Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes; and The Return of Tarzan

Introduction

Opening Passages: From Tarzan of the Apes:

I heard this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the tale.

From The Return of Tarzan:

"Magnifique!" ejaculated the Countess de Coude, beneath her breath.

Summary: John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, is dispatched to British West Africa to investigate complaints that blacks are being mistreated; he goes with his young wife Alice, who is pregnant with their child. They never make it to their intended destination, however, and find themselves on a jungle-touched shore, many, many miles from civilization. Being resourceful people, they survive for a while, building a cabin and bringing their son into the world; but it is a hard thing, and they both die. The son is saved due to the compassion of an ape named Kala, whose only baby has just died; she takes the boy as her own, defending his place in her ape-tribe, where the apes call him 'White Skin': Tarzan. A human boy is more helpless than any ape; but if the point can be reached where the boy's survival can be reasonably assured, the boy has something that outmatches any ape. The fortunes of Tarzan are tied with this, human reason, by which a single man with a tiny bit of leisure can have more ingenuity than an entire civilization of apes. He discovers his father's cabin, not knowing its relation to himself, and by innate curiosity and years of study teaches himself to read and write English, a language he cannot speak.

One day a new group of people is marooned on the same coasts, including William Cecil Clayton, who has become Lord Greystoke in the absence of the rightful heir to the title, and Jane Porter, an American girl from Baltimore. Through his help, they survive to be rescued. Tarzan in the meantime saves the life of a French officer, Paul D'Arnot, and from him learns to speak his first human language: French. With D'Arnot's friendship Tarzan learns the ways of civilization and sets out to find Jane again. He discovers that she has promised her hand to another, and because of it, he renounces any attempt to reclaim his title, returning instead to France, not knowing what he will do with himself alone in white man's civilization.

Which, indeed, proves to be an interesting question as we pick up in the sequel, since Tarzan soon discovers that civilization can be more perilous than the jungle as he finds himself thrust into the middle of a seamy world of blackmail, espionage, and assassination, facing off against the Russian villain, Nikolas Rokoff. This eventually leads him to Algeria on a mission for the French war ministry, and then off to Cape Town. On the way to Cape Town, however, he is pushed overboard by Rokoff and marooned again in his old haunts. He is adopted into the native Waziri tribe and discovers an ancient outpost of Atlantis, called Opar, where the human race has begun to degenerate into bestial ways, or, indeed, worse, since (as we discover throughout The Return of Tarzan) the ingenuity of human reason does not confine itself to good.

In the meantime, Jane, Clayton, and Nikolas Rokoff (under an assumed name) find themselves marooned not far from where everyone, it seems, is always marooned. Jane's life is again saved by Tarzan, who has completed the "cycle of evolution" by living again with his original tribe of apes. The sequel ends with a marriage as the first book had ended with the threat of a marriage, and we see Tarzan returning once more to civilization.

Burroughs writes by what may be called the method of inversions; he delights in turning things upside-down. The English aristocrat is raised by apes. Civilization is more dangerous than the wild. Beasts are more noble and honorable than most men. The perfection of manhood is achieved among the animals of the jungle. The last representatives of what was once the greatest of all civilizations have become degraded to something hardly recognizable as human. Jane, having survived the jungle, goes back home to live in Wisconsin, which, indeed, is in some ways about as opposite to the African jungles of Tarzan as one can imagine.

Burroughs is often criticized for trying to drive stories by coincidences, as witnessed, for instance, by the multiple maroonings of obviously connected people in the same place at convenient times, but I think to some extent this ignores an important feature of all these fortunate and unfortunate happenstances. In general they tend to be doublings that intensify the inversions. Kala is the double of Alice and also her inversion. Lord Greystoke is the contrasting double of Lord Greystoke; at the same moment that the real Lord Greystoke is eating raw flesh in the jungle, the other Lord Greystoke is sending his steak back for being undercooked. The two maroonings of Tarzan of the Apes are contrasted by the presence of Tarzan to assist the second marooned party; the two maroonings of The Return of Tarzan create an inverted double of the originals. The Arabic girl and the Oparian girl are doubled inversions of the others, each assisting Tarzan, one honorably and nobly, and the other selfishly. The first book ends with threat of marriage, the second book ends with marriage -- and a double marriage, at that. Exotic Opar inverts exotic France in civilization and is its double in peril. Through the course of the two books, Tarzan rises from ape to primitive man to civilized man, then descends from civilized man to primitive man to ape; the relation between Jane and Tarzan in the one book is the inverted double of their relation in the other. This is not a mere accident of these two books alone; doublings are extremely common throughout all the Tarzan books, and the very nature of the character, the ape-man, the civilized savage, would guarantee the existence of inversions throughout, even if it weren't the case that the author was obviously enjoying all the paradoxes.

