely from appearances two sub-species of Homo Sapiens came into existence when the White evolved from the Black. This qualitative difference between the sub-species or what we have been taught to consider races, was noticed by all the early explorers with differing interpretations.
As the English novelist, H. Rider Haggard, who as a man of considerable experience and acumen, put it:
I say that as the savage is, so is the white man, only this latter is more inventive, and possesses a faculty of combination…
Rider Haggard was quite right, both sub-species evolved from the same stock, both had the same emotional makeup, but what Haggard dismisses as only ‘more inventive’ and ‘a faculty of combination’ is precisely that which separates the White sub-species from the Black sub-species and makes it evolutionarily more advanced. In conventional terms invention and a faculty of combination is called the scientific method.
The scientific method is not to be dismissed lightly. It is a faculty of mind that is an evolutionary step in advance of the White sub-species’ evolutionary predecessor, the Black sub-species.
This may be a startling interpretation to you, however if one is to follow the scientific logic adduced by scientists of Evolution the facts follow as day follows night. They cannot be avoided nor can they be explained away. They must be dealt with head on, just as our Attorney General Eric Holder has stated.
The evolutionary step within the Homo Sapiens species is almost tentative to our White minds, not so clear cut as to separate, say, the Chimpanzee species from the Gorilla species. The transition is however in that direction.
In the nineteenth century the cleavage between the scientific mind and that of the savage or first Homo Sapiens mind was beginning to become felt in the Western psyche. A malaise of spirit was created which troubled the soul of Western man. The ‘strict limits’ of scientific civilization versus the seeming naturalness and open simplicity of the African became a dichotomy in the Western psyche.
Haggard was not the first to confront the problem but before I begin at the beginning with who I consider to be the first let me elucidate the problem further by another quote from Rider Haggard.
Ah! this civilization what does it all come to? Full forty years and more I spent among savages, and studied them and their ways, and now for several years I have lived here in England and in my own stupid manner have done my best to learn the ways of the children of light; and what do I find? A great gulf fixed? No, only a very little one, that a plain man’s thought may spring across.
Haggard was quite correct as far as he went. What he failed to understand, ‘in his own stupid way’, was that there was a small gulf over which civilized man thinks he could spring backward without difficulty but from the other side that small gulf appears a great chasm which the completed mind of the first Homo Sapiens can never find a way across.
Edgar Rice Burroughs who read Haggard and was also struck by this really important introductory chapter to ‘Allan Quatermain’ pondered the issue long and hard and resolved the issue in his own mind when he said that the savage mind could never grasp science while only one in a hundred of the White species could, with perhaps one in a thousand being able to advance science. ERB intuited what modern genetics would prove.
This dichotomy between the primitive and scientific mind does not become truly prominent until the mid-nineteenth century. It wasn’t observable to the naked eye before then and only begins to establish itself in literature with the apperance in 1841 of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Murders In The Rue Morgue.’
Poe created a whole new genre of literature, not only of the detective story, but of the conflict between what Freud would later identify in his system as the Unconscious and the Conscious mind. Prior to Poe reason, or the forebrain, was the sole approach to knowledge; after Poe awareness of the Unconscious element began its long rise until today it is dominant.
When dissatisfaction with Haggard’s strict limits of civilization began to forcibly intrude into White consciousness, causing the split identity, is not clear to me although it may well have been the introduction of the Age of Steam. Certainly by 1841 the intrusion of the steam railroad was going a long way to condition man’s mind to a rigid one way view of reality as laborers spun out the long steel ribbons along which the great unyielding iron locomotives ran.
The science of steam was unforgiving, with a low level of tolerance for human error, and making no allowance for individual idiosyncracies.
In the days of the great steamboat races on the Mississippi boiler pressure was controlled by a little governor. Greater speed could be attained if the governor was removed allowing boiler pressure to increase. Of course, the inevitable result was the explosion of the boiler and destruction of the steamboat and crew. Even knowing the scientific consequences of removing the governor operators time after time did it in hopes of defeating physics and winning the race.
Thus science seemed ‘unfair’ and the White man’s limited undeveloped understanding began to rebel.
When evolution gave man access to science he reached the limits of what human exertion alone could do. Thus the forebrain was frustrated, driving it back toward the brain stem and the Unconscious. A new scientific frontier was opened thereby- the study of the human mind.
Edgar Allan Poe grasped this significance expressing it in poetic language. ‘Murders In The Rue Morgue’ posits the problem in the form of C. Auguste Dupin who, while using rigorous scientific method is mistaken for being intuitive. The Conscious mind versus the Unconscious.
The Unconscious is always disreputable. It is there that little understood sexual urges and primitive egoistic rituals reside. It is there that the primitive man resides; the savage of Rider Haggard, the Negro of the present day. It is there that the Western psyche rebels, seeking to emerge triumphant over science and understanding. That is the little leap backwards that Rider Haggard saw. In academic writers of the nineteenth century it was called ‘the thin veneer of civilization.’
Thus the initials of C. Auguste Dupin spell CAD, or a slightly disreputable man. A man who thinks only of himself. If Poe doesn’t introduce the notion of the doppel ganger, he certainly defines the role and purpose. Dupin and the narrator are two halves of the same person. They are in fact one personality.
This notion would be further developed in Conan Doyle with his creation of Sherlock Holmes and his doppelganger, Dr. Watson. The notion would be brought to horrifying fruition in the classic tale of the split between the conscious and unconscious minds, Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.’
Poe’s narrator being of greater means than Dupin who is seedy and down at the heels rents an old dilapidated house in the Faubourg St. Germain which creaks as lustily as the House of Usher. The house is a symbol of psychological decay. The Faubourg St. Germain is itself a symbol of decay. Formerly the home of the pre-revolutionary elite, since the French Revolution it is the home of shattered fortunes.
The two men, who are inseparable, lock themselves up in this mansion by day with all the curtains drawn, sure sign of intense depression, going out only after dark into what the narrator calls the ‘real night’ as opposed to the night of the soul; the dark Freudian unconscious.
And then two women are murdered in mysterious circumstances. Using all his scientific method Dupin divines the murderer to be an Orang-outang, which was no small feat whether scientific or intuitive. Thus the highest mental powers were symbolically pitted against man’s animal nature.
Poe thus states the central problem of the Western psyche which is still unresolved at this time while still being discussed as much. While Rider Haggard was wrestling with the problem Conan Doyle was writing his Sherlock Holmes stories. Holmes like Dupin is a bit of a cad; not entirely an admirable person. He has placed himself above the law, being quite capable of executing summary judgment on one who might in his sole opinion escape the toils of the law. Holmes companion, Dr. Watson, is a sturdy unimaginative burgher who serves as the example of the unconscious to Holmes’ conscious but scientifically unfeeling mind.
Robert Louis Stevenson takes matters to an even more intense level at roughly the same time. Jekyll and Hyde are in fact one man. Jekyll is the example of what Freud would call the repressed man but one which society calls a disciplined and respectable man. He is in total control of himself but he suspects there is another side to his character which he would like to discover.
Unable to find access to this other side by psychological or rational means, he uses his scientific acumen to invent a potion which releases this demon, Mr. Hyde, concealed inside his unconscious. Hyde is a very destructive character and having been once released he proves impossible to put back in the bottle. He returns unsummoned. Eventually he suppresses Jekyll becoming the sole personality. The jump only works one way.
Thus Stevenson predicted the evolution of the twentieth century. This little cluster of writers bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is very interesting.
In the intervening near fifty years between ‘Murders In The Rue Morge’ and ‘Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde’ science had been revealing nature at a galloping pace placing even greater stress on the Western psyche. Central to the further deteriorization of the psyche was Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin Of Species’ which appeared in 1859 just on the eve of the exploration of Central Africa when the stressed scientific Western psyche confronted its dark unconscious in the form of the African Black man. Thus Africa became the Heart Of Darkness for the White man just as Hyde was the heart of darkness to Jekyll. That little gulf across which he thought he might leap appeared as a gigantic chasm.
The notion of evolution versus Biblical creation not only caused a tremendous social dislocation but the notion of evolution from a lower to a higher, from Ape to White man, placed the Black man or Negro in an intermediary state of development just as Burroughs would later depict the role of Tarzan Of The Apes.
Beginning c. 1860 with the expedition of Capt. Richard Francis Burton into the lake regions of Central Africa the problem began to take a concrete form.
What the White Man found in the interior of Africa startled him. For here the dichotomy between his unconscious and conscious was juxtaposed in reality between himself and the Black African. The Black African seemed to represent unchanged what man had been one hundred fifty thousand years before when he evolved from the hominid predecessor.
For Burton and Henry Morton Stanley who followed him as an explorer the superiority of the White was apparent. In the Negro they saw only the child of nature; men without alphabets, physics, chemistry, astronomy or intellectual attainments of any kind. The Negro was to be pitied, treated paternalistically as a little brother or as the Negro would later be known: The White Man’s Burden, Idi Amin notwithstanding.
The main period of exploration and discovery was ending when Rider Haggard began publishing his great African adventure trilogy from 1885 to 1888.
While Burton and Stanley felt an easy superiority over the Blacks, Rider Haggard took a more disquieted attitude. He was troubled when he noted that for all the White man’s scientific attainments there was no difference in the emotional development of the two sub-species.
And what did he find? A way forward? A great gulf fixed? No. ‘Only a little one, that a plain man’s thought might spring across. I say,’ he said, ‘that as the savage is, so is the white man, only the latter is more inventive, and possesses a faculty of combination…’
Well, indeed. But wasn’t Haggard undervaluing the quality of being more inventive and possessing a faculty of combination? Those two qualities, after all, comprise the scientific faculty which cannot be attained by effort but is evolutionarily ingrained. It is forever beyond the reach of the first Homo Sapiens. Haggard and all other writers recognized that this faculty is what the Africans lacked.
Consider then in one hundred fifty thousand years the Africas were so incurious that they had never observed the heavens. They had no astronomy! When the White split off probably one hundred thousand years ago this is the first science they established. Think about it.
Is this scientific faculty such a small thing? If, in fact, a White man of plain understanding can make the leap backward to a natural state can the Black or natural man leap the chasm to a scientific state of consciousness?
Darwin’s theory of evolution is based on natural selection, actually a form of eugenics, by which he believed new species were evolved. It would appear, however that evolution is caused by genetic mutations and when a species has mutated into the complete expression of itself evolution stops for that species which then becomes, as it were, a living fossil.
Rather than natural selection there is perhaps natural rejection. When a new sub-speices forms with its differences it is more likely that the predecessor recognizes the differences and ejects the new comer rather than the new species recognizing itself and banding together. Consider Tarzan among the apes.
When the White sub-species came into existence perhaps one hundred thousand years ago it is more than probable that the sub-species was rejected by its Black predecessors and forcibly ejected from sub-Saharan Africa.
Thus in the two closest known predecessors of Homo Sapiens, the Great Mountain Ape and the Chimpanzee both species are completed and now await extinction as they are unable to compete with their successor hominids.
Scientists tell us, I have no way of disputing their conclusion only interpreting them, that Homo Sapiens evolved from a predecessor about a hundred fifty thousand years ago. They further tell us that the first Homo Sapiens was the Negro sub-species.
The predecessor, who has disappeared without a trace, unless he is the Bushman, was a completed species; he was incapable of further evolution himself but from him the Negro sub-species of Homo Sapiens evolved.
Now comes the hard part to accept. Science is science; one must either follow its facts or abandon the pretence of being scientific man.
As the first Homo Sapiens was the Negro sub-species, is the Negro sub-species complete as an example of evolutionary development? If the Negro was the first Homo Sapiens then the White sub-species must be evolved from the Negro and as nature is ever groping toward higher intelligence the White must be an intellectual improvement on its Black predecessor. The apparent facts indicate this.
Evolution appears to be always toward a form of higher intelligence. Thus the qualities of combination and inventiveness may be completely beyond the reach of the Black sub-species. The Black may stand in relation to the White as the Great Mountain Ape stands to the Chimp.
Further, if one assumes, as one must, that evolution has not stopped either with the development of Homo Sapiens or its sub-species the White man, then the White man must carry the genetic makeup for the mutation to the next step of evolution. As only fifty thousand years intervened between the evolution of the first Homo Sapiens and its White successor than the next evolutionary sub-species or species may already be among us. This is what H.G. Wells novel The Food Of The Gods is about. Apparently the evolutionary bud, like a swelling on a tree, may only blossom once and then the sub-species or species is incapable of budding again becoming fixed in form
The question then arises will the next step be to a new species that will make Homo Sapiens a completely inferior species such as now exists between Homo Sapiens and the Chimpanzee or a new sub-species that will merely increase the distance between it and the first sub-species.
If the new mutation increases its intellectual capabilities will it also be able to evolve a new emotional organization that will separate it from Homo Sapiens and its animal nature completely? Or is it possible that the dichotomy between the two under which Western man suffers will increase involving some sort of evolutionary insanity or suicide?
Well, as the nineteenth century drew to a close vitamins hadn’t even been discovered let alone genetics so people muddled along in a dissatisified condition.
The unconscious aspects of man began to predominate over the conscious as Western man confronted with his natural state in Africa began to slip back across the little gulf in admiration of the seeming ‘natural ‘ state of the ‘noble savage.’ This slip backward was aided and abetted by Sigmund Freud’s vision of the unconscious.
Late in the century Thomas Alva Edison invented the movie camiera. This invention was to have a major effect on the rise of the Unconscious or retrogression to the primitive as the dominating factor in the Western psyche. At approximately the same time as the film industry was becoming important Sigmund Freud published his seminal work: The Interpretation Of Dreams. Thus a scientific vocabulary began to come into existence by which the workings of the mind could be analyzed and discussed. the Unconscious became an established entity.
Now, writing is work of the forebrain or in other words, a scientific pursuit, while movie making is a function of the Unconscious. A good story is more important in writing while subliminal drives are the stuff of movies. It is only required that movies make emotional but not rational sense. They follow a different logic.
Edgar Rice Burroughs was to be confused by this difference when he tried to translate his books to the screen. While the early Tarzan films were not unsuccessful they were not all that satisfying; it was not until MGM invented the Tarzan of primal desires impersonated by Johnny Weismuller that the movie Tarzan became potent. However in that guise Tarzan was entirely another creation. His being had become independent of ERB’s mind.
One movie is capable of finding more viewers than a thousand books can find readers. Thus the subconscious began to dominate over the conscious Tarzan.
I am of the opinion that Freud was already aware of the effect of the emergence of the Unconscious as a formative factor in society before he codified the phenomenon in scientific language. After all Freud was subject to the same influences as Poe, Haggard, Doyle, Stevenson and Burroughs.
Freud himself came from an earlier school which delighted in the unrestrained indulgence of the unconscious or passions. In English terms the attitude took form as the Hell Fire Club to which the American Benjamin Franklin belonged. Its motto was: Do What Thou Wilt. Its bible on the continent was ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel’ by Rabelais, while in Jewish circles the credo had been established by Jacob Frank and his descendants. Frank’s position was that man will never be good until he commits evil to his heart’s content. Freud being Jewish was of this school.
These groups of people were quite extreme. Their credo was startlingly expressed in the eighteenth century by Tobias Smollet when his hero, Roderick Random, is introduced into a woman’s home who wrote the following:
Thus have I sent the simple king to hell
Without or coffin, shroud or passing bell.
To me what are divine or human laws?
I court no sanction but my own applause!
Rapes, robb’ries, treasons, yield my soul delight;
And human carnage gratifies my sight;
I drag the parent by the hoary hair,
And toss the sprawling infant on my spear,
While the fond mother’s cries regale my ear.
I fight, I vanquish, murder friends and foes;
Nor dare the Immortal gods my rage oppose.
The above pretty much defines Freud’s intent in his psychology. So long as such sentiments were consciously expressed in print they horrified a rational thinker while remaining strictly an underground movement. But now Freud combined the attitude with the malaise of soul which had been called into existence by the dichotomy of the scientific and unconscious minds.
Freud reduced the mind, including the Unconscious, into scientific terms by which such Rabelaisan attitudes could be discussed and disseminated into polite society as scientific thought rather than eccentric opinion.
Freud despised what he called the morality of the day or in other words, Christian morality. He determined that the main cause of mental illness was the repression of disorderly or anti-social desires. He glorified these base desires as the Ego and proclaimed that where the Unconscious was Ego shall be. This is another way of saying: Do What Thou Wilt.
Thus in the decades following Freud the whole notion of self control and a disciplined mind fell into disrepute as Western man began to revel in his most criminal desires; for the Unconscious which always disregards the rights of others is alway criminal.
So it was that the terrible figure of Dracula who began his rise in the 1890s became the dominant psychological projection of the twentieth century. Dracula is the Unconscious incarnate. Completely despising the rights of others, even their right to life; he sucks anyone’s life blood so that he alone may live.
Like Dupin and the narrator of ‘Murders In The Rue Morgue’ Dracula only comes out in the ‘real night’. In fact, one ray of the sun, in other words, consciousness, will turn him to dust. Light is anathema to him; he must shun the day.
Alongside Dracula the cult of the Phantom Of The Opera has grown into huge proportions being disseminated to polite society by Andrew Lloyd Weber’s opera of the same name.
Talk about conscious and unconscious, the Phantom lives in a sewer, the very home of the Unconscious, where he has installed a huge organ on which he plays the most glorious conscious creations of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Deformed in soul, the deformation has been extended to his exterior in the form of a burned face which he covers with a mask just as one masks one’s interior motives from others. Attracted to the higher things from the depths of his sewer he haunts an opera house directly above where, spying from secret passages, he falls in love with the beautiful opera singer who, initially repulsed by the soul shown on his face gradually succumbs to the lure of the unconscious.
Edgar Rice Burroughs was born into this strange social milieu, as we know, in 1875. Seemingly failing in every thing he did, he had scant prospects in life until at the age of 37 in 1912 his education jelled into the creation of his life, Tarzan the Magnificent.
Tarzan is extraordinary in that he runs counter to the other expressions of the Western malaise. Tarzan is whole and entire. In Freudian terms, where Unconscious was, now Ego reigned and it was good Ego, not the criminal model of Freud.
As Tarzan was, so must have been Burroughs, although I have no idea how he achieved this. It appears, nevertheless, to be true. In fact, whatever Burroughs read or was thinking about he seems to have resolved in Tarzan the mental dilemma which was first formulated by Poe. Further, he acknlowledges Poe’s influence.