I had thought that I had never read The Return of Tarzan before, but enough of it was familiar that I must have at some point. In any case, Tarzan of the Apes and The Return of Tarzan are best read together; they form a completed circle and make for an integrated story, particularly as the latter begins soon after the former ends and it is the latter, not the former, that really brings us to a point suitable for an ending.

The Greeks often recognized three parts to human life: reason, thymos, and desire. Civilization in these books knows plenty of reason and plenty of desire, but of thymos it knows very little. Thymos is that in us which rises to the difficult challenge; and civilization tends to limit the opportunities for the development of this. Indeed, it may well produce Men without Chests, to borrow C. S. Lewis's phrase for it, who, in the end, are merely cunning manipulators out for selfish ends. Tarzan is raised above the beasts of the jungle by reason, but ironically it is thymos, learned from the beasts of the jungle, that raises him above merely ordinary men. Human greatness lies not merely in civilization but in heroism; and we find a heroism civilizaton cannot teach in Tarzan of the Apes.

Favorite Passages: From Tarzan of the Apes:

When in a short time they had reached the beach, only to find no camp in sight, Philander was positive that they were north of their proper destination, while, as a matter of fact they were about two hundred yards south of it.

It never occurred to either of these impractical theorists to call aloud on the chance of attracting their friends' attention. Instead, with all the assurance that deductive reasoning from a wrong premise induces in one, Mr. Samuel T. Philander grasped Professor Archimedes O. Porter firmly by the arm and hurried the weakly protesting old gentleman off in the direction of Cape Town, fifteen hundred miles to the south. (p. 131)

From The Return of Tarzan:

Jane Porter shuddered. "The mysterious jungle," she murmured. "The terrible jungle. It renders even the manifestations of friendship terrifying." (p. 192)

Recommendation: Recommended.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes, Signet (New York: 2008).

Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, Ballantine (New York: 1992).

Where Eternal Prayer is Living

In the Gothic "Duomo" of Milan
by Ruby Archer

Come, chastened light, thou spirit of the sun!
Come, wander where eternal prayer is living;
Come, with a glow from saintly garments won,
Wake the dark walls unto thy wealth of giving.

Glide with thy vivid foot along the aisles,
And touch the fretted marble with thy fingers.
Mingle with tapers borne by priestly files,
Caress the fragrant incense where it lingers.

But leave the dim confessional in gloom,—
Peer not to learn a secret faltered lowly.
Kneel now, and mourn before a chaliced tomb,
Revere the dignity of marble holy.

Lo! 'Tis the Virgin and the Jesus child,
And at their feet some hand hath offered flowers—
Roses and pansies—pure, devout, and mild
As that loved face that blesseth all the hours.

Go, chastened light, thy wings are free again.
Go, meet the sun beyond the sacred portal.
Proclaim that thou hast been in fane of men
And found it worthy of the gods immortal!

Like Multitudinous Forks of Fire

Milan Cathedral
by Herman Melville

Through light green haze, a rolling sea
Over gardens where redundance flows,
The fat old plain of Lombardy,
The White Cathedral shows.

Of Art the miracles
Its tribes of pinnacles
Gleam like to ice-peaks snowed ; and higher,
Erect upon each airy spire
In concourse without end,
Statues of saints over saints ascend
Like multitudinous forks of fire.

What motive was the master-builder’s here?
Why these synodic hierarchies given,
Sublimely ranked in marble sessions clear,
Except to signify the host of heaven.

A Quick Trip to Italy, Part XIII

On Friday we went to Milan, about a three hour ride by high-speed rail.

Mediolanum is an old city, with a very long history. It was settled by Celts in the fifth century BC and conquered by Romans in the third century BC. For a period of time under Domitian it was the capital of the Western Roman Empire. It was a major site of conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. It was one of the major cities of the Italian Renaissance. After Napoleon invaded Italy, it was the capital of the Cisalpine Republic, and later of his Kingdom of Italy. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, its opera houses and theaters were among the greatest in the world. Mozart and Verdi debuted works here. Milan has almost always been a thriving trade center and today is one of the economic powerhouses of Europe.

Very little of this is obvious, though. Rome always feels very big and overcrowded; Milan, the second most populous city of Italy, rarely feels so, with plenty of walkable areas and gardens all over the place. You can hardly move around in Rome's historic center without stumbling on something ancient; Milan's ancient Roman history only very rarely comes out. And in World War II, as the economic center of Italy, Milan was very heavily bombed throughout the war. Almost a third of its buildings were destroyed; very few of its great medieval and Baroque buildings and monuments escaped being at least damaged, and some vanished entirely. Milan, almost everywhere, seems very modern, because Milan, almost everywhere, is indeed very modern.