We know that Burroughs read and revered the African adventure novels of Rider Haggard. It can be stated certainly that he read the African explorers Capt. Richard Burton and Henry Morton Stanley. Whether he read the other seekers of the source of the Nile, Speke and Baker, I don’t know, as I cannot so state with certainty. It is not impossible that Baker’s wife was a model for Jane.
It is certain nevertheless that the great age of African exploration thrilled him while occupying a prominent place in his daily thoughts.
Being scientifically inclined, he applied his reading in evolution, exploration, geology, psychology and other subjects to the formation of his great creation, Tarzan. As he says, he wrote to amuse and entertain (read: make money) so that he expressed the results of his deepest study in seemingly frivolous tales. Then, while he captured the imagination of the reading public, he offended the critics of ‘serious’ literature who refused to take him seriously. He even found it difficult to find a book publisher even though he was a proven popular success.
Yet he pondered deeply the dilemma propounded by Poe while apparently puzzling out the deeper meaning of Haggard’s introductory chapter to ‘Allan Quatermain.’ Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde filled his thoughts.
There is little doubt that Haggard’s hero, Sir Henry Curtis, is a progenitor of Tarzan. One can see Tarzan in the great White English warrior standing tall in a sea of Black soldiers. Sir Henry Curtis leads the Black Kukuana into battle against their foes. The first Big Bwana had come into existence.
Burroughs wants his hero Tarzan to be born in Africa so in 1888 the year ‘Allan Quatermain’ was published and Sir Henry Curtis sealed himself in his valley high in the Mountains Of The Moon, Lord Greystoke and his wife, the Lady Alice Greystoke are abandoned on the West Coast of Africa where, as we know, they both lost their lives but not before Lady Alice gave birth to a son who was then adopted by the great she ape, Kala.
In The Return Of Tarzan the putative successor to Lord John Greystoke is voyaging through the Suez Canal around Africa in his yacht, the Lady Alice, when he is shipwrecked near the exact spot where his father and mother built their tree house in Africa.
To understand fully this sequence in Burroughs’ imagination one has to examine the other source for his creation, Tarzan- Henry Morton Stanley.
There can be no question that before Burroughs wrote Tarzan he had read if not studied the books of H.M. Stanley. And, why not? Stanley’s most important titles are: How I Found Livingstone In Central Africa, Through The Dark Continent and In Darkest Africa.
‘Through The Dark Continent’ is one of the great adventure stories of all time. The conscious living out of Stanley’s unconscious needs and desires is remarkable reading.
One might think that Burroughs’ yacht ‘Lady Alice’ was named after Clayton’s mother, Lady Alice Greystoke. Not so. Burroughs is full of subtle jokes and elaborate circumlocutions. If not Clayton’s mother then how did Burroughs come up with the name ‘Lady Alice’ for the yacht? Well, if you read Stanley’s ‘Through The Dark Continent’ you will find that he carried for thousands of miles through Africa a boat in sections that could be broken down and rebuilt. With this boat Stanley circumnavigated Lake Victoria as well as Lake Tanganyika, then sailed the boat down the entire length of the mighty Congo River. That boat was named the Lady Alice. Thus Tarzan like Stanley was carried by the Lady Alice. That’s a very subtle joke, Son. Stanley himself had named the boat after his Cincinnati fiancee, Alice. During his sail down the Congo she ditched him for another man. In weird synchronicity Stanley ditched the Lady Alice on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic nearly at the end of his journey. What a true coincidence.
As an aside, the psychology of it is very interesting. Psychologically a vessel represents a woman. the Holy Grail which is a chalice represents woman while the blood it contains represents man. Thus you have the man, Stanley in the boat, woman. Stanley’s mother abandoned him as a child. He saw her only once thereafter. Thus, his mother, the most important woman in any man’s life abandoned him. In the Lady Alice, Stanley was obviously carried once again by his mother although I don’t know if her name was Alice also. He then abandoned his boat the Lady Alice.
Stanley didn’t follow the Congo to the sea as is popularly believed but abandoned the river after traversing an incredible series of rapids when he came to an identified rapids at Stanley Pool where, completely exhausted and having reached an explored point, he considered his job done. He had the Lady Alice carried to a hill top where he left it to the elements. Now, in Burroughs mind he may have landed the Lady Alice at the approximate place he thought Stanley had abandoned his Lady Alice. So, Tarzan’s house may have been intended to be on the coast directly below the Lady Alice. That would also make the location in Gabon. In that sense Tarzan was the successor of H.M. Stanley.
One may therefore assume that the Greystokes were put ashore near the mouth of the Congo where the fictional yacht Lady Alice ws shipwrecked within sight, as it were, of the real Lady Alice. That’s how the mind of Edgar Rice Burroughs worked.
On his way from England on the Emin Relief Expedition which forms the content of ‘In Darkest Africa’ just like Lord Greystoke Stanley sailed from England through the Suez to Zanzibar where he collected his porters, sailed with them to Capetown and from thence to the mouth of the Congo. Then Stanley began his incredible journey up the Congo across Africa from West to East into the Northern lake regions where on this trip he located and identified the fabled and thought mythical, snow capped on the equator, Mountains Of The Moon.
Anyone who doesn’t admire Henry Morton Stanley has the heart of a dullard. What a man! What terrific incredible adventures. I’d rather read about them than live them myself but what a story. So thought Edgar Rice Burroughs who never tried to live such adventures either.
Very important to Tarzan is Stanley’s dealings with the various African tribes. Stanley is virtually a single White man leading a faithful band of Negroes just like Tarzan and his faithful Waziri.
Africa was virtually Stanley’s province as it was for Tarzan. Tarzan’s reputation was far famed throughout Africa or at least the areas of Africa through which Stanley traveled. Tarzan doesn’t have much to do with South Africa which has no association with Stanley although Tarzan does travel in North Africa of which Samuel Baker wrote.
Stanley, whose three major expeditions covered a period of about fifteen years must also have become legendary amongst the Blacks. The exploration of Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika coupled with the journey down the Congo must have been the subject of astonished conversation in every village in Central Africa. The more so because Stanley was on scientific expeditions to map geographical features like lakes and rivers which reason no African could ever comprehend.
They could comprehend slaving and ivory buying but they couldn’t comprehend scientific endeavors.
Stanley’s situation in Uganda near the Ripon Falls, the outlet of the Nile from Lake Victoria, with its emperor Mtessa is the stuff of legend for either Blacks or Whites. Stanley, virtually singlehandedly at the head of a band of African natives successfully negotiated months at the court of Mtessa and lived to the tell the tale which I believe few could have accomplished. Then traveling South through areas that had never seen a White man he successully negotiated the circumnavigation of Lake Tanganyika. Both Victoria and Tanganyika are among the largest bodies of fresh water on earth, huge lakes. Then transporting the Lady Alice to the Congo he made the extraordinarily hazardous descent of that enormous and hostile river. This is really mind boggling stuff.
There are too many allusions in Burroughs to the adventures of Stanley to believe that he wasn’t a source for Tarzan.
As more or less an aside there is even a possible allusion to a scene in Burton’s ‘Travels In The Lake Regions Of Central Africa.’ Burton describes in particularly vivid detail an apparition he had while suffering from fever. In a fairly remarkable psychological projection he experienced himself as two different people, not unlike Jekyll and Hyde, who were at war with each other; the one attempting to defeat the best efforts of the other.
In 1857 this psychic manifestation could not be understood. Today it can be interpreted. It would seem that Burton was consciously aware that he seemed to thwart his own projects. He undoubtedly worried about this a great deal but as an unresolved subconscious controls the conscious mind he couldn’t penetrate the mystery.
Under the influence of malarial fever the psychic barriers of the subconscious broke down and his desire was shown to him symbolically by his unconscious mind. Had Burton been psychologically capable of pursuing this insight to its logical conclusion unearthing the fixation on which it was based then he would have resolved his problem and integrated his personality becoming a single unit or whole person. His legs wouldn’t have given out on him as he came close to his goal. Depth psychology was unknown in 1857 so the psychological manifestation remained a mystery to him.
It seems clear that Burroughs was equally impressed by this incident which he later used to create an alter ego for Tarzan called Esteban Miranda. If you recall, Miranda’s inept activities were bringing Tarzan into disrepute. Africa began to wonder.
As the evolution of Tarzan, as I mentioned in my earlier essay, the idea of Tarzan entered the back of Burroughs’ mind bearing a candle which in a pitch black cave is a pretty strong light. This idea was probably an identification with Sir Henry Curtis of Rider Haggard but Burroughs was unable to develop the train of thought when he came to the water barrier in the vaults of Opar.
Tarzan successfully leaped the barrier but Burroughs lost his train of thought when the candle symbolically blew out leaving the idea of Tarzan to gestate in his subconscious. There Curtis slowly combined with Henry Morton Stanley to erupt from Burroughs’ forehead fully formed in 1912 as Tarzan.
Burroughs probably read Stanley in the nineties. His creative juices would have been jogged when Stanley died in 1905. Stanley’s devoted wife gathered several chapters of Stanley’s autobiography of his childhood, composed by himself, then cobbled together the rest of his life from diaries, news clippings and the like.
Stanley’s autobiography was released in 1909. The first Tarzan book was written in 1912. I don’t know when Stanley’s autobiography came to Burroughs’ attention but sometime before 1912 he read it completing the idea of Tarzan in his mind. As Burroughs’ prospectus to All Story Magazine indicates, Burroughs was struggling to combine a number of ideas into the entity that was to become Tarzan.
The publication of Stanley’s autobiography plus the pressure at age 37 of having to so something to merit his high opinion of himself probably forced the jelling of the idea of Tarzan which erupted from his forehead bearing gold ingots like Tarzan emerging from the rock of Opar above the gold vaults.
Burroughs now had the ideal vehicle to give expression to all his social theories. Critics may see Burroughs as a mere shallow entertainer but I don’t. I bought my first Tarzan book the year Burroughs died in 1950 with I was twelve. I continued to buy them until 1954 when I was sixteen. I was totally absorbed in them; not as mere entertainment. I thought Burroughs was writing some pretty heavy stuff even if I missed the much I picked up later when my interests were subconsciously directed to the same social problems that concerned Burroughs. I found to my surprise that Tarzan having entered the back of my mind had formed much if not most of my social thought. I give you the results of my education by Burroughs here.
I find myself amazed by the depth and profundity of Burroughs’ thinking. The ease with which he handled these complex problems without directly identifying them or preaching is fairly amazing. I pointed out in my earlier essay how Burroughs addressed the problem of eugenics in the males and females of Opar.
So he took on the problem of psychic dislocation in the White sub-species in the very nature of his creation, Tarzan.
We know he was heavily influenced by Poe’s ‘Murders In The Rue Morgue’ because he retells the story in the ‘Return Of Tarzan’ in Chaper 3, ‘What happened In The Rue Maule.’ Now this retelling is close enough to be considered borrowing if not plagiarism if his purpose hadn’t been to develop Poe’s theory. Poe was positing the problem; Burroughs was offering the solution.
Just by way of reference; my copies of Tarzan are those of Grosset and Dunlap from the late forties and early fifties. They also have what I consider the finest artwork on Tarzan, a matter of taste, I know.
Where in Poe, Dupin is a human while the Orang-outang a beast, Burroughs combines the two in one. The sub-conscious and the conscious are integrated. Tarzan is at once the most charming and civilized of men but once aroused he quickly reverts to animal ferocity. But he is able to pass back and forth at will, unlike Jekyll and Hyde, and at a moments notice; he is in control of both his animal and human nature.
He even escapes by leaping from the window to a telephone pole, which had appeared since Poe’s time, shinnying up the pole, having had the good sense, or science, to look down first to see a policeman standing guard, he then makes a fairly daring leap, the result of his jungle training, to the roof of the building scampering across numerous rooftops. Tarzan then descends to earth down another telephone pole. There were telephone poles in Chicago but I don’t know whether Burroughs checked to see if there were telephone poles in Paris.
Running wildly for a few blocks he then enters a cafe, successfully cleaning himself up to a gentlemanly appearance in the rest room. Now fully human again he ‘saunters’ down the avenue where he meets the countess as his charming urbane self.
These two stories of Poe and Burroughs are fairly remarkable; one posits the problem which the other resolves. Was either conscious of what the problem was that they were dealing with? The results would indicate yes but in the chapter on the Rue Maule Burroughs has this to say:
‘Tarzan spent the two following weeks reviewing his former brief acquaintace with Paris. In the daytime he haunted the libraries and picture galleries. He had become an omnivorous reader and the world of possibilities that were opened to him in this seat of culture and learning fairly appalled him when he contemplated the very infinitesimal crust of the sum total of human knowledge that a single individual might hope to acquire even after a lifetime of study and research, but he learned what he could.
Surely Burroughs is here reflecting on his own study and research with becoming modesty. His thirty-seven years have not been wasted in idleness. As an omnivorous reader he has acquired some small store of knowledge which he has considered deeply. He does think about the problems of his times. The conflict between the split conscious and unconscious mind of the White man which was commonly discussed as we have seen interested him. Tarzan is simply the result of his cogitations.
Tarzan, born in Africa, the seat of the primitive, reared by Kala a she ape as a pure animal, then progressing straight from his animal nature to the civilized pursuits of study and absinthe he returns to the jungle to experience the intermediate Black nature as chief of his faithful Waziri. This pretty well describes the historical reality of Western man. Then Tarzan rules over Africa as an avatar of science.
Sometime after 1915 when Freud’s body of work began to develop in translation Burroughs must have done a quick study finding, apparently, no difficulty in understanding what Freud was talking about. Further, I think he quickly went beyond Freud’s own understanding, or at least, he applied Depth psychology in a positive way while Freud chose the negative way. Thus Tarzan integrates his personality while Freud exacerbates the separation of conscious and unconscious.
Both Freud’s and Tarzan’s influence grew during the period between the wars. However when MGM preempted the influence of the books in the thirties withe the invention of the movie Tarzan, the great jungle hero began to be lost in the Freudian miasma. The movies turned him into part of the unconscious.
At the same time Africa became a known quantity and while not losing its charm for the Western dichotomy it lost its mystery becoming more commonplace as the Black African absorbed the forms of Western culture. A Black African in a shirt, pants and shoes is just an ordinary Black man. He is no longer the ‘noble savage.’
Then, too, Black resentment at White dominance came to the fore and resistance to the White began along with an offensive for not only equality but superiority.
Thus Marcus Garvey appeared with his Universal Negro Improvement Association. While he was ridiculed in America and had his credibility destroyed he nevertheless laid the ground work for what has followed. His UNIA was truly universal organziaing Blacks in Africa, the West Indies, Brazil and the United States.
At the same time White scholars like Lothrop Stoddard were proposing the innate superiority of the White man. As the science of the time posited one species of Homo Sapiens composed of three separate ‘races’ there were slight grounds to suppose that there were any other than superficial differences between the ‘races.’ There was no basis to differentiate substantial qualities as between two sub-species of different developmental stages. Stoddard and the ‘racists’ were discredited and ridiculed as much as Marcus Garvey had been.
The Second World War intervened suspending discussion for a few years. After the war Freudian thought had taken hold of the psychological community. The founder’s ideas were revered rather than questioned or tested. Freud’s ridiculous map of the mind took on concrete form as students struggled to understand such nonsense as the Id, Libido and Super-ego. Really laughable stuff.
His notions of the unconscious were embraced by the people at large. The ideas of self-discipline and mental training were rejected in favor of avoiding ‘repression.’ The criminal aspects of the unconscious gained the ascendance furthered along by the avatars of the unconscious- movies and movie makers.
As 1960 dawned the Whites began a precipitous slide back across that narrow little gulf, which Haggard saw, toward savagery.
However as there was a difference in the quality of the mind of the White it became apparent that it was not so possible as it seemed to abandon their scientific nature. While the Black without the scientific ‘gene’ could be relatively comfortable in a scientific milieu supported by Whites, the scientific White could not be comfortable in a savage world, He was troubled either way.
Freud had thus injured the sub-species greatly by insisting on the ego occupying the unconscious rather than melding the two halves of the mind by eliminating the destructive elements of the subconscious.
I had taken my Tarzan in subconsciously so that in 1960 when the challenges to White intellectuality became confusing I was able to hold on to my standards if not undisturbed then at least securely. When I later integrated my personality I became proof against the destructive elements of Freudiansim.
Through Burroughs then I identified with his hero Tarzan to save my soul. When I say that Tarzan lives I mean that he was my sheet anchor on the stormiest of seas. It was because of ERB’s creation of Tarzan that I have survived whole and entire. May Tarzan ever prosper and never die. May he have discovered the fountain of youth. Look to the future and keep you eye on the bouncing ball.
A Review: The Chessmen Of Mars By Edgar Rice Burroughs
January 7, 2009
Edgar Rice Burroughs On Mars
A Review
The Chessman Of Mars
by
R.E. Prindle
Introduction
Porges speaks quite highly of this story and I think him right. The story is a quite complex one with many highlights and as many or more undertones. Burroughs manages to unite his past with his present while mildly projecting a future.
The story was his only effort of 1921 while falling between Tarzan The Terrible and The Girl From Hollywood the first of two books for 1922. the other being Tarzan And The Golden Lion. Thus this book falls between the recovery of Jane and their return to the Estate and Tarzan’s subsequent return to Opar. These two Tarzan novels undoubtedly reflect discord in the marriage of ERB and Emma.
It would seem that the move to California disrupted ERB’s concentration as the effort to udjust to Tarzana must have consumed his time somewhat in contradiction of his opinion in Tarzan The Invincible that man has been given all the time he can use, no more, no less. Well, there’s limits to everything, probably even infinity.
Whether Burroughs’ tremendous building efforts of the first couple years were pinching his finances at this time there does seem to be an element of panic in the story. The pictures of his new three car garage shows two Packards and a Hudson so that the unbridled spending of Marcus Sackett in Marcia Of The Doorstep of 1924 seems to be directly based on ERB’s own wastrel habits.
The Hudson is interesting as ERB may have bought his first Hudson in 1914 in emulation of his hero L. Frank Baum who he visited in Hollywood in 1913 and was friendly with again in 1916. In that connection the opening of Chessmen is a variation on The Wizard Of Oz in which Dorothy, her house and dog are transported from Kansas to Oz by a tornado. In Chessmen Tara of Helium is caught in her flier by a furious windstorm that deposits her in the all but forgotten outpost of the Kaldanes. So far out that it might in fact have been the Martian Oz.
Thus in a sense, ERB returns to the scenes of his childhood or, at least, his young manhood. This is very likely the result of stress, whether from looming financial difficulties or the responsibilities of managing his estate of Tarzana.
That he was under extreme stress is made evident by the appearance of John Carter who only appears to a stressed out Burroughs. At such times Burroughs psychologically returns to the comfort and security of Mars where he is beyond the travails of earthly existence. This in turn connects this story to the trials and tribs ERB was facing when he wrote Tarzan And The Lion Man. As I hope to show there is more than one similarity to that story.
This apprearance of Carter is interesting. Carter appears after sunset while leaving just before sunrise. ERB cannot be sure whether he was dreaming or the visit was real. ERB has said that his stories came from his dreams and this story bears all the marks of being a dream story.
ERB had the remarkable faculty of turning his problems into metaphors and symbols of his daily problems. While I don’t believe the stories were concocted in REM type dreaming I’m sure tha as he lay dozing weighing his daily problems he was able to weave them into a creditable story that he was able to elaborate when awake.
Plus, while we can’t be sure how much psychology he knew or how he understood it he had been aware of psychological concepts while still a boy. He learned much of this at the knee of Lew Sweetser on the Idaho ranch. One presumes he remembered, considered and developed his psychological ideas over the years. Sweetser, even as ERB was writing the story was giving public lectures on psychology. Chessmen is replete with psychological images not least the appearance of Carter himself.
Whether Carter was quasi real to Burroughs or not he wants us to believe that Carter was real. It is quite possible that Carter is not actually there but is merely a phantom of himself much as Helen of Troy was said to be a phantom in Rider Haggard’s The World’s Desire. Just as Carter explains his appearance to the dreaming ERB, Burroughs admits he was in a dreaming or trance state as he blew smoke at the head of his defeated king when Carter appears. That’s quite an image. His king or himself had been defeated on the chess board as perhaps in real life calling up the need for a visit from the omnipotent Carter.
And now as to your natural question as to what brought me to Earth again and this, to earthly eyes, strange habiliment. We may thank Kar Kormak, the bowman of Lothar. It was he who gave me the idea upon which I have been experimenting until at last I have achieved success. As you know I have long possessed the power to cross the void in spirit, but never before have I been able to impart to inanimate things a similar power. Now, however, you see me for the first time precisely as my Martian fellows see me- you see the very short sword that has tasted the blood of many a savage foeman; the harness with the devices of Helium and the insignia of my rank; the pistol that was presented to me by Tars Tarkdus, Jeddak of Thark.
Indeed. And I do see what Burroughs suggests, one presumes that the reader sees in his own mind’s eye, the habiliment and weapons on which John Carter, the bronze giant, speaks. We’ve been hypnotized into projecting into our own reality what isn’t there.
Yes, Carter speaks of Kar Kormak as though he really existed when we, having read the novel Thuvia, Maid Of Mars, know that the fantastic Bowmen Of Lothar were mental projections without substance who hypnotized others into seeing them and making them believe that they were real.
So what has Burroughs done here? We know that he is very familiar with the principles of hypnosis. At this very time many forms of mass hypnosis were being practised or about to be practiced. Freud was publishing his mass hypnosis lessons; Fritz Lang had or was making the first of his incredible Dr. Mabuse movies- Mabuse, The Gambler, in which mass hypnotism figures so prominently while Hitler, himself a master hypnotist, was making his bid for power.
Was Burroughs laughing up his sleeve at us as he knew we were actually visualizing in our own way what he suggested to us. I don’t know whether he was laughing but I’m sure he was confident that he had succeeded. So, having hypnotized us into believing the strange appearance of Carter who appears only in the same manner as the phantom bowmen of Lothar to Burroughs although as Carter says he has been successful in projecting the appearance of inanimate matter ERB then begins to weave his incredible story arranging the details so that all can be seen as reality to our minds having once accepted the appearance of Carter as reality who then narrates the story in his own voice.
Another interesting detail is that Carter now addresses ERB as his son. When ERB created Carter he was the man’s nephew his father being still alive. Then as he finished The Warlord Of Mars his father died thus Carter’s son dominates Thuvia, the next Martian novel. Now, while under stress, ERB’s father reappears to him to dictate this story to his son.
Carter, then, must always have been ERB’s projection of his idea of the perfect father.
Finally in this introduction I would like to note that both the city of Helium and the ruins of Opar were colored red and gold. ERB’s Hudson automobile then, a bit of memorabilia of Baum, links the Emerand Cityof Oz and the red and gold cities of Helium and Opar. Both cities are retreats under stress. As we will see a key strain of Chessmen is ERB’s fond memories of Baum and the Oz series. Indeed, Tarzana itself was a grander version of Baum’s own Ozcot while being at the same time an attempt to realize a terrestrial Opar and Helium.
Sigmund Freud And His Vision Of The Unconscious
November 22, 2008
Sigmund Freud And His Vision Of The Unconcious
Redefining A False Vision
by
R.E. Prindle
Texts:
Bakan, David, Sigmund Freud And The Jewish Mystical Tradition, Orig. Issued 1965, Dover edition of 2004
Movie: The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse, 1932, Fritz Lang, auteur.
https://idynamo.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/something-of-value-i-2/
Sometime after I wrote the first part of Something Of Value (see above for link) I read David Bakan’s Freud And The Jewish Mystical Tradition. Bakan’s book confirmed my findings while developing Freud’s relationship to his culture’s mystical tradition based on Bakan’s understanding of the Zohar and the Jewish Kabbalah, which I haven’t read or studied; nor do I intend to unless I exhaust my other pursuits which doesn’t seem likely. You never know though.
However a point to consider is how Jewish is the Jewish mystical tradition, that is, what are its antecedents? Are they rooted in Judaism or elsewhere? Bakan seems to believe that the Jewish Kabbalah is derived entirely from Jewish sources independent of the general milieu. I don’t believe this to be true. The Jewish mystical tradition like all others is based on the very ancient Egyptian traditions as is a great deal of ancient Jewish culture. Bakan believes that the Kabbalah arose in the first century AD. This is probably true.
The Hermetic tradition which is equivalent to a European Cabala took form as such in Alexandria during the Ptolemaic period when Greek and Egyptian ideas interreacted. Hemeticism evolved from much earlier doctrines centered around the Egyptian god Thoth. The Zohar and Cabbalah then is Hermetic material adapted for Jewish needs. The whole can be traced back to Alexandria. It will be remembered that there was a large colony of Jews in Alexandria from long before the first century AD.
The Zohar is a mystical book, which is attributed to the first and second century Rabbi, Simeon Bar Yohai, and it was rewritten, edited and whatever in twelfth century Spain in the sixteenth century. Its influence then was transmitted to the seventeenth century Jewish messiah, Sabbatai, Zevi.
According to Mr. Bakan Freud was familiar with the Zohar and Kabbalah. I couldn’t go so far as to claim so myself but Mr. Bakan can quote chapter and verse. While Freud claimed to be scientific Mr. Bakan relates almost all of Freud’s psychology to the Kabbalah showing Freud’s dependence on Sabbatianism and Frankism as I indicated in Something Of Value Part I.
Thus while seeming to be working from a scientific point of view Freud is actually blending a bit of scientific method acquired from European sources, as there is no science in Jewish culture, with his Jewish religious material to subvert the European moral order. While Freud himself was at war with European civilization, the international Jewish organizations of which he was a member extended his field of influence to the United States and Canada. Thus while Freud speaks specifically of Europe he can be taken to mean Euroamerica.
2.
A further background for his psychology, Freud’s central childhood fixation, appears to be the incident in which a European knocked his father’s hat into the gutter which his father meekly, or wisely, depending on your point of view, accepted without a demur. Because of this story Freud wished to avenge himself on all Europeans.
Probably at this point Freud assumed the Moses complex that stayed with him to the end of his life. He, Freud, would lead his people to triumph over the Europeans as Moses had led the People out of Egypt while Pharaoh and his army were drowned in the Red Sea.
However, oddly enough, as he claimed to be wholly Jewish, Freud was conflicted in his attitude toward Europeans. As a child he had a Roman Catholic nurse who introduced him to Christianity by taking him to church. Most probably she also tried to wean him from Judaism. This experience had a great effect on young Freud. In the following anecdote, as with most fixations, he seemed to have lost the exact memory of the situation. From Bakan:
…that my ‘primary originator; (of neuroses) was an ugly, elderly, but clever woman who told me a great deal about God and hell, and gave me a high opinion of my own capacities.
On October 15, 1897 he quotes his mother speaking about the old nurse who took care of him when he was very young:
“Of course,” she said, “an elderly woman, very shrewd indeed. She was always taking you to church. When you came home you used to preach and tell us about how God conducted his affairs.”
His memory had become confused while it does not appear that he ever exorcised his fixation, for fixation it was. He apparently loved this nurse at the time rather than hating her. When she was later accused and convicted of stealing from the Freuds she was dishonored and actually sent to jail. Freud was heartbroken while changing his opinion of her. But, he had had contact with Christian Europeans which left a lasting impression on him that he could not consciously recognize or acknowledge. If I am correct, this impression resurfaced when he came into contact with C.G. Jung who he adopted as a surrogate for this nurse transferring his love and hatred of her to Jung.
Just as he loved this nurse there were apparently strong homosexual overtones in his relationship with Jung. As Freud would have known, the compulsion toward repitition would have been a component in his relationship with Jung through his nurse although he apparently did not recognize this. So much for his self-analysis. He found reasons to break off with Jung or drive him away while bitterly claiming to be betrayed by Jung just as his nurse had been accused and convicted of theft thus betraying the love of the child Freud. Thus once again his contact with a Christian European was brief ending in sorrow for himself.
A third situation occured late in life when he wrote Moses And Monotheism. Rather startlingly he claimed that Moses was not Jewish but was an ethnic Egyptian. This means Freud, who had a Mosaic fixation, split his personality between his Christian longings and his professed Jewish identity. Another result would be that monotheism was not a Jewish invention but actually a goyish invention so that all the evil arising from monotheism was not the fault of the Jews but the goys. A neat job of transference. Thus Freud’s notion of Moses may have been a sort of dream reversal of facts.
Whatever the results of Freud’s self-analysis back before the turn of the century, it is quite clear that he was unable to resolve his fixations nor, one believes, was he aware of their influence on him. He never integrated his personality remaining under the influence of his subconscious fixations. No wonder he ignored the conscious mind.
3.
Like most people Freud had to find his way from adolescence to adulthood and his true ambitions by a 
circuitous route.
The editor’s note to 1927’s The Future Of An Illusion says this:
In the ‘Postscript’ which Freud added in 1935 to his Autobiographical Study he remarked that a ‘signficant change’ had come about in his writings during the previous decade. “My interest,” he explained, “after making a long detour through the natural sciences, medicine, and psychotherapy, returned to the cultural problems which fascinated me long before, when I was a youth scarcely old enough for thinking.”
He undoubtedly refers to his experiences in church with his Christian nurse contrasted with the ‘Christian’ who knocked his father’s hat into the gutter. As Freud is very duplicitous in his use of language one should try to be very sensitive to the personal meanings behind the general meaning of his words. Thus I believe his use of the term ‘cultural problems’ can usually be understood as his inner conflict between his Christianity and Judaism.
As Bakan points out, that while Freud rejected Rabbinical religious Judaism he was deeply immersed in the Jewish mystical tradition of the Zohar and Kabbalah. Thus one can discount his claim to be an ‘atheistic’ Jew. Or else atheism has a more specific meaning for him.
I would place the change of emphasis in his writing or, at least the beginning of the change, in 1915. My guess would be that Freud was unaware of the coming Jewish Revolution until he joined B’nai B’rith in 1895. That knowledge would have shaped the direction of his researches. Whatever science was involved would have been subordinated toward achieving the Revolution. At the same time that he was working out the nature of psychoananlysis as Bakan indicates he must also have been studying the Zohar and Kabbalah. I haven’t read or studied either so I have to rely on Bakan’s analysis of their influence. Bakan traces strong mystical influences running side by side with what passed for science in Freud’s mind. As Freud persistently says he’s going to ignore the facts if favor of projections one must assume that there is more mysticism than science in Freud’s construction of psychoanalysis- as he says ‘his creation.’
Bakan points out that Freud transited from the role of physician to that of ‘healer.’ That is analogous to the hands on approach of Christian Fundamentalism. Freud then for all practical purposes abandoned medicine for healing. Then, sometime between 1913, the year of the beginning of the Jewish revolution, and 1915 he abandoned psychoanalytical research for his ‘cultural’ studies.’ In other words, he began to apply his psychological studies to the manipulation of cultures through his developing ideas on Group Psychology.
Just as Freud learned that there were screen memories that transformed more painful memories into something more acceptable to salve those injured feelings so Freud learned that he could develop ‘screen’ language to serve up unpalatable meanings in palatable ways. Thus what he says has a reasonable meaning to the uninitiated but has a totally different meaning to the initiated- those with the key. In many ways it is the same as a criminal argot. Those who understand the argot can discuss topics openly without the uninitiated understanding, while only those with the key can twig it. Ya dig?
The key incident that fixed his mind on ‘cultural interests’ was his father’s story of the guy who knocked his hat into the gutter. Freud then, in attempting to diguise his hatred for ‘Christianity’ while secretly admiring it because of his nurse who gave him an inflated opinion of his importance, and his desire to avenge his father and hence all Jews through his Moses fixation, developed his program. Thus he acted in his own mind altruistically and need feel no guilt.
Freud was very seriusly conflicted, also suffering from depression according to Bakan. Hence his purpose was to knock the whole of European Christianity into a cocked hat in the gutter, which is to say the actual persons of Europe. Compare Freud to Rebbe Schneerson in America.
Thus, the use of terms like ‘Culture’ and ‘Civilization’ should always be placed in the context of Jews and Europeans. In this manner he avoids the appearance of bigotry and hatred while sounding ‘scientific.’
Now, this obsession and extreme form of vengeance for something that, after all, didn’t happen to him nor did he witness it, might certainly be considered a neurosis, probably a psychosis and possibly a degree of insanity. In reading Bakan there is a hint that he believes Freud had a disordered mind. Indeed, Fritz Lang’s movie The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse should be held steadily in mind when reading of Freud’s later career. Lang must have had Freud in mind when he filmed the movie.
Lang also had a hand in the making of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari from which film he was dismissed. Lang’s departure from Caligari changed the ending of that movie to the conventional note of the victim, or whistle blower, being declared insane. Lang reversed this by making the perpetrator Caligari/Mabuse insane as in real life with Freud. Further the disciple of Mabuse, the head of the asylum, Dr. Baum was also declared insane. Although the problem appeared to be solved the threat of the conspiracy continuing from Mubuse’s cell, now occupied by Dr. Baum who has assumed Dr. Mabuse’s identity, looms like a spectre over the denouement.
While Freud was never incarcerated as he sould have been, he was imprisoned in his mind no less than Drs. Mabuse and Baum or the character in Gradiva which held such fascination for Freud. It is interesting that Freud had a plaster cast of the relief of Gradiva’s heel on which the story of Gradiva was based that the displayed prominently in his office. The story obviously had greater significance for him than his ‘objective’ analysis of the story would lead one to suspect.
Thus from 1915 to 1935 like Dr. Mabuse he sat imprisoned in his projection of reality churning out page after page, volume after volume of criminal plans for the subversion of civilization which is to say of Euroamerican civilization but not Jewish culture. He makes a definite point of that illusion of whose future he is discussing applies only to Europe and Christianity rather than religion in general which would include his own Judaism. At this point he is not aware of the burgeoning Wahabi Moslemism so that his message is that Jewish beliefs are real while Christian beliefs and Scientific reality are illusory. One has to penetrate the screen language and convert it into the proper psychological intent.
As David Bakan points out Freud lived his whole life in a sort of Jewish ghetto having very little contact with Europeans.
His choice of Jung as the potential heir to his ‘creation’ may have had as much to do with a desperate attempt to reestablish a connection similar to that of his childhood Christian nurse. Thus his overtures to Jung while under extreme stress were driven from his unconscious while he himself was unaware of his true motivations. This would have been an expression of a repetition compulsion. Thus as his nurse disappeared from his life under discreditable circumstances he replicated the situation with Jung. His attempt to convert Moses (hence himself) into an Egyptian may have been a last attempt to replicate and resolve this early contact with Christianity. His view of European civilization then was filtered wholly through a Jewish projection of possibilities. He really had no intimate knowledge of European mores.
From 1915 on, then, his writings were obsessed with hatred for Euroamerica and a desire to wreak vengeance on them by destroying the basis of their civilization. His ideas for the subversion of European civilization were carried to America by the international B’nai B’rith organization to be adopted and employed there. In addition Revolutionary plans executed in Europe in 1917 were financed and organized by the world Jewish government in the US. While functioning according to local conditions the Revolution was conducted on an international scale. Act locally, think globally. Hence Jewish revolutionaries left the US for Russia after 1918 to aid in the consolidation going on there. This is really an incredible repressed story in the Freudian cultural manner. Very Freudian that such phenomenal criminal activity that were best left invisible was repressed into humanity’s unconscious.
At this point I think it mght be well to examine Freud’s vision of the unconscious in more detail. While there can be little doubt that there is a subconscious function to the human mind usually referrred to as the unconscious after Freud that had been an accepted fact amongst scientific researchers for a hundred years Freud has been given the credit for discovering it. The exact nature had not been determined before Freud nor does Freud determine it. His view is merely a projection of his own conscious and subconscious needs.
4.
In David Bakan’s view Freud made a compact with ‘Satan.’
Certainly not in the literal sense but in the figurative sense that Freud would do anything, abandon any 
moral precepts, to achieve fame. Bakan points out the supercription to Freud’s Interpretation Of Dreams a quote from Virgil: Flectere si nesqueo, superos, Acheronta movebo. Translated as: If the gods above are no use to me, than I’ll move all hell. Freud further blurred the line between good and evil or amalgamated the two from the influence of Sabbatai Zevi and Jacob Frank who cast off all morality. Since Freud has been successful in altering both Euroamerican and Jewish morality toward these immoral or amoral beliefs by false ‘Satanic’ criminal doctrines it is imperatvie to debunk his personal projection of the ‘unconscious.’
As he ‘made a pact’ with powers below- the unconscious- against the powers above- the conscious- he invested his projection of the unconscious with the attributes of ‘Satan’ or evil. This view of the subconscious is a self-serving fiction not based on any science.
He sets up the unconscious as an autonomous entity with the main function of blighting the conscious. He give the powers of hell supremacy over the powers of heaven. The notion is mere fantasy; it cannot be. There is no possibility that the function of the subconscious doesn’t have a positive function in and of itself and in relation to the conscious. If you actually think abut it for a moment you wil realize this must be true; every part of the body works to the benefit of the whole; there can be no exception for the subconscious.
Now, nature is not flawless. The order that the religious seem to find is not there. Nature functions in a much more imperfect or haphazard way. It takes only one peek through the Hubble to see that.
However the relationship between the conscious and subconscious is delicate and easily disrupted especially in the early years of the organism when it has no experience with which to evaluate the events occurring to it. The Ego and Anima are not part of the subconscious and possibly not of the conscious but functions through the conscious and subconscious minds.
The conscious mind perceives phenomena and acts on them but the terrific inflow of impressions is more than it can deal with so the day’s input is received into the subconscious for further reference. Thus a major function of dreams in the sleeping state is to review and process, organize the information into a coherent whole for future reference. The subconscious then is able to compare incoming information with experience for the appropriate response. When the conscious and subconscious minds are attuned, that is to say, the personality is integrated, the system works properly, otherwise the response is distorted by one’s fixations. This is very easy to see in Freud.
However, especially in youth when experience is scant, the mind may be challenged with some devastating new experience for which there are no reference points. If an appropriate response is made there is no problem. If an inappropriate response is made against which future experience may be in variance, the earlier response which has become fixated will over rule the current response and substitute the fixated inappropriate response. Thus the current response will constellate around these earlier fixations which gives one bizarre symbolic dreams and inappropriate responses.
The inappropriate response will usually result from an insult to the Ego or, in other words, one’s sexual identity. In turn the response to this insult will be expressed in a sexual affect.
The purpose of psychoanalysis, which is real science, although Freud didn’t see that, is to locate and exorcize them allowing the conscious and subconscious aspects of the mind to function properly as a unit. Dreams are actually important because they are an analysis of life’s experience providing responses. None of this, of course takes in intelligence, discipline and other functions of mind and character that Freud dismisses as irrelevant.
Now, in the cultural war between Judaism and Euroamerica, or as the Jews express it, Christianity, Freud infused the Jewish subconscious with a disregard for morality al la Jacob Frank in relation to Sabbatai Zevi. Any evil was excused so long as it seemed to advance the cultural war. While this infusion may not have reached down through the ranks of Jewry- which is to say they behaved in a certain way but didn’t know why- the ideas were thoroughly planted in the minds of what Henry Ford would call the International Jew.
The cold war between Jews and Europeans became a shooting war in the wake of the Great War. Men, money and munitions flowed in a wide steady stream from the United States to Russia. Coordinators established themselves in strategic locations. If one reads restricted, censored literature the impression is made that horrible anti-Semites harassed and hated innocent unresisting Jews. Jews may have been killed but they were not innocent or unresisting. To the contrary freed from guilt, or supposedly so, by Freudian/Sabbatian/Frankist precepts, abattoirs were established throughout Russia where unsuspecting Russians were led in one door and flowed out the other in liquid form. This is not the place to dwell on gruesome details. The literature exists but the collective Jewish mind has repressed the deeds into the collective unconscious. In other words, history has been denied and censored so that the crimes can’t be known. Actually Whittaker Chambers, the Red spy, translated a number of these books concerning the Hungarian atrocities of Bela Kun and Tibor Szmuelly, but those are impossible to come by. All this slaughter was made possible and justified by the doctrines of Freud.
In relation to the 1919 atrocities of the Jews in Hungary and the response which expelled them from power it should be noted that Israeli troops were recently introduced into Hungary to reestablish the tyranny of Kun and Szmuelly. Don’t ever think that historical memories are short. Remember the Amalikites.
Freud sat confortably in Vienna looking on as the carnage occurred. If, as believed, the tenor of his writing changed in 1925 that was probably due to the death of Lenin in 1924. By 1925 it was apparent that the Jewish Revolution in Russia was on shaky grounds as Stalin began his rise to power so that Freud may have renewed his cultural attack or, on the other hand, as 1928 was the terminal projected year of the Jewish Revolution Freud may have been celebrating the death of European Civlilation when he published The Future Of An Illusion. By the illusion he meant European Christianity and he meant European civilization was finished. The Rome of the Popes should have fallen.
In Illusion and Civilization And Its Discontents Freud makes us believe that the malcontents of civilization are synonymous with civilization rather than being a minority that always exists during great revolutionary changes. Freud whose Judaism was challenged by the Scientific Revolution as much as Christianity or Moslemism must have been aware of the reactionary ‘instinct’ as he himself was in reaction to both European Christianity and the Scientific Revolution.
David Bakan closes his volume with these words:
…under the ruse of “playing the devil” (Freud) served Sabbatian interests. In this respect, however, just as Freud may be regarded as having infused Kabbalah into science, so may he be regarded as having incorporated science into Kabbalah. Sabbatian-wise, by closing the gap between Jewish culture and Western Enlightenment he acts as the Messiah not only for Jewish culture but for Western culture as well.
Note that Western Enlightenment is reduced to Western culture putting it on a par with Jewish culture which is a tacit admission that there is no science in Jewish culture and none is wanted in Western ‘culture’. Language as a screen.
Bakan’s is a hefty statement. Under the guise of the Devil Freud becomes the Messiah not only for Jews but for Euroamericans. Truly in this scenario good comes from evil in the Jewish mind, assuming that the Messiah is good. In case you missed it, Freud according to Bakan was the Second Coming. Narrowing the gap between the two cultures means the imposition of Jewish culture as the Chosen or Abelite people over Western or Cainite culture. Thus the age old goal of reversing the Cain and Abel story so that Cain is obligated to give preference to Abel is accomplished.
By infusing Kabbalah into science, science has been subjugated to the unscientific Jewish culture so that the Catholic/Jewish situation of Medieval Europe has been restored. The Enlightenment that invalidated Judaism, Christianity and Moslemism has been obliterated, hence the revival of religion happening today. Thus in Bakan’s eyes and according to Freud’s intent Judaism has deconstructed Euroamerican society so the reconstruction according to Jewish cultural mores can commence.
The result has been accomplished by the destruction of the Scientific Consciousness as there is little of science in Freud’s cultural writings. He just says what he believes and wants you to believe and asserts it as a fact. As always there were some Westerners who resented the encroachment of the strict limits imposed by science. Rider Haggard in his Allan Quatermain made that as clear as possible. The topic is the dominant theme of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan novels. Henry Ford and his mass production methods was a symbol of that rebellion against the strict limits set by the clock. Some denounced it as Taylorism; but with each passing decade the West became more acclimated to the change as the reactionary mood became acclimated to the new reality.
Freud invents ‘instincts’ and their ‘renunciation’ to give sense to his arguments; the renunciation of instincts’ almost sounds scientific but it isn’t. there are no instincts nor does Freud even attempt to demonstrate their existence. Like the rest or Freud’s psychology the notion is just something Freud made up. As always he notes only the negative societal destructive effects. He says nothing of the ‘instinct’ to be around people which would conflict with his instinct against civilization- the last is a vague enough term the way he uses it. But as Fritz Lang points out the hypnotic spell cast by Mabuse negates criticism so that the head psychologist of the asylum, the objective scientist himself, Dr. Baum, suspends critical judgment falling under the spell of Mabuse to the point of becoming a disciple just as Lang himself did. Indeed, as the West has. Hitler was a blessing in disguise for the Jewish Revolution. The guilt caused by Hitler completely disarmed the West allowing the reconstruction of Western mores to proceed at a faster pace than would have been possible otherwise. Indeed, the Nazi Era drove the entire psychotic Jewish Revolution to the shores of the United States beginning in the early thirties. Thus the deconstruction of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ America was assured.
To return to 1919.
Men Like Gods: Tarzan Pays Homage To Heracles
July 9, 2008
Men Like Gods
Tarzan Pays Homage To Heracles
by
R.E. Prindle
First published in the online Magazine: ERBzine
Cover of The Mighty Atom
The Golden Age of Strongmen had captured the imagination of the world between 1890 and 1910….Into the 1920s the strongman continued as a living wonder and inspiring vision that could be had for the modest price of admission
-Ed Spielman: The Mighty Atom:
The Life And Times Of Joseph L. Greenstein
When I was a child and youth in the 1940s and ’50s the legendary strongmen of the turn of the twentieth century were, if no longer living, living legends. At least one, Bernarr Madfadden, the father of American bodybuilding, was still going strong.
The most legendary of the strongmen was Frederick Mueller who was known professionally as the Great Sandow.
In his heyday Sandow was so strong that he was capable of ‘exploding’ or breaking the ‘Test Your Strength’ machines in the arcades of Vienna, Austria. There were so many broken machines that it was thought a vandal was destroying them but when apprehended it was discovered that Sandow was not only testing his own strength but the strength of the machines. He flippantly suggested that they be made of better materials.
On stage as Spielman relates, Sandow, who was trained as a turner, could do a back somersault over a chair with a thirty-five pound dumbbell in each hand. He could do a one arm chin-up with the grip of any of his fingers of either hand, including his thumbs.
He could…wait a minute! I’ve heard something like that before. Oh yea, I remember now. In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan And The Lion Man he has Tarzan leap up to seize stakes pointing down from a ten foot high wall, then draw himself straight up until his torso was above the stakes, then roll over the top defeating the purpose of the stakes. Was he thinking of the Great Sandow when he wrote that?
I think he was.
Burroughs was a fan of boxing and a great admirer of the strongmen of the Golden Age, although he didn’t like the bulky physiques. He repeatedly denounces the physical build of the Strongmen in preference for Tarzan’s ‘smooth rippling muscles.’ In my day the bodybuilders were ridiculed as being ‘muscle bound.’ But the ladies panted when they said it. Tarzan is as strong or stronger than the strongmen but sleek.
Next one asks is there any place that it can be shown that Burroughs ever saw Sandow? yes, and where else? The Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. The Expo was a life changing experience for 17 year-old Ed Burroughs. Bill Hillman of ERBzine has written a wonderful series on the influence of the Fair on young Burroughs.
The influence of the Fair was as moving for the rest of America and the World as it was on Our Man. There apparently has never been so influential a World’s Fair as that of Chicago of 1893.
One of the best attended features of the Fair was put on by the Great Sandow. Bodybuilding had already gotten started in England. Sandow was a student of the innovative Professor Attila in London. He came to the attention of Florenz Ziegfeld while performing in New York. Ziegfeld brought him to Chicago for the Expo. Sandow was a sensation.
The Great Sandow
He created quite a stir at the fair. Not only did Burroughs see him there but so did a man named Bernarr Macfadden. At the time he was known as Bernard McFadden but he chose Bernarr because it sounded more like a lion’s roar and Macfadden because he thought it looked more distinguished in print. As a result of seeing Sandow Macfadden became the father of bodybuilding and the health movement in the United States. John Dos Passos spoofs him in Vol. III, The Big Money, of the his USA Trilogy.
Macfadden was the discoverer of isometric exercises, which his student, Charles Atlas, renamed Dynamic Tension and made a fortune.
Unless I’m mistaken Macfadden would cross ERB’s path sometime between 1908 to 1912.
Sandow made bodybuilding a rage after the Fair while Macfadden organized the sport around his magazine ‘Physical Culture’ which he began publishing in the wake of the Fair. Sandow also opened the way for a number of strongmen to build careers on their physiques.
They all passed through Chicago. How many of them ERB paid the modest price of admissio to see we can’t know, but as he always speaks of the strongmen in the plural one assumes that he saw several.
Anyone who has watched the Strongest Men In The World competition on cable TV will understand how impressive both the feats and the physiques of these men were.
In ERB’s day a man called Warren Travis Lincoln could lift a platform that held twenty-five men with his back. That was a weight of about 4200 pounds.
G.W. Rolandow could stack three decks of playing cards and tear them in two. One assumes that was before they were plastic coated.
Emil Knaucke who weighed in at five hundred pounds, a spectacle in itself, could hold a car above his head with one hand. Spielman doesn’t specify make or model.
Louis Cyr, one of the most famous strongmen, could restrain a team of horses on either side at the same time. Really spectacular stuff.
Bent Press Arthur Saxon
A man like Arthur Saxon of the Saxons was considered to be the strongest man in the world. He could do a bent press of nearly five hundred pounds. As in the photo, in the bent press a lifter raised a barbell above his head with one hand in a bent posture then raised another weight with his other hand.
Eighteen ninety to nineteen-ten were formative years for ERB. He would have from fifteen to thirty-five so that when he saw Sandow in ’93 at seventeen he was at a most impressionable age.
ERB turned 40 in 1915 and 50 in 1925.
By the twenties vitamins and food supplements had been discovered and were being developed for commercial use. Vitamins were still novel when I was kid in the late forties. Not everyone knew of their value as late as then.
The Great Sandow, Louis Cyr, and a trio of German strongmen called the Saxons were all naturally strong but by the 20s it was possible to build muscular Adonae from the scratch of a 98 lb. weakling. With vitamins, food supplements and a rigorous regimen for bodybuilding a normal body could be turned into as mammoth a specimen as Tarzan, as witness Arnold Schwarzenegger and his contemporaries who emerged from New York City gyms in the 1960s.
In point of fact you didn’t even need all that gym equipment. If you followed the body building plan of the most famous Adonis of the 40s and 50s, Charles Atlas, all you needed were your own opposed muscles.
Atlas took Macfadden’s isometric exercises and called them the more commercial sounding Dynamic Tension. By pitting one muscle against its opposite fantastic results could be achieved.
Charles Atlas, who changed his name from Angelo Siciliano, was voted the world’s most perfectly developed man in 1922 by his mentor, Macfadden and Physical Culture magazine.
Angelo, born in 1894 in Acri, Sicily came to the US in 1904, thus he would have been 18 in 1922, 18 in 1912.
Siciliano actually had been a 98 lb. weaking who had sand kicked in his face by a bully. His girl friend actually did walk away from him. Siciliano then built himself up into what I’ve always considered to be the image of Tarzan and changed his name to Charles Atlas.
I was not as successful with the Dynamic Tension plan Chuck sold me in the 50s but then I didn’t try that hard and I couldn’t afford the food supplements which are indispensable. Nevertheless it had become possible to turn out ‘Men Like Gods’ on an assembly line basis.
It is more than likely that Burroughs was very familiar with the bodybuilding or fitness program of Macfadden. That photo of him flexing his muscles on the dock at Coldwater is that of a man who has been working out. I can’t beleive that a man who was interested in magazines as Burroughs was couldn’t be familiar with Physical Culture Magazine. Not only would he have the living memory of the Great Sandow in his mind from the Expo but Bernarr Macfadden had moved his headquarters from Battle Creek to Chicago in 1908. He had a very prosperous looking facility.
During these years from 1899 when ERB was bashed in the head in Toronto to 1910 at least, he complainedof excruciating headaches that began when he got up in the morning and lasted through half the day. These would have been very enervating affecting his ability to work. In The Girl From Farris’s he has his hero Ogden Secor suffering from the same headaches going from doctor to doctor ‘tinkering with his skull’ in hopes of finding relief. The doctors could do nothing for Secor so he undertook a fitness regime which eased his situation. So must have ERB.
Once again, the picture of ERB standing with his legs apart flexing his muscles on the dock at Coldwater in 1916 shows that he was either proud of a moderate physique or he was trying to develop those ‘rippling’ muscles like Tarzan and Charles Atlas.
At fifty in 1925 ERB probably thought himself beyond the age when he could develop his physique into a semblance of his creation, Tarzan. Ten or twenty years younger and you might have seen Burroughs as another Charles Atlas or Tarzan.
There is every reason to believe that sometime between 1908 and 1912 he developed an interest in Macfadden’s program.
When he sat down to begin his Tarzan series at the end of 1911, Burroughs’ mind must have been filled with the feats of Sandow and the other strongmen. Anent this, Tarzan’s leopard skin loin cloth was borrowed from the strongmen. Leopard skin shorts were de riguer for the bodybuilding crowd.
Of course the role models for these strongmen were Samson and Heracles. The latter is better known in his Roman usage as Hercules. For the purposes of this essay I will refer to him as Heracles in hs Greek manifestation.
Especially in his original manifestation Heracles was a Sun god as the companion of the Earth Mother, Hera. When the Patriarchal system was imposed on the Matriarchy Hera was wed to Zeus while her former consort, Heracles- The Glory Of Hera- was demoted to the role of Holy Fool and the strngest man in the world.
ERB often refers to Tarzan as a Jungle God and a latter day Hercules. Burroughs had a good Greek and Latin education so one might asume that he had some familiarity with the cycle of myths devoted to the feats and tribulations of that ancient type of all strongmen, Heracles.
In fact, without stretching the point unduly, one can posit a relationship between the Pelasgian Sun God, Heracles and the Flaming God of Opar and through them to Tarzan; they can be construed as one.
Whether ERB was conscious of what he had done in conflating the three cannot be determined for sure but as he was manipulating valid historical data why shouldn’t he have been conscious of what he was doing? The Aztec ritual of tearing the heart out to offer to the sun god is implicit in scenes where Tarzan lies across the sacrificial block, pardon me, altar. The annual sacrifice of the queen’s consort is implicit once again as La raises the sacrificial knife. A blatant resemblance to Cybele and Attis.
While the subconsious is always important it is the conscious mind that organizes, plots and writes. As a writer I may have subconscious motives which may emerge but assembling and organizing my material is a conscious intellectual act. It is axiomatic that one cannot write what one does not know.
One of the great mysteries of mythological studies has been the relationship of Heracles to his namesake the former Matriarchal Earth Goddess, Hera. I noted just previously, during the matriarchy as the Sun, Heracles would have been appropriately called ‘The Glory Of Hera’ or of the Earth. The same notion can be applied to Mesopotamian and Egyptian mythology. For instance, as David Adams points out somewhere, the lion is a symbol of both the sun and the matriarchy. It is a fact that the body of the Sphinx at Memphis is older than the head. The head of the original has been replaced by that of a man. It therefore follows that the Sphinx was carved during the Matriarchy having either a lion’s or a woman’s head. After the succession of the Patriarchy the head was changed to reflect the New Order.
In the Greek Oedipus myth the Theban Sphinx was still represented as the original matriarchal symbol of a lion with a woman’s head. Woman-lion/sun/Heracles. The answer to her riddle after which she committed suicide was ‘man’ which denied the Matriarchy, hence she had to kill herself as the Patriarchy thus symbolically replaced the Matriarchy. Apply that to the Egyptian Sphinx and the change of heads.
Theban Sphinx
Now, the original Egyptian Sphinx was exactly the same as the Theban Sphinx: a woman’s head on a lion’s body. the Sphinx is positioned to be looking due East at sunrise in the Age Of Leo. Thus, perhap, the secret of the Sphinx is simply that as Mother Earth she sat waiting for her consort Heracles (or his Egypian counterpart) to appear on the horizon each morning.
The notion has simplicity to recommend it.
As we all know, Oparians were a group of Atlanteans isolated from the main body when mythical Atlantis broke apart and sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. The worship of the Flaming God was inherited from the parent civilization by Opar.
Thus whether Burroughs knew what he was doing or not he always gets the sequence of events right.
Without getting into any discussion of if, where or when Atlantis may have existed, let me say, neverttheless, that all the evidence points to a predecessor civilization anterior to Crete, Pelasgian Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia in much the same way Atlantis preceded Opar.
The predecessor civilization must have existed in the Mediterranean Basin during the last ice age when ocean levels, scientists tell us, were several hundred feet lower than they are today. There are evidences of quarrying several hundred feet below sea level on the flanks of the island of Malta for instance. Given this as a fact, then when the ice melted and the waters rose during the Great Flood to their present levels any society or civilization that existed in the Mediterranean Basin was forced to move to higher ground which is to say above the present sea level.
One thing is certain, if the Basin was habitable it was inhabited.
The disruption caused a long dark age from which mankind only slowly recovered. At the same time these relatively highly developed people moving into less developed savage societies had a fertilizing influence introducing more sophisticated ideas and methods such as agriculture.
Lower Egypt, one of Two Lands, was obviously settled by the displaced Libyan dynasty. After centuries of warfare the Upper Egyptians succeeded in conquering Lower Egypt uniting the Two Lands. The Third Dynasty was a Libyan Dynasty so that the warfare was translated from an external one to an internal one in which the Libyans defeated the Upper Egyptians. During the Libyan Dynasty the great pyramids were built reflecting in some way the the flooded predecessor civilization.
So Crete and Pelasgian Greece received survivors also. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia attribute their civilization to the advice of Oannes, John in English, who came from the sea.
Often ignored by classical scholars but obviously part of this great Mediterranean culture is ancient Spain. Now, Spain has one of the great traditions of the worship of Heracles as a Sun god. This tradition preceded and was uninfluenced by any Patriarchal tradition from Greece. In point of fact the Patriarchal Heracles went West to annex the Spanish traditions to the Patriarchal cause. In the process he rounded up the cattle of the Sun i.e. the Matriarachal Heracles to bring back to Greece. Throughout history, including modern Africa, lifting another man’s cattle transferred his authority to oneself. See the great cattle raid of Cooley in Irish mythology. It therefore follows that the Greek Patriarchal myths of Heracles are built on an earlier Matriarchal mythological cycle while being perverted or converted to Patriarchal needs.
Heracles was originally a sun god. He was the original of the Flaming God. I can’t say Burroughs knew this either consciously or subconsciously, however as we will see there is substantial evidence to indicate that he was consciously manipulating the material.
The city of Seville in Spain is built over a Sun Temple in which Heracles was the sun deity. This site beneath Seville can still be vistited today. Assuming that the history of the Spanish Heracles developed independently of the Greek Heracles which after all is a Greek interpretation of a Pelasgian god then it follows that the two traditions must have come from a common source. That source cannot have been other than the ante-deluvian civilization of the Mediterranean Basin.
It follows then that whatever names they were known by in this anterior civilization Hera was the Great Mother Goddess while her ‘Glory’ Heracles must be no other than the Flaming God, the Sun. What else could the ‘Glory’ of the Earth Mother be?
Thus when the Great Flood, which must be the same as that spoken of by the Sumerians who would have gotten the story from Oannes, destroyed the civilization of the Mediterranean Basin the inhabitants fled to the former highlands surrounding them taking their traditions with them. The Spanish Heracles was yet identical to the Pelasgian and Cretan models which later became variant.
When the Greeks entered Pelasgia at the beginning of the Arien Age, the Zodiac dates back to the anterior civilization, they found this remnant of the ante-deluvian civilization with immemorial religious traditions occupying the land. As the Arien Age began a great shift in the mental and social organization of man progressed in its evoltuion. The shift was from a Matriarchal consciousness to a Patriarchal consciousness. In other words, the God replaced the Goddess as the most important sex. Fecundation became more important than actual reproduction.
This meant that all the divine myths had to have all the sexual relationships reversed so that the God took precedence over the goddess. Hera could no longer be allowed to have a male god as her subordinate ‘Glory’, the roles had to be reversed. Hera would have to become the dependent of Zeus.
Homer’s Iliad is one key in the story of this reversal.
As Hera was unwillingly made subordinate to her Lord and Master, Zeus, Heracles had to be appropriated by the God. The Patriarchy then turned Heracles into a scourge of Hera and she his enemy in ridicule of the previous dispensation. Kind of a Burroughsian style sly joke.
The meaning of the name Heracles as the glory of Hera was thus lost. Heracles lost his identification with the Sun becoming a buffoon as the greatest of men; a physical giant of somewhat dim intelligence. Hera’s glory was turned into a laughing stock but still a good sort of fellow who could aspire to godhood at death.
In the Patriarchal myths Heracles destroyed various Matriarchal cult centers such as the Hydra at Lerna, the Stymphalian Swamps, the Stag of Artemis, the Nemean Lion and others. His cycle of adventures was involved in replacing the Matriarchal with the Patriarchal sarcastic ‘Glory’ of Hera.
To make a feeble Patriarchal attempt at accounting for the meaning of Heracles’ name Homer tells the following story in book XIX of the Iliad. Zeus, influenced by the goddess Folly, announced to the assembled Gods on Olympus that before the day was out a descendant of his lineage would be born to a mortal woman who would be the greatest man in the world.
Hera, who hated the infidelities of Zeus, heard his proclamation with scorn. She knew her husband but too well. She knew he referred to Alcmene who was bearing Heracles but she also knew that a son was to be born to the wife of Sthenelus who was only seven months pregnant. Sthenelus was of the lineage of Zeus.
Hera rushed off to visit Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to ask her to hasten the birth of Eurytheus while delaying that of Heracles. The former having been born first became the greatest monarch of the age after the Patriarchal fashion but by Matriarchal means.
Hastening back to Alcmene Eileithyia uncrossed her legs allowing Heracles to be the younger son of Zeus born on that day. While Heracles was the bravest and strongest of men he was nevertheless compelled by Hera’s resourcefulness and prompt action to be subservient to Eurystheus. Thus the will of Zeus which could not be averted was perverted by Hera to thwart the Big Guy’s will.
Heracles was still the strongest man alive but he was subordinate to the will of Hera through Eurystheus, portrayed as one of th weakest and most cowardly men of his time hiding behind his mother’s skirts but by the grace of Hera and the matriarchy, the greatest ruler.
Zeus, appalled by his lapse of judgment threw Folly off Olympus from which she is still banned.
In that sardonic manner Homer explained the meaning of Heracles as the glory of Hera. She had used him to Ace Zeus. Heracles had been stripped of his role as the glorious Sun companion of Hera. He comes down to us as the strongest man who ever lived. In the Roman nomenclature of Hercules he became the role model of every strong man who ever lifted a dumbbell. Yet they all wore leopard skin shorts, the leopard being a symbol of the Matriarchy. You can’t fool Mother Nature.
To Burroughs who was a student of Greek mythology the great strongmen of the Golden Age must have appeared as men like gods. Their feats of strength, their marvelous physiques, were so far beyond the abilities of ordinary men that they must have seemed to be in a class by themselves far above mortal men.
In that sense Tarzan is the greatest of the strongmen, above Sandow, Arthur Saxon and even Heracles.
Heracles himself had been demoted to a mere mortal although his legend was so great that he was allowed immortality by the Patriarchy after his mortal death. Unwilling to grant him too much credit he was allowed to be the doorman of Olympus. He held this position throughout the Arien Age being replaced by St. Peter in the New Dispensation of the Piscean Age.
Burroughs, familiar with the mythic cycle of Heracles, however he understood it, plays with both identities of Heracles in the person of Tarzan at Opar. He also brings in a number of elements from H. Rider Haggard’s novel She. There can be no doubt of the influence of Haggard. Burroughs even names his heroine La which is what ‘She’ is designated as in French translations of Haggard’s novel. The palance of Opar is also based to some extent on the labyrinthine caves of She.
There are many literary influences for the creation of Tarzan not least of which are the real life H.M. Stanley and Haggard’s fictional heroes Sir Henry Curtis and Allan Quatermain. I would now like to direct attention to a third, that of the heor of She, Leo Vincey.
If one closely examines Vincey it will be discovered that he too was a Sun King whose death had been caused in an earlier incarnation by She. The cartouche which contains the name of Leo’s distant Egyptian ancestor was translated as ‘The Royal Son Of Ra’ or son of the Sun as in Egyptian mythology Ra is the sun.
Leo also translates from the Latin as Lion so we have the Son of the Sun who also is a Lion Man which is how Burroughs refers to Tarzan in ‘The Invincible’ and undoubtedly as how he always thought of his creation.
Haggard translates Vincey as the Avenger. Tarzan is the ‘Avenger’ or guard of Africa. Haggard describes Vincey as almost inhumanly beautiful while Tarzan is the most handsome man in the world not unlike Charles Atlas.
Haggard’s She is indescribably old kept forever youthful by having bathed in the fire of eternal youth. Hera was also eternally youthful and a virgin queen. She restored her youth and virginity by bathing annually in a holy spring. Hera’s bath obviously refers to the Spring rains which inundated Mother Earth just prior to vegetation springing forth in virgin birth. After the summer heat the vegetation dies down and Earthy Hera becomes barren once more to await her bath and return to virginity.
Mr. Dynamic Tension- Charles Atlas
So a connection can be made between Sun>Heracles>Vincey>Tarzan and Mother Nature>Hera>She>La.
Burroughs La was neither ancient nor immortal in the personal sense although she was the latest in an immortal line of Priestesses. She is a priestess of the Sun or Ra, The Flaming God.
Haggard’s Leo Vincey was the direct descendant of Kallikrates She’s great love of two millennia past. She, or Alyesha, to use her name, had killed Kallicrates in a rage. Kallikrate’s descendants were sworn to avenge the murder. Thus Vincey travels from England to far off Africa to locate this fabulous woman.
Kallikrates was the love of Alyesha’s very long life. When she recognizes Leo Vincey as her lost lost love she saves his life while offering him eternal youth if he will only bathe in the flames of eternal life. He hesitates to do so. To encourage him Alyesha steps once again into the flames which was a serious miscalculation. She crumbled to dust. Thus while Leo Vincey doesn’t actually avenge the death of Kallikrates she is nevertheless his victim.
Tarzan while actually born in Africa was conceived in England so he made the trip to Opar from England although he is ignorant of La. When Tarzan is captured in Opar he is laid on the altar of the Flaming God, La with the sacrifical knife raised, looks down on this Jungle God, this man like a god, and falls in love. Thus we have a replay of the She-Kallikrates situation.
Unable to take Tarzan’s life, La releases him begging him for his love. Alyesha’s full title was She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed in the Matriarchal sense. The old conflict arises, Tarzan is more on the Patriarchal side, he has his moly in the waistband of his loin cloth, monagamous we are led to believe, happily married, so the Lion Man Sun King declines the honor of being mated to La>Hera. He asserts his Patriarchal prerogative to disobey although he always has a soft spot in his heart for La.
In a fairly masterful way ERB conflates the legend of Heracles, the fiction of H. Rider Haggard and the incredible strongmen of the Golden Age and his own little bit to write a charming and beautiful story which is fairly simple on the surface but one which becomes immensely rich with a deeper understanding of the sources.
Ernest Hemmingway once said that before one sat down to write one should have ten time the information in your possession as you put on paper else the story will seem shallow and contrived. It would seem that the sources upon which Burroughs was drawing, from the bodybuilding strongmen of his day to the legendary cycle of Heracles to the adventures of H.M. Stanley and the fiction of H. Rider Haggard might well fulfill Hemingway’s dictum.
When one searches for the sources of Burroughs one finds layer after layer of golden riches while discovering that in fact ERB did indeed create a man like a god- Tarzan The Magnificent.
Addendum
This is a quote taken from Bonzo Dog’s song Mr. Apollo. I don’t know whether the reader is familiar with the Bonzos but they were one of my favorites. Several glorious LPs. Neil Innes came from them as well as the great but tragic Viv Stanshall. Leave those drugs alone, boys.
Follow Mr. Apollo,
Everybody knows a healthy body
Makes a healthy mind.
Follow Mr. Apollo,
He’s the strongest man the world has ever seen.
If you take his courses
He’ll make you big and rough.
And you can kick the sand right back in their faces.
A few years ago I was a four stone apology-
Today, I am two separate…Gorillas.
Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
Long may they wave.
Part 7, Tarzan And The Lion Man: A Review
May 20, 2008
A Review
Themes And Variations
The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs
#18, Tarzan And The Lion Man
Part 7 of 10 Parts
by
R.E. Prindle
First published on the ezine, ERBzine
The Storyteller
The City Of God
7 a.
The first to the Falls, Rhonda was then spotted from the plateau by some of the Apes of God.
The Reviewer
Now begins the story within the story. A long short story or novelette that is as fine as anything in Fantasy or Science Fiction. This story is the eighteen caret ruby in the diadem of the Tarzan series. That this story should have gone unrecognized for over seventy years is incredible.
Not only is it objectively stunning but the subjective richness is beyond measure. Just as some background on the number of influences on the story let us begin with two, both of which are interconnected in ERB’s mind.
The novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, had a profound effect on ERB’s mind. He apparently read it early which is to say before 1900. The possibility of creating life had interested him from the beginning of his corpus while references to it are interspersed throughout. One of the greatest of his creations, the great physician and scientist Dr. Ras Thavas, will succeed in creating life five years hence in The Synthetic Men Of Mars but will botch the job terribly.
In this story Burroughs’ character, God, doesn’t create life but he manipulates genes to create a whole new species. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818 and in 1931 Universal made the definitive movie. That was two years before Burroughs wrote Lion Man so it is reasonable to assume the movie had an effect on him.
IMDb provides a quote from the movie that may have inspired ERB; I don’t think there is any doubt that he saw this seminal horror film.
Henry Frankenstein: Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive….It’s alive, it’s moving, etc.
Victory Moritz: Henry- in the name of god!
Henry Frankenstein: Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!
Frankenstein's Monster
The 1931 Frankenstein is stil an overwhelming experience to watch over seventy years later. For the audiences of 1931 it must have been overpowering. The fabulous castle of Dr. Frankenstein was surely an inspiration for the castle of Burroughs’ God. What Burroughs did with the inspiration is as astonishing as both the Shelley original and the movie.
In the news also at the time for over a period of a decade or more was the spectacular career of John R. ‘Goat Glands’ Brinkley. This is an astonishing story. I rely mainly on two accounts: Vishwas Gatitonde’s excellent article “Magic Men’ in BB New Series #59 and the account in Wlofman Jack’s autobiography. Wolfman Jack’s autobiography slipped by unnoticed but is one of the great autobiographies of the second half of the twentieth century, probably the twentieth century and possibly of all time.
Also see on the internet:
Dr. John R. Brinkley- A Story You Should Know
Grift, Goats and Gonads by Scott McLemee
Kansas State Historical Papers- John R. Brinkley
Border Radio Quackery by Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford
The Goat Gland Doctor by Joe Schwarcz, PH.D
The medical practices of God involve gland transplants along with genetic implanting or splicing. Over the years based on a foundation of Frankenstein ERB had built up a magnificent fantastical scientific edifice of life creation based on Evolution.
There can be no doubt that he read and thought about the subject a great deal. He was very well informed on evolutionary matters. He was a well educated, thoughtful, intelligent man contrary to nearly every opinion about him. His ideas as presented in Lion Man are probably as far as he could take them based on the knowledge of his time. The discovery of DNA was only a little over a decade away, actually made a few years before he died. One wonders what he would have made of it. Even then ERB’s notion of ‘germ cells’ with their indestructability contains the essence of DNA so ERB was on the right track in his thinking. I’m going to handle this out of order as the ideas explain what follows better.
ERB was familiar with the use of cannibalism to ingest certain qualities of slain warriors. Thus it was thought that to eat the brains of especially intelligent people transmitted that intelligence to oneself. To eat the flesh of a brave man made oneself also brave, etc.
From there to cellular therapy is a short step. Even though there was probably no one who believed in the physical benefits of human cannibalism this side of Africa when it came to animals parts intelligent men threw common sense out the window.
Cellular Therapy arose at the end of the nineteenth century. Joe Schwarcz explains:
Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard, a noted French physiologist, had shocked the medical community by injecting himself with the crushed testicles of young dogs and gunea pigs. Afterwards he claimed that he had regained the physical stamina and intellectual vigor of his youth. Many men availed themselves of ‘La Methode Sequardienne’, but once the placebo effect was filtered out little remained. In Vienna physiologist Eugen Steinach proposed that youthful vitality could be restored by increasing levels of testosterone. the easiet way to do this, Steinach said, was through vasectomy. Sperm production wasted testosterone, and if the channel leading from the testes to the ejaculatory duct were tied off, then blood levels of testosterone would rise. Brinkley may also have heard of the work of Serge Vorenoff, a French doctor who was stirring u a storm of controversy with his experimental gland transplants. Vorenof had been a physician in the court of the King of Egypt, and there he had spent a great deal of time treating the court eunuchs, who suffered from a variety of illnesses. He hyposthesized that maintaining active genital glands was the secret of health. As proof, he cited his experiments with an aging ram into which he transplanted the testicles of young lamb. the ram’s wool got thicker, and his sexual vigor returned. Voreneff then went on to transplant bits of monkey testes into aging men; he claimed success, although he could offer no scientific validation of his claim. In America the stage was set for the meteoric rise of J.R. Brinkley.
Brinkley began to transplant goat glands into the testicles of his patients. As he began his career in the early 1920s radio made its appearance as a commercial entity. On the qui vive Brinkley realized its potential to increase his business and spread his gospel. He bought the first radio station in Kansas in 1923, his practice was in Melford, His call leters were KFKB- Kansas First-Kansas Best- as bold a claim as his medical ones. He was actually a fine broadcaster transmitting Country Music, weather, farm reports and other items of interest as well as infomercials for his medical practice. This notoriety brought the AMA and government down on him. By 1930 he had had both his medical and broadcasting licenses revoked.
Now, here’s where the man showed his innovative brilliance. This really got him attention. Nothing daunted he moved down to fabled Del Rio, Texas, Brinkley created the fable, across the Rio Grande from Villa Acuna. His radio station in Kansas was small, a mere 1000 watts, although probably non-directional.
In Mexico without US regulations he was able to build a boombox of 75,000 to 100,000 non-directional watts. This was later incresed, if this is believable, to 500,000 watts and tahen to1,000,000 watts according to Fowler and Crawford who really should know.
Clap For The Wolfman
Alright. When I grew up in Michigan in the 1950s I could clearly pick up the successor Del Rio station after dark when its power was only 250,000 watts. Wolfman Jack who worked the station tells an amusing story of his arrival. Driving through the desert to the transmitter he noted that all the cars parked there had left their headlights on. This mystified him but then he learned that the wattage was so powerful that headlights glowed in consequence. The air crackled around him. At a half million and a million watts people must have levitated.
So, Dr. Brinkley was much in the news all these years so that ERB as Gaitonde suggests couldn’t have missed him. While in our time there is no reason to mention La Methode Sequardienne yet with Brinkley being reviled it is quite possible ERB came across a discussion of cellular therapy in his reading which did mention these earlier experiments.
ERB has God, a formerly handsome Englishman, create a hybrid hominid between a gorilla and a human. God himself has regressed being a hybrid human/gorilla. p. 133:
“What is this strange purpose we are to serve?” asked Rhonda.
“It is purely scientific; but it is a long story and I shall have to start at the beginning,” explained God.
In the beginning. God appears to have been a medical student back in England with a strong interest in biology. p. 134:
“I had always been intrigued by Lamarck’s investigations and later by Darwin’s. They were on the right track, but they did not go far enough; then shortly after my graduation, I was traveling in Austria when I met a priest at Brunn who was working along lines similar to mine. His name was Mendel. We exchanged ideas. He was the only man in the world who could appreciate me, but he couldn’t go all the way with me. I got some help from him; but doubtless, he got more from me; though I never heard anything more about him before I left England.”
ERB gives us a fair amount of information here. He is familiar with the Frenchman Lamarck of the eighteenth century who centered on heridity. A red flag goes up on Darwin because if God left England in 1859 he would have known nothing of Darwin who published that year. In any event while Darwin’s Origin Of Species sheds light on the mechanics of the variations among a species I can’t find any evidence of how species themselves evolve. ERB is also familiar with the genetics of the monk, not priest, Gregor Mendel, who published in 1866 sending a copy to Darwin which the latter dismissed as irrelevant. However, Burroughs through God seems to have taken Darwin less seriously than Mendel.
He imples that Mendel was on the right track with his peas but that following the same line of reasoning God went well beyond him which indeed he did. Mendel was disregarded in 1866, his revival beginning in the year 1900. So Burroughs in 1930 is keeping up his reading.
Burroughs then goes on to explain God’s theory of heredity. His theory is not all that bad. It shows Burroughs obviously doing some reading and thinking on the subject. p. 134:
“In 1857 I felt that I had practically solved the myster of heredity, and in that year I published a monograph on the subject. I will explain the essence of my discoveries in as simple language as possible, so that you may understand the purpose you are to serve.
“Briefly, there are two types of cells we inherit from our parents- body cells and germ cells. these cells are composed of chromosomes containing genes- a separate gene for each mental and physical characteristic. The body cells, dividing and multiplying, changing, growing, determine the sort of individual we are to be; the germ cells remaining practically unchanged from our conception, determine what characteristics our progeny will inherit, through us, from our progentors and from us.
“I determined that heredity could be controlled through the transference of these genes from one individual to another. I learned that these genes never die; they are abosolutely indestructible- the basis of life on earth, the promise of immortality through all eternity.
It appears that ERB’s main concern is heredity and indeed genealogy was important to him. While his information is a clumsy account compared to what has been learned since then, given the times ERB was quite advanced. He doesn’t have the handle on DNA which is a decade or so in the future, Watson and Crick published in 1947, but in the germ cells he’s on the track of the right idea. The notion of the body cells is, of course, superfluous.
But now God runs up against a brick wall when he publishes his theory in 1857. Remember Mendel’s discoveries were still eight years in the future while so far ahead of their time that they will be disregarded for thirty-four years.
I don’t know what horror films have been released by this time, Dracula and Frankenstein for sure, but here the plot seems very familiar, possible Burke and Hareish. Unable to proceed in a legal manner because of society’s obtuseness God turns to criminal means, but quite novel crime.
As he has detemined that germ cells are immortal he raids the tombs of Westminster Abbey extracting germ cells from Henry VIII and his court and entourage. Thus he has a little time capsule when he is discovered and flees England to avoid blackmail. He decides to conduct his experiments on gorillas in Africa. He finds the greatest concetration of gorillas in Africa, and hence on earth, in the valleyof diamonds. In something like seventy years he converts pure gorillas into a hybrid of gorillas and humans capable of speech and human cognition. They build his magnificent City of God for him which must have been quite new when Tarzan arrived.
As they are bred from the genes of medieval Englishmen the effects of Lamarckian heredity are evident as they speak a medieval form of English and replicate the City called London after its medieval progenitor. Following Burroughs’ earlier thought in Opar the gorillas accept only beings born in gorilla form with human attributes. Sports and mutations are expelled. the other are, of course, the result of Mendelian genetics that are beings with odd combination of genes.
God was born in 1833, the same year as Burroughs’ father, thus in 1933 he is one hundred one years old. Some forty years back or so as he realized he was aging so he decided to splice in the body cells of young gorillas in a form of cellular therapy to rejuvenate himself. This worked well in preserving his youth but unfortunately the more gorilla body cells he spliced in the more gorilla-like he became, so that when Tarzan and Rhonda meet him he is a grotesque hybrid, more intellignet than the gorilla hybrids, but reverting rapidly to pure gorilla. Serious problem.
God is very pleased to capture two such fine looking human specimens as Tarzan and Rhonda because by splicing in their body cells he will be able to resume his human shape in some style.
So Burroughs has been developing his ideas in a creditable scientific way. While it’s true his actual science is speculative he is employing some fairly sound reasoning on the matter that may not have been too dissimilar from the tack taken by Stalin’s scientists, while creating a human-ape hybrid has apparently been a timeless fascination. It is said that our own scientists have succeeded in actually creating a chimp-human hybrid but that the specimens have been destroyed. I haven’t any confirmed proof that such has been done but rumors are around.
Having given a reasonable scientific explanation of the gorilla hybrids and God’s purpose for Tarzan and Rhonda, Burroughs with his usual ghoulish delight introduces his favorite topic of cannibalism. He informs the two that after satisfying his need for body cells he intends to eat them thus imbibing their characteristics. He also says that he will extract several glands from Rhonda for some special purpose.
I’m not exactly clear on what cannibalism meant to ERB. It seems he associates it with his father who was particulary hard on Burroughs in his youth which ERB may have interpreted as being eaten alive by his father. As we have God, cannibalism and his father associated here his father may be the reason for the recurring reference to cannibalism is his work.
The female glands recur again in Tarzan’s Quest where the Kavuru chief Kavandavanda requires female glands for his immortality pills and Vishwas Gaitonde finds the subject mentioned again in Tarzan The Magnificent.
So when Rhonda arrives at the Falls and is spotted from above by the seeming gorillas, she is actually spotted by a clone of the real fifteenth century Lord Buckingham in his gorilla guise.
Now begins a series of astonishments, jokes and twists such as are found in few novels. As I mentioned, today much of this is old hat, but in 1933 this was startling fresh and new. At this point we are unaware of the hybrid nature of the gorillas. The following passage then was not only startling to Rhonda but to us. p. 94:
(Rhonda) felt very small and alone and tired. With a sigh she sat down on a rounded boulder and leaned against another piled behind it. All her remaining strength seemed to have gone from her. She closed her eyes wearily, and two tears rolled down her cheeks. Perhaps she dozed, but she was startled into wakefulness by a voice speaking near her. At first she thought she was dreaming and did not open her eyes.
“She is alone,” the voice said. “We will take her to God- he will be pleased.”
it was an English voice, or at least the accent was English, but the tones were gruff and deep and guttural. The strange words convinced her she was dreaming. She opened her eyes, and shrank back with a little scream of terror. Standing close to her were two gorillas, or such she thought them to be until one of them opened his mouth and spoke.
“Come with us,” it said; “we are going to take you to God;” then it reached out a mighty, hairy hand and seized her.
There’s a shocking opener to the twilight zone between R2 and R3 as ERB prepares the curiosity of the reader for what is perhaps the most amazing story he ever told.
King Kong
Rhonda, physically and emotionally exhausted by the terrific events of the past few days, slips into a trance in the middle of Africa only to be brought out of it by voices speaking Enalish saying they are taking her to God. What can that possibly mean? When she opens her eyes she sees two gorillas are doing the speaking.
That’s something else, isn’t it? Had they been on the screen could they have competed with King Kong that was released in that year of 1933? Out of King Kong came 1949’s Mighty Joe Young while the public’s fascination with gorillas continued until Planet Of The Apes which, if it doesn’t owe anything to Burroughs’ story, develops the theme ad absurdam. Kong, Young and Planet Of The Apes, Stalin’s experiments all owe their origins to the Tarzan oeuvre.
Burroughs raises the theme to heights that have never been surpassed. Combining the human gorillas with the City of God was incomparable genius.
With the background clear let’s take a leap into the future.
The City Of God
God At Work
7 b.
The whole thing seemed like a hideous and grotesque nightmare,
yet it was so real that she couldn’t know whether or not
she was dreaming.
Lion Man p. 95
In taking the ‘germ cells’ of individuals from the time of Henry VIII, as the cells were cloned with those of the gorillas the hybrids cloned the environment they knew. While clones have no mermory of a previous existence, in the popular imagination they do. Thus in the paranoid classic movie The Boys From Brazil of 1978 the number of clones of Adolf Hitler all exhibited the supposed conditioned responses of the original which they could not have experienced themselves.
At the same time ERB cleverly replicates the political situation between God, Church and Henry VIII. When Rhonda was captured, two gorillas named the Dukes of Buckingham and Suffolk quarrel over whether she is to be taken to Henry VIII or God. As we still have no idea of what is going on we are as mystified as Rhonda.
And then as Rhonda tries to order her bobbled brain she realized she could communicate with these improbably English speaking apes. p. 96:
Now she had an instant in which to think clearly, and with it came the realization that she had the means of communicating with her captors.
‘Who are you?” she damanded. “And why have you made me a prisoner?”
‘The two turned suddenly upon her. She thought their faces denoted surprise.
“She speaks English!” exclained one of them.
There’s a neat turnabout similar to when Tarzan addresses Buckingham in Mangani and the gorilla answers him in English. The gorilla exclaims, “She speaks English.”
Then follows an explanation of God, Henry VIII and Cranmer that only succeeds in confusing Rhonda further as she seems to be in some costume play in which for some inexplicable reason actors clad as gorillas are acting out a play about Henry VIII. She pinches herself to no avail. She is awake. This isn’t theatre, although Hamlet soon would be played in Nazi uniforms which is just about as ridiculous.
The gorillas take her to Henry VIII where we will leave her until she is joined by Tarzan.
While Rhonda escaped theArabs Naomi had been recaptured. In company with the Arabs she is brought to the canyon that leads to an easy ascent of the plateau according to the map. As the ascent becomes steep they leave the horses with Eyad going ahead on foot. Awaiting them at the crest is Stalin’s dream corps. Throughout the oeuvre one is always amazed at the disregard for their own well being the apes exhibit. They charge in story after story with complete disregard for their own well being. Always a signficant portion are left on the field of battle but the survivors never complain while Tarzan complacently accepts their sacrifice as his due.
So here, barehanded against the Arab firearms the gorillas launch a wave attack reminiscent of the Chinese in Korea that doesn’t stop until all the Arabs are dead. No regard at all for casualities. No wonder Stalin thought Burroughs was on to something. While the apes perform as they have always performed in Tarzan stories the difference here is that these are not mere apes but hybrids with human intelligence. If Burroughs was aware of Stalin’s experiments was he laughing at the Great Commissar? Is this battle a reference to Stalin? One can’t be positive of course but I am sure that the character of God-the formerly handsome Englishman- is partially based on H.G. Wells who was associated with Stalin.
Naomi was with the Arabs. She is captured by Buckingham who asks her how she got away from God; she is identical to Rhonda so Buckingham naturally confused her for the latter. The Apes sense of smell was not as developed as Tarzan’s. I’m sure the Big Bwana would have smelled the difference immediately.
ERB is now dealing with his sexual problems. Of the three women involved with the City of God- Naomi, Rhonda and Balza, it is necessary to sort out which woman represents what to ERB. As Naomi is weak and vacillating she obviously represents Emma. Rhonda who is strong and self-willed seems to represent ERB’s Anima ideal or in other words, La of Opar. La disappears from the oeuvre after Tarzan The Invincible of 1930 but as Tarzan and Rhonda in God’s prison replicate Tarzan and La in the Lion’s den of Invincible it seems probable that ERB has transported La from the fantasy world of Opar to the mere imaginary world of the movies. This leaves Balza- The Golden Girl- who probably represents Florence, but we will deal with her in the appropriate place.
ERB has now gotten the two women, the Arabs and Tarzan to the Falls. Orman, West and the safari are assembling at the base of the Falls so, having dissolved his story after the Bansuto attack ERB has now reintegrated it.
After a series of adventures during which Buckingham kills Suffolk, Tarzan appears to rescue Naomi killing Buckingham. At this point in Burroughs’ psychology he assumes the identity of his ordinary self and that of Tarzan into one being. As the movie people have never seen Tarzan they assume that he is Stanley Obroski his identical twin. Tarzan does not correct anyone but allows them to believe he is Stanley.
As I perceive it then ERB has now deluded himself into believing that he is Tarzan. Those who know him still perceive him as Ed Burroughs. He has no choice but to let them believe that because if he attempted to impose his delusion on them he might have been committed. Thus for a period of about five to six years from 1934 to 1939-40 Burroughs perceives himself as Tarzan but capitulates in Tarzan And The Madman giving up his illusion of being the Big Bwana. In Lion Man he describes Tarzan as a madman so the two novels are linked by the concept of madness.
After writing Madman Burroughs left California for Hawaii where he forced Florence away from him. WWII came along which saved him from himself. After the war he went back to LA to die. It is interesting that he didn’t choose to live in Tarzana but bought a house in Encino that backed against the Promised Land. thus like Moses, with whom there was a connection made in Tarzan Of The Apes, ERB was destined to view the Promised Land but not enter it.
In Lion Man he is flush with the hope of being able to live out his fantasy. He is now a few months from abandoning Emma so symbolically he returns Naomi to the safari at the Falls from whence she disappears from the story.
Only Rhonda and Balza will figure in the rest of the story. Emma is no more although Jane will appear again in Quest probably as Emma’s replacement Florence. In Magnificent Florence is mentioned only anonymously as Tarzan’s ‘wife.’ ERB is definitely struggling.
Having delivered Naomi to the safari Tarzan then reascends the plateau in search of Rhonda and the City of God.
The City Of God
7 c.
Every one of us, I believe, is possessed of two characters.
Often time they are so much alike that the duality is not noticeable,
but again there is a divergence so great
That we have the phenomenon of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
in a single individual.
E.R. Burroughs- The Swords Of Mars
Tarzan And the Lion Man was followed at the end of 1933 by the Mars story The Swords Of Mars which features the return of John Carter. ERB had taken a vacation from Emma returning to the scene of his own early adventures- Arizona. Not coincidentally in the White Mountain of Apache country. ERB’s motivations are sometimes obscure. He was in the Army in Arizona in 1896-97 which was before he married Emma. So he took his leave of absence from Emma to a place before he married her. Setting the clock back, so to speak, somewhat reminiscent of The Eternal Lover.
Just as Tarzan and Stanley met in Lion Man so while about to go to sleep, O.B.- The Other Burroughs- hears the door open, the clank of a man in war gear walking across the floor; terrified like an adolescent in a bad dream, O.B. is relieved and pleased when John Carter, back from Mars, greets him. A real Jekyll and Hyde situation. Thus as with Tarzan and Stanley the two Martian aspects of Buroughs are reunited but not melded. John Carter then tells O.B. a bedtime story as though Burroughs were a child again. I’m not that familiar with the Mars stories but there must be a connection to Lion Man and the MGM situation. This must be true because this is the novel in which the opening letters of each chapter spell- TO FLORENCE WITH ALL MY LOVE, ED. One assumes then that although the decision to leave Emma was difficult to make, ERB made the final decision in the Arizona mountains.
So now a few months earlier Tarzan/Stanley makes the journey to the City of God where he will be reunited with his Anima ideal, Rhonda -La of Opar- in prison. Thus his whole person both Anima and Animus are locked up by MGM.
Rhonda had been taken to Henry VIII by Buckingham and Suffolk. The city was called London, the country England and the river The Thames. As ERB jokingly smirks- The English always take a little bit of England with them wherever they go. Pretty funny, actually.
Here the events of Henry’s reign are being reenacted. As the apes are clones of Henry and his court who replicate their times one wonders whether each succeeding generation will be stuck in this one period of history reenacting it over and over until the end of time. Once again I am reminded of The Eternal Lover. ERB seems to be obsessed by the idea of time.
Rhonda was first placed with the wives of Henry, a week later being moved to a cell in God’s castle where Tarzan found her when he too was captured.
For now he was moving through the night until he came up against the ten foot high wall surrounding the City of London and within it the City of God. Here we have the historical confrontation between the spiritual and temporal powers. At the least the story is a very humorous parody of the religious situation of Henry VIII. Once again ERB ridicules religion and this is done so cleverly and with such genius.
But there are many levels of meaning. Earlier I mentioned that the capture of Tarzan may have been meant to replicate ERB;’s capture by MGM. In that sense then the City of God might represent MGM which boasted that it had more stars then Heaven. So there is probably a joke there too.
On the other hand, God is described as a formerly handsome Englishman. The only candidate for that role I can come up with is ERB’s bete noir, H.G. Wells. I think that I have adequately documented the literary feud between Wells and Burroughs. Wells began well with his scientific romances. While not as fresh and stunning as they were at the time of issue they still hold up well today. Even though ERB denied having ever read Wells I think that claim can be dismissed out of hand. ERB, then, would have been as impressed with Wells’ early romances as anyone else. Then when Wells began his campaign of defamation and ridicule which is most clearly represented in his Mr. Blettsworthy On Rampole Island he fell from favor in Burroughs’ eyes, hence the grotesquely deformed ‘formerly handsome Englishman.’
As much as I like Wells he does pontificate. Like all Liberals he has a difficult time distinguishing his opinion from truth, right and wrong, or reality. While he does sometimes make a hit in his prophesying he is mostly wrong. Backing the Worker’s Paradise of Stalin’s USSR was certainly wrong and more than enough to discredit him in the staunch anti-Communist Burroughs’ eyes.
Wells probably shook Burroughs’ faith in the glory of England which had been a keystone of his secular faith fromt he beginning. Thus, combining MGM, Stalin and the USSR and Wells, Burroughs packages all the troublemakers of this perilous time for him into one big box with a bigger bow on top.
As his story could have no effect on his situation let us hope it was at least cathartic for him. When Tarzan ends up in the cage with Rhonda that about epitomizes Burroughs’ situation vis-a-vis MGM, Stalin and Wells. There are so many coincidences here that the brain revolves like a turret. Was it wholly coincidental that Wells showed up in Hollywood at the end of ’35 to visit fellow Red Charlie Chaplin just as Burroughs was completely boxed in because of his Guatemalan adventure?
Isn’t it amazing that Burroughs met his fate in Guatemala, the scene of the adventures of his early hero General Christmas and also the scene of some of the adventures of Ogden McClurg who was killed shortly after this return from the area in 1926? It may be truly coincidental but the further one digs very often the more dirt one turns up.
Burroughs may have felt confident he could write his way out of this box just as he was able to escape by self-publishing in 1930; perhaps he thought he could escape this time by making his own movies. If so, a little analysis would have shown him that the rules had drastically changed. Especially as he had signed the rights to represent his character Tarzan away.
Coincidental with the release of the MGM Tarzan movies which preempted the nature of Tarzan from literature came the decline in Burroughs’ own literary powers. Whereas in 1930 he was able to respond to the challenge with a series of top novels, after Lion Man there is a preciptious decline in the the quality of is work. While the later novels have their charms for Burroughs’ admirers they do lack commercial appeal.
By 1935 also Burroughs had antagonized radio which had become the major source of his income so that that medium was closed to him during his lifetime. With publication revenues declining and the comics by Burroughs’ own admission producing a pittance, ERB had only one major source of income left and that was the moves. MGM had him over a barrel.
MGM might have produced a whole series of Tarzan films along the lines of the Charlie Chan movies as Burroughs reuefully remarked but they chose instead to issue only four movies between 1932 and 1939. Obviously the makret would have borne more. The limited release schedule kept EBB on a short financial tether.
It is said that events cast their shadow before them so that it is possible, if not probable, that Burroughs foresaw the shape of things to come even as he wrote Lion Man.
In 1930 when the Reds invaded his dream land of Opar ERB abandoned that fantasy. The fabled city ceased to exist in his imagination while disappearing from the oeuvre. Now in Lion Man it appears that the enemy had captured the castle while building a ten foot wall around it with Tarzan/Burroughs on the outside. Thus Burroughs’ dream of separating himself from the world by a tne foot wall has been inverted in his imagination. He wasn’t keeping the world out; the world was keeping him out.
In the novel succeeding Lion Man, The Swords Of Mars, when the mad inventor Fal Sivas quails at taking hsi invented spaceship to the Martian moon Thuria the following exchange takes place between he and John Carter:
“But you built this ship to go to Thuria,: Carter cried. “You told me so yourself.”
“It was a dream,” he mumbled; “I am always dreaming, for in dreams nothing bad an happen to me.”
Fal Sivas can be taken as an alter ego of Burroughs. The Sivas probably refers to the Hindu god Shiva or Siva with whom Burroughs had become a devotee or developed a fascination for. Thus while his heroes Tarzan and John Carter are men of action Sivas/Burroughs or any other combination is not.
So in Lion Man Burroughs is desperately trying to become the man of action rather than the dreamer. The problem now is that ERB himself is past the point of no return. He has been walled out from the City of God.
In dreams however Tarzan enters the Heavenly City by a fantastic feat of strength that recalls Burroughs’ 1890-1920 infatuation with the Strong Men such as the Great Sandow.
The wall which Tarzan fancies was built to keep out lions i.e. the Lion Man has sharpened stakes pointing downward. p. 124:
…he leaped for the stakes. His hands closed upon two of them; then he drew himself up slowly until his hips were on a level with his hands, his arms straight at his sides. Leaning forward, he let his body drop slowly forward until it rested on the stakes and the top of the wall.
That seems to be an impossible feat of strength except in dreams, but then by this point Tarzan thinks he is dreaming. This might as well be an MGM movie lot such Burroughs spent five weeks on. Here the dream faces a sort of reality. As though pasing through a movie set as ERB must have done during those five weeks Tarzan comes to the steps leading to the Heaven of God. this Stariway to Heaven, Jacob’s Ladder.
As if to accent the relationship to MGM he passes the Apes of God who are dancing and partying. The scene will be replicated at the foot of the Falls when the movie company duplicates this scene thus strengthening the connection with MGM.
Tarzan begins the long climb up the Stairway to Heaven. The fire flares illuminating him on the steps but the apes below don’t notice- high above on a parapet of Heaven, God does. Note the resemblance to the move castle of Frankenstein. A man of action God quickly prepares a trap.
In real life the trap was probably the promise of the contract and money. ERB blames the movies for being duplicitous, which is definitely true, still, he had had a dozen or more years to work out the conditions prevailing on his own. After all, by 1932 he had proven product to sell. The public had even given a profit to some pretty crummy movies so that had he taken the time, acted on his own conditions, rather than just signing for a few quick bucks he might have retained a position of some control, made himself an equal partner. So, while MGM did betray him he might have been able to manage the situation.
Tarzan enters the castle to be confronted by six doors of which only #3 is open. Depending on how you count them there were six to eight major studios, thus the six doors may represent the Studios of which only MGM was willing to deal with him. Remember he had been blacklisted since 1922, the blacklist having been broken in 1928 by Joseph Kennedy.
Tarzan descends the stairs as heedlessly as Burroughs signed the contract and like Burroughs he finds himself trapped. The nose of noses sniffs the air and detects the delicate scent of a White woman. He has found she whom he sought, Rhonda.
7 d.
The Confrontation With God
Now Tarzan is reunited with his Anima ideal in the person of Rhonda formerly La of Opar. That Rhonda can be associated with La is because this scene is a replication or double of Tarzan and La in the lion’s den of Invincible. There La and Tarzan were imprisoned in a cell beneath Opar. They escaped the cell in a duplication of their escape from this prison. In Invicible there was a runway within which the lion fed. A shaft led upward to a room in a tower. There the old man who betrayed them discovered them.
In this case a breeze passing over the floor indicates an air shaft to Tarzan. This is probably borrowed from Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines although it will soon if not already be a staple of the movie genre. Tarzan locates the shaft in the ceiling in a corner of the cell. He and Rhonda ascend it to the opening in front of which God is talking to some gorillas. Thus the scene virtually duplicates Invincible. La and Rhonda must be associated in ERB’s mind.
As an aside Burrughs uses a variation of this scenario in The Swords Of Mars when John Carter is imprisoned. There are beams some twenty feet ot so above the floor to which Carter leaps. He takes a position above the door dropping on his keeper when he enters.
At this point in the story Tarzan and Stanley Obroski may be considered to be reunited as one persona. Rhonda, who has never seen Tarzan, addressed the person in Stanley’s guise as Stanley. ERB has a little fun as he has Tarzan play along.
As he says in Swords, he is convinced that every man has a dual Animus, that is two different aspects, sometimes nearly identical but sometimes as different as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Thus at this point his mind is impressed with Shelley’s Frankenstein and Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. He had read both novels before 1900 while both stories were released as movies in 1931. So the stories are very fresh in his mind.
Tarzan/Obroski may be considered of the Jekyll/Hyde variety. There is little doubt that Burroughs saw the pair and himself that way. Thus Carter and Fall Sivas in Swords may also be seen as two sides (Jekyll/Hyde) of the same persona. Tarzan does not try to convince Rhonda that he is not Stanley, but in the Jekyll side of the persona he astounds here with Hydelike feats compelling her to reevaluate him.
There are undoubtedly snippets of other horror movies here that ERB has seen also but I can’t remember the titles or dates. There was one about two Scottish body snatchers Burke and Hare which I think I can detect here and another about a mad doctor who operated on the brains of abducted victims that shows up here and in Swords that was called the Black Sleept or somesuch. The latter would have had a castle along these lines as well as Frankenstein. Of course, which of that ilk of movie didn’t? Burroughs is combining an astounding number of influences here both literary and cinematic but both combined.
Thus, having availed himself of ‘such a God given opportunity’ to find Rhonda he is imprisoned with her. The joke was ERB’s. You know, God left the doors open- God given opportunity. I chuckled softly to myself as I read.
After an exchange of repartee between Stanley/Tarzan and Rhonda God makes his appearance. Not exactly what one would expect God to look like. In fact it is almost amazing that the fundamentalist Christians didn’t create an uproar. After all according to the Old Testament man was created in God’s image. There’s a laugh. Here’s the image. p. 128:
It had the face of a man, but its skin was black like that of a gorilla. Its grinning lips revealed the heavy fangs of an anthropoid. Scant black hair covered those portions of its body that an open shirt and a loin cloth revealed. The skin of the body, arms, and legs was black with large patches of white. The bare feet were the feet of a man; the hands were black and hairy and wrinkled, with long, curved claws; the eyes were the sunken eyes of an old man- a very old man.
The Scopes Monkey Trial had only been about seven years before. So here Burroughs is making sport of God with a sort of reverse evolution. God is a cross between a man and a gorilla. Yet ERB led such a charmed life that his mockery or parody of God created no comment. If he wanted to start a ruckus to promote his book sales he failed miserably.
God might have been half ape but he had a whole hearted sense of;humor. Overhearing Tarzan say that he had come for Rhonda his opening comments are mock injury. p. 128:
“So you are acquainted?” He said. “How interesting! And you came to get her, did you? I thought that you had come to call on me. Of course it is not quite the proper thing for a stranger to come by night without an invitation- and by stealth.
“It was just by the merest chance that I learned of your coming. I have Henry to thank for that. Had he not been staging a dance I should not have known, and thus I should have been denied the pleasure of receiving you, as I have.
“You see, I was looking down from my castle into the courtyard of Henry’s palace when his bonfire flared up and lighted the Holy Stairs- and there you were!
Burroughs is justly criticized for the occasional bit of wooden dialogue but I find the confrontation with God very well written. The constantly mocking tone of God is carried off very well. Tarzan’s indignation is very well executed. The influence of Shelley, Stevenson and the various movies is seamlessly blended into a very tightly executed scene.
All this is done in a very few pages while it is a remarkable bit of writing.
God hints at his motives for their use for him. p. 129:
“…I shall keep you for a while for the pleasure of conversing with rational human beings.
“I have not seen any for a long time, a long, long time. Of course I hate them nonentheless, but I must admit that I shall find pleasure in this companionship for a short time. You are both very good looking too. That will make it all the more pleasant, just as it increases your value for the purpose which I intend you- the final purpose, you understand. I am particularly pleased that the girl is so beautiful. I always did have a fondness for blonds. Were I not already engaged along some other lines of research, and were it possible, I should like nothing better than to conduct a scientific investigation to determine the biologial or psychological explanation of the profound attraction the blond female has for the male of all races.”
Burroughs doesn’t tell us how blonde Rhonda and Naomi are, whether they are platinum blondes like Kali Bwana or merely blondes. Of course today ERB would be censored for his handling of the sexual and racial preferences for blondes but it is a recurrent theme in his writing and one worth studying.
Having piqued our curiosity as to his purpose for the couple God leaves to check up on Henry. p. 130:
“Come back here!” (Tarzan) commanded. “Either let us out of this hole or tell us why you are holding us- what you intend doing with us.”
The creature wheeled suddenly, its expression transformed by a hideous snarl. “You dare issue orders to me!” It screamed.
“And why not?” demanded the ape-man. “Who are you?”
The creature took a step nearer the bars and tapped its hairy chest with a thorny talon. “I am God.” it cried.
There you go. The cat’s out of the bag.
The scene is dramatically successful while the reader is now left to guess the model for God. We are told that he was a formerly handsome Englishman now deformed as a hybrid ape-human. The city is London, the territory is England and the river is the Thames. A reasonable place to look would be among the English. Who among the English is bedeviling ERB? H.G. Wells is the only one I can think of. Regardless of whether Wells considered himself a Communist or not he is sailing his craft so close to the wind that it is impossible to distniguish between the two. At the very least Wells is throughly subversive. If anything he resents not being in Stalin’s place. So Burroughs must consider him Communist.
To my mind then, Burroughs is mocking Wells much as Wells mocked Burroughs in ‘Blettsworthy.’ God has delusions of grandeur and so does the highly pontificating Wells. My vote for the model is Wells.
One also notes that in the last of the MGM Tarzan movies, 1942’s Tarzan’s New York Adventure, Tarzan is captured by the circus roustabouts and thrown into a mobile cage. The camera then pans around to front which identifies the cage as a lion cage. One thus has the joke of the Lion Man in a lion’s cage. A final thumbing of the nose at Burroughs exiled in Hawaii. MGM then dropped what had been a very lucrative series. Strange behavior indeed.
God then returns to give his history as detailed earlier in the essay. While for some reason everyone, fans and detractors alike, wants to think of Burroughs as a semi-literate boob who is coincidentally a ‘master of adventure’ yet both in content and exposition, God presents his story in a masterly way. In 1930 there may have been few of his readers who had ever heard of Mendel and possibly Lamarck, although one hopes all had heard of Darwin. So it is possible that a reader might have been puzzled by the inclusion of Darwin while dismissing Larmarck and Mendel as fictitious. Of course if you’re reading strictly for fast-paced adventure you may not notice the details even though they are far from concealed.
God also clears up the mystery of the map. Surprisingly the map is not a stage prop but authentic. In fact, God made it about seventy years previously. It seems that he had been in love with a women back in England but she preferred wealth to being the wife of an impoverished scientist.
This may be a coincidence but that is the premise of the plot of H.G. Wells’ In The Days Of The Comet. Perhaps it was a message to Wells in case he hasn’t gotten it yet. But then God discovered the immense number of diamonds in the valley so he wrote the girl promising her riches beyond imagination. He had employed a native runner to take the letter to the coast to mail it but since he had never had a reply he wondered if it had ever been received. Now it came back to him. A simple but inventive twist.
When God leaves this time Tarzan sets to work to escape. Following the draft across the floor he finds the air shaft. Just as in Invincible he sends La up first now he sends Rhonda up first. As in the earlier story they are trapped at the top.
Looking through the entrance to the shaft they spy God and some gorillas in front of it. Their escape is spoiled. Now begins the Gotterdamerung.
The City of God
7 e.
The Gotterdamerung
Burroughs now has both aspects of his Animus with his Anima trapped in the tower unable to go foward or backward. God and his gorillas stand in anticipation before the opening. Burroughs has been stalemated. At this point one aspect of God must be MGM and its contract.
ERB has spun out his fantasy in a plausible way to this point, but now he has to find a way to resolve his dilemma. As he is daydreaming and this is a mad dream, as Fal Sivas says in Swords, in dreams nothing bad can happen to you. In this bind something bad can happen to ERB. He can lose his grip on reality. In that way he becomes mad or insane which is what the story is about.
In speaking of Henry God might also be speaking of ERB. p. 143:
“You all forget,” (God) cried, “that it was I who created you; it is I who can destroy you. First I shall make Henry mad, and then I shall crush him. That is the kind of gods humans like- it is the only kind they can understand. Because they are jealous and cruel and vindictive they have to have a jealous, cruel and vindictive god.”
There’s a lot information in that quote. It refers to the ancient Greek saying: Those who the gods would destroy they first make mad. So we have an excellent joke here. The incredible mind of Burroughs can conceive humor in the midst of the blackest despair.
He is talking of the Yahweh of the Old Testament while he quite soundly understands that god is a psychological projection of the mind of his creator. In a masterly grasp of Freudian group psychology, whether he knew it or not, he realized tha the people have created a god in their own image and not vice versa. Trapped in the tower this is a real agonized cry of despair before losing his grip on reality.
I don’t mean to say that ERB went stark raving mad but he edged into a fantasy world at least once removed from the fantasy he had been living since 1912. For the period of his marriage to Florence he can only be described as spaced out. Bear in mind that it’s going to get worse as he gets trapped into his movie production experience.
The Masenas in The Swords Of Mars make the threatening moves on John Carter who keeps backing away. Only too late he realized he had maneuvered himself where they wanted him. The Masenas were cat-men, i.e. lions who had two mouths. In a sly way Burroughs is caricaturing the Jews of MGM and their mascot Leo the Lion. The upper mouth which is sort of pursy and purring to seduce one, is above a lower mouth that is all teeth and no lips to rend one. So he is saying that he is dealing with two-faced people. While the upper mouth is assuring, the lower rending mouth is ever ready to destroy you.
Tarzan realizes that he has no choices left but to stay put or rush God and the gorillas. Alone he would have had a chance of success but with Rhonda in tow he is lost. This is an interesting reflection on the relationship of the Animus to the Anima. I’m at a bit of a loss to explain this.
God had sent for Rhonda to be told that she was not in the cell. Knowing that Tarzan was in the air shaft it followed that Rhonda was too as neither could have escaped the cell otherwise. He orders smudge pots to be lighted to smoke them out. Thus Burroughs acknowledges that his own situation is untenable while he has no solution. The only one left is the Samson like effort of pulling the temple down on his own head destroying both himself and his enemies.
God’s plan backfires as he sets his own castle afire. Unable to stand the smoke any longer Tarzan rushes out to be felled by a blow from one of the apes. At this precise point ERB goes mad or loses his mental balance. I don’t believe there is a Tarzan novel in which the Big Bwana isn’t knocked on the head at least once. In this case when he gets up he won’t have lost his memory but he will be a different man, another round of emasculation.
Once again he is separated from his Anima. Rhonda is spirited off to Henry. God and Tarzan are trapped on the patio as the castle becomes engulfed in flames.
This chapter is appropriately titled ‘The Holocaust.’ In its way everything that ERB had hoped and dreamed goes up in flames with God’s castle. Heaven is reduced to ashes.
Tarzan has his trusty rope so he can escape over the parapet to the roof of a lower level. God begs him to save him which Tarzan reluctantly does.
Tarzan, one has difficulty in styling him the Big Bwana in this emasculated state, reverses the actual situation between Burroughs and MGM by placing the rope around God’s neck putting him on a short tether. Henry is now in full revolt. Tarzan agrees to help God in exchange for his help in recovering Rhonda and letting them leave. Perhaps Burroughs was asking MGM for a release from his contract. Let by Tarzan the forces of God defeat Henry.
I’m not clear who Henry represents or if he is meant to represent a real individual. Aware of his defeat Henry abandons his wives for the blonde White woman, Rhonda. He has a secret subterranean escape route. Thus Burroughs, who through Tarzan stormed the gates of Heaven, the heights of consciousness, has first returned to earth and now slips back into the subconscious. In all probability then, his attempt to integrate his personality had failed while coming so close.
Henry had followed his tunnel to emerge into the valley of diamonds and mutants. Here he encounters a lion. Throwing Rhonda down he runs from the lion which we all know is the exact wrong thing to do. Rhonda then escapes.
Tarzan emerges from the tunnel just as the lion is rending Henry. So Henry perishes. Tarzan sets off into the valley of diamonds in pursuit of Rhonda or, in another word, his Anima.
The City Of God
7 f.
The Golden Girl
While one is astonished that there was no uproar because of ERB’s treatment of God, Heaven and the gorillas, one is even more astonished that at no time since 1912 was ERB ever under attack for his views on evolution. The oeuvre is a veritable compendium on the various possible results of evolution yet no one ever said a word nor has to this day.
In LIon Man which treats of evolution in perhaps his most daring way yet, his effort is met with stony silence. God, in his creation of the hybrid gorillas according to the logic of Gregor Mendel, had a large number of sports and variations. The ‘normal’ hybrid apes refused to accept these either killing them or driving them from their society.
God laments that the tendency to exclusivity, or like to like, was such a strong characteristic of the new species that he could do nothing to break the hybrid’s attitude. This must be a wry comment on those who wished to break down racial and special barriers.
Apart from the role of White women in racial politics, which ERB through God has already commented on, there is not, nor will there ever be, inclusivity of different races on the pshysiological level nor even on the intellectual level of religion.
Thus the theme of separation in this spurious London, England was a variation on Opar where normal males were killed producing the ape-like male Oparians, while only the beautiful females were preserved. In this case the rejected hybrids, who bear some resemblance to the Hormads created by Ras Thavas, have taken up residence across the Thames. Among them, as one might suppose, Mendelian genetics predicts, were two human looking specimens. The male who was perfectly human in form had a gorilla mind; the female although rumored to have a gorilla mind in fact was a perfect human in mind while also possessing a normal human form.
She is the mate of the human looking male as kind mates with kind. Tarzan, having recovered Rhonda, finds Balza, which means Golden Girl, being abused by her mate. He rescues her but the trio is set upon by the whole tribe of mutants.
Balza explains to Tarzan that having defeated her former mate Tarzan has claimed her for his own. She is his, will-he or nil he. She then becomes hostile to the Anima figure of Rhonda.
So now we have a difficult psychological situation. Burroughs, who believes that every man is of a dual personality, has first united the two Lion Men and has now killed off one half of the duality leaving Tarzan as a single psychological unit. Not integrated but half a man so to speak. This is in violation of his stated belief which he has clarified no further. At the same time Balza seems to be driving his old Anima figure of La/Rhonda away, replacing her. Thus this Wild Thing becomes both Burroughs’ Anima ideal and human woman. We have single with single, or half with half. Now we have a single Animus, the Lion Man, Tarzan and Wild Thing as his Anima and woman. This is quite a combination. That would certainly explain the nature of the next several years of ERB’s life when he seems to run completely off the rails.
He expresses this in his work of the thirties in different ways. The Venus series is born out of this conflict in the second half of 1932 subsequent to the release of the movie Tarzan, The Ape Man. John Carter does reappear at the end of 1933 in The Swords Of Mars but Burroughs in the Venus series creates a much lesser man than either Carter or Tarzan; Napier is a pale shadow reflecting Burroughs neo-emasculated state.
In the first venus volume Napier heads for Mars in his rocket ship. Mars or the Greek Ares is the manly planet. But now suffering from his further emasculation Burroughs no longer feels capable of competing with men on Mars. Thus Napier has miscalculated the influence of the Moon, or female influence, which bends his trajectory sending him to the female planet Venus instead. In terms of classical mythology with which Burroughs was very familiar the Moon represents the feminine principle, while Venus, the Roman form of the Greek Aphrodite, represents the force of Love. Thus in symbolical terms ERB/Napier is diverted from the Manly principle of Mars by the female principle of the Moon and sent to the planet representing domination by the feminine principle of Love. Napier is not a warrior.
In Lion Man, written a few months after The Pirates Of Venus Tarzan follows his female Anima principle, Rhonda, into the valley of diamonds, where he is attached to The Golden Girl, Balza. In Burroughs’ terminology diamonds represent the realization of his sexual hopes. So Rhonda in this instance can be taken to represent Napier’s moon who leads him to Balza, the planet Venus or Florence. Burroughs is now severely handicapped in his conflict with MGM. In this chapter of Lion Man when he catches up with Rhonda comes across Balza being beaten by her man, the sport with the human appearance and gorilla brain. Balza had been misrepresented earlier, actually having a human brain. She now attaches herself to the emasculated Tarzan.
In their flight from the mutants- Tarzan running away again- they discover a pit full of diamonds. Presaging Tarzan And The Forbidden City in which the father of diamonds is a piece of coal, the huge pile of diamonds has lost any value to him. Thus Burroughs senses in 1933 that love is going to be a serious disappointment.
As a matter of fact in his psychological malaise Balza/Florence seems to have lost any value to him. He leads the women to the foot of the Falls where they rejoin the movie company who are living riotously. Their dance is a double of the Dum Dum like dance of the gorillas. Not a favorable comparison, perhaps indicating that man has not advanced much from the apes. Leaving Balza to become a movie star Tarzan returns to the jungle to find Stanley dead, thus the dead Stanley is rather unaccountably accepted by the movie company who return to LA. The whole story becomes a sort of mirage which, while we know it did happen, never happened.
ERB as a writer has now completed Ring 2. He completes his Ring construction by returning to the site of Ring Left 1, Hollywood as Ring Right 1. As Holtsmark notes he has followed the classical mode of Homer. He has not only done that but written his most perfect example. I find Lion Man masterly on all levels, in fact, ERB’s Magnum Opus.
A year after the movie company returned to the US Tarzan himself undertakes a visit to the film colony of Hollywood.
Go To Part 8, More Stars Than There Are In Heaven
Part 4, Tarzan And The Lion Man: A Review
May 17, 2008
A Review
Themes And Variations
The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs
#18 Tarzan And The Lion Man
Part 4 of 10 parts
by
R.E. Prindle
First published on the ezine, ERBzine
The Safari To The Capture Of Stanley Obroski
I consider this novel to be the magnum opus of the Tarzan series. If it doesn’t have everything it’s not lacking anything essential. Like most of Burroughs’ stuff the story expands in the transition from the page to the mind. This one blossoms into a giant bouquet. The enormous spectacular story is condensed into a hundred eighty-five pages. As always the pace is astonishingly rapid while entirely coherent; nothing is left our nor is the story jumpy.
Do the critics condemn ERB? Well, he was somewhat of the same mind as H.G. Wells of whom it was said:
“…he…had a horror of being ambushed in the grove of academe. ‘Better the wild rush of the Boomster and the Quack,’ he told Henry James in 1912, ‘than the cold politeness of the established thing.’
As quoted by W. Warren Wagar, H.G. Wells:
Jouranlism and Prophecy 1893-1946, Houghton Mifflin Co. 1964, p. 12
ERB put it a little differently when he explained that every once and a while an important novel came along but that those were few and far between. Even time erases that significance except for the specialist. Burroughs is still read both by the specialist and the hoi polloi.
That this book was important for the author is evident by the extended period of time of writing, for him, of 110 days that he took to write the novel. He wanted it to be his major best seller in which hope he was disappointed.
After a very amusing, even funny, first chapter ERB got his story rolling in the chapter titled ‘Mud’ in which in a masterful five and a half pages he introduces his story in media res, places the scene and introduces several key characters. The atmosphere is terrific. In just five and a half pages!
The amount of content in the first paragraph is actually astonishing. p. 11:
Sheykh Ab El-Ghrennem and his swarthy followers sat in silence on their ponies and watched the mad Nasara sweating and cursing as they urged on two hundred blacks in an effort to drag a nine-ton generator truck through the muddy bottom of a small stream.
The quote features a unique spelling of Sheykh which ERB didn’t use again reverting to the usual Sheik An oddity. Plus he couldn’t have gotten more letters into the Sheykh’s title. That the Sheik and his followers are not good guys is indicated by the word ‘swarthy.’ If you’re swarthy you’re bad. ERB confirms this as he contrasts the idle Arabs on their ponies with the ‘mad Nasara sweating and cursing.’
Arabs don’t do the work of the world, they get others to do it for them. Thus for a thousand years they had depopulated Africa in the search for slaves to fetch and hew. Their contempt for the mad Nasara, or White people, who are working alongside the Blacks is apparent and accurate. ERB is a superb multi-culturalist who has studied cultural attitudes, in fact, he could have invented the term. He is not of either the utopian or sentimental multi-cultural schools however but of the factual kind.
In the next two pages ERB instroduces the female leads Naomi Madison and Rhonda Terry while quickly establishing their characters. Then he quickly brings attention back to the Arabs. p. 12:
Naomi: …It is no more your fault that you can’t act than it is the fault of that sheik over there that he was not born a white man.”
“What a disillusionment that sheik was!” exclaimed Rhonda.
“How so?” asked Blaine.
“When I was a little girl I saw Rudolph Valentino on the screen, ah, brothers, sheiks was sheiks in them days!”
“This bird doesn’t look much like Valentino,” agreed Blaine.
“Imagine being carried off into the desert by that bunch of whiskers and dirt! And here I’ve been waiting all these years to be carried off.”
Once again we are advised of the unsavoriness of the Arabs while ERB evokes the sentimental memory of Valentino, the female hearthrob whose funeral in 1926 was swamped by adoring admirers.
He contrasts the film variety to the real thing by portraying the real thing as ‘whiskers and dirt.’ In the novelistic manner he also gives the premonition that Rhonda will be carried off by this repulsive speciment. We are alerted to watch for when.
Then the spotlight is turned on the Sheik who explains the Arab presence:
“Which of the benat, Atewy, is she who holds the secret of the valley of diamonds?”
Thus we are advised again what to expect but not when. The secret is, of course, a map of doubtful authenicity. The map serves the function of the Jewels Of Opar, the locket of Ant Men and Kali Bwana of Leopard Men. It is full of astonishing surprises not least of which is that it is an authentic map. Working all that out must be part of the reason the book took 110 days to write.
ERB then once again denotes cultural differences between the Arabs and Whites. Not in any sense derogatory to the Arabs but merely noting cultural differences in interpretation. Once again this novel will be an exploration in multi-culturalism
ERB then introduces the director, Tom Orman. p. 14:
Sweating, mud covered, Mr. Thomas Orman stood near the line of natives straining on the ropes attached to a heavy truck. In one hand he carred a long whip. At his elbow stood a bearer, but in lieu of a rifle he carried a bottle of Scotch.
Well, that’s quite a description. Orman is down in the mud ‘working’ which might be commendable by Western standards but not Arab and the long whip indicates he is a cruel taskmaster, once again by Western standards, and the bottle of Scotch gives the reason why. After some quick but comprehensive scene setting and character sketching the safari gets underway. By now we know everything we have to know to get a complete image of the story in our minds.
There may be people who say ERB can’t write but I defy anyone to do a better job in as few pages. Henry James would have taken a hundred fifty and accomplished no more.
In the next seven pages ‘Poisoned Arrows’ ERB rings the story to a crux, even a mini-climax.
ERB once said that he learned Greek and Latin almost before English and that it affected his writing. I found that difficult to understand until I recently read Erling Holtsmark’s Tarzan And Tradition. Holtsmark points out that Burroughs used the ring construction of the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer rather than the current construction of a sequence of events leading up to a grand climax and out. As one is used to the modern usage of the climax the ring construction makes Burroughs read awkwardly. If one bears in mind the ring construction the stories become more comprehensible.
In Lion Man ERB constructs a perfect ring novel.
The opening and closing Hollywood scenes form the outer ring. Thus once Burroughs wrote The Conference he was obligated to write a closing Hollywood scene. The safari sequence is balanced by the story of God. The story of the twin Lion Men is balanced by the story of the twins Naomi and Rhonda just before the story of God. The inner ring of the concentric circles is the transition from Bansuto territory to the Omwamwi Falls. If one reads the novel with this construction in mind it reads very smoothly.
In addition it appears that ERB was writing a movie scenario as each chapter represents a scene in a movie. After all ERB appears to be telling MGM how to write a truly imaginative movie quite superior to the rather commonplace story of Cyril Hume. Hume essentially wrote an H. Rider Haggard story based on The Ivory Child leaving out the imagination. ERB even supplies snappy dialogue that would come across well on the screen.
So, in this scene the Bansuto of Rungula begin a series of guerilla attacks to set up the next scene ‘Dissension’ while allowing ERB to develop characters and internal tensions. In Dissension the porters warn that they will desert if Orman doesn’t retreat and take the longer way around. Also ERB develops the relationship between Obroski and Naomi while once again contrasting the characters of Naomi and Rhonda.
ERB makes an interesting comment in this chapter. On p. 26 he says:
“No,” (Naomi) acquiesced thoughtfully, “that wouldn’t be good. He’s (Orman) got a nasty temper, and there’s lots of things a director can do if he gets sore.”
“In a piture like this he could get a guy killed and make it look like an accident.” said Obroski.
She nodded. “Yes. I saw it done once. The director and the leading man were both stuck on the same girl. The director had the wrong command given to a trained elephant.”
Here ERB must be alluding to Kamuela Searle who appeared in the 1921 film Son Of Tarzan. Accounts vary but according to Porges, Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan, p.20:
Kamuela Searle, handled roughly by the elephant that was carrying him, sustained injuries which resulted in his death.
If that is true ERB is explaining why Searle, bound to a pole, was dropped. ERB may be giving us some very pertinent inside information.
The chapter also shows Obroski and Naomi in the girl’s tent when the drunken Orman bursts in. Naomi is shown as cowering while Rhonda with presence of mind orders Orman out of the tent.
Chapter 5, Death, introduces Tarzan into the story in a rather unusual way for the Big Bwana. p. 20:
While the camp slept, a bronzed white giant, naked but for a loin cloth, surveyed – sometimes from the branch of overhanging trees, again from the ground inside the circle of sentries. Then, he moved among the tents of the whites and the shelters of the natives as soundlessly as a shadow. He saw everything, he heard much. With the coming of dawn, he melted away into the mist that enveloped the forest.
This seems more like a movie stunt than the real Tarzan.
A number of porters desert and the column is attacked once again.
In Chapter 6, Remorse, in three and a half pages the Arabs learn the whereabouts of the treasure map, setting up the abduction of both Rhonda and Naomi because the two are identical in appearance. Orman gives up drinking.
In chapter 7, ‘Disaster’, the next to worst thing that could happen happens, the porters all desert during the night. The company slogs on with tensions increasing. They leave the forest into a grassy area in which they feel safe. This corresponds to the scene in Trader Horn when the Blacks chase Horn’s party after they leave the village with Nina T. Instead the safari is attacked by the Bansuto in force. Fearing the grass might be fired they push on into the forest. Here they discover that Stanley Obroski is missing.
This is the transition point from the second ring into the third ring. Chapter 8, The Coward, is devoted to examining Obroski’s state of mind which we will consider in a moment. While in Chapter 9 the Arabs abscond abducting Naomi and Rhonda while stealing the treasure map.
Thus Chapter 8 sets up the third ring dealing with the adventures of Stanley Obroski and Tarzan while Chapter 9 leads into the inner ring or center of the story.
Up to this point following the classical ring model ERB has ordered Ring 1: The conference in Hollywood, 2. Brought the safari to the center of Africa, set the stage for Ring 3 and the center of the ring, all in thirty-eight pages.
Further he has created a viable movie scenario with both story and dialogue. It was apparently common usage for one writer to create the story and another to write the dialogue. So in Tarzan, The Ape Man Cyril Hume had written a commonplace story while Ivor Novello wrote some limp dialogue. Here Burroughs has written an exciting story with much snappier dialogue than Novello. He seems to be taking MGM by the hand to show them how.
Now to part 5, the story of Stanley Obroski and Tarzan.
I, Dynamo 