But despite the pulverization of so much of its history, Milan still has treasures. The most obvious is the Cathedral of Santa Maria Nascente -- most often known as the Duomo di Milano:

A photograph does not in any way do it justice. The Duomo, the heart of the Ambrosian Rite of the Latin Church, is the largest church in Italy. (St. Peter's is larger, but, of course, it is not technically in Italy.) It is usually said to be the fifth largest church in the world. It is over 10,000 square meters in area, over 440,000 cubic meters in volume, and it took nearly six centuries to build. The fortunes of the cathedral are closely connected with the history of Milan.

In 1385, Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Pavia seized Milan by overthrowing his uncle Bernabo by breaking a few promises. Bernabo was, however, very unpopular with the Milanese because of his very oppressive taxes. Using his new position as Signore of both Pavia and Milan, he went on to take Verona, Vicenza, and Padua (although he would later lose the last of these). One of the things he did as his fortunes were quickly rising was promise to the Milanese a grand new cathedral. The Milanese, happy to be out from the heel of the taxing taskmaster, were enthusiastic about the project -- so Gian Galeazzo, very cleverly, began to take donations for it, and the first stone was laid in 1386. Construction proceeded quite swiftly, and soon half the brick structure was built. But Gian Galeazzo died of fever in 1402, and very little was done afterward, although bits and pieces would be done here and there. The very Gothic cathedral got a few High Renaissance touches here and there.

In 1564, St. Carlo Borromeo became Archbishop of Milan, and one of his insights was to recognize that the guild controlling the construction of the cathedral was part of the problem; he used his influence to change the statutes and appoint Pellegrino di Tibaldo de Pellegrini as chief engineer. They planned on toning down the Gothic character of the cathedral (Gothic was increasingly seen as a Franco-German style) and giving it a more Italian Renaissance flair. But there was an immense of cathedral there, and an immense amount of cathedral yet to be done. Construction continued through the sixteenth century into the seventeenth, when the facade finally began to be developed. Construction continued through the seventeenth century into the eighteenth century, and in 1762, the Madonna's Spire was erected by Carlo Pellicani, with a gold-plated bronze statue of Mary placed on top of it, the Madonnina:

We were in Milan the day after Italian Unification Day, so that's why the Virgin Mary is waving the Italian flag. The Madonnina is one of the key touches of Milan. By tradition, no building in Milan is allowed to be higher than the Madonnina. But, tall as the Madonna's Spire is, Milan is a city of skyscrapers, and has been for decades! How can this be? When the Pirelli Tower was built in the 1950s in Milan, it was the tallest building in Italy. So they made a small replica of the Madonnina and put it at the top of the building. Skyscraper or now, it is still not higher than the Madonnina! When the Palazzo Lombardia rose even higher, they did the same. They did the same with the Allianz Tower of CityLife. One of the most famous folk songs in Milan, often regarded as the anthem of the city, refers to the Madonnina in its chorus:

Oh mia bela Madunina, che te brilet de luntan,
tüta d'ora e picinina, ti te dominet Milan,
sota a ti se viv la vita, se sta mai cui man in man.

It was written by Giovanni D'Anzi in the 1930s, and this bit means something like, "O my beautiful Madonnina, you shine brightly from afar; wholly golden and tiny, you rule over Milan. Life is lived beneath your feet without twiddling one's thumbs."

Life went on, and then came Napoleon. He wanted to be crowned King of Italy in the Duomo, so he promised the archbishop that if they finished the facade, he would reimburse the entire expense. That finally got things in full gear; the facade was finished and Napoleon was crowned King there in 1805. He then went off to fight in Russia and never got around to reimbursing anyone.

Arches and spires continued to be built through the nineteenth century. The last gate was put in on January 6, 1965, and this is usually the date given for the end of construction -- although there are still parts of the cathedral where you find blocks of stone that are supposed to be carved into statues at some point. There's so much going on with the cathedral, however, that you wouldn't notice it unless you were looking for it. It makes for an impressive whole.

Here is one of the doors, not the largest:

Inside, it is like a forest of columns. We were only allowed on the right-hand side (and thus actually missed a number of the most famous features of the cathedral).

St. Charles Borromeo, of course, is quite prominent here:

Now we will descend into the crypt, under the grand altar of Milan Cathedral, and receive an impressive sermon from lips that have been silent and hands that have been gestureless for three hundred years.

The priest stopped in a small dungeon and held up his candle. This was the last resting-place of a good man, a warm-hearted, unselfish man; a man whose whole life was given to succoring the poor, encouraging the faint-hearted, visiting the sick; in relieving distress, whenever and wherever he found it. His heart, his hand, and his purse were always open. With his story in one's mind he can almost see his benignant countenance moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days when the plague swept the city, brave where all others were cowards, full of compassion where pity had been crushed out of all other breasts by the instinct of self-preservation gone mad with terror, cheering all, praying with all, helping all, with hand and brain and purse, at a time when parents forsook their children, the friend deserted the friend, and the brother turned away from the sister while her pleadings were still wailing in his ears.

(Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, Chapter XVIII)

Even just seeing the right side of the church, there was a lot of it. And we came out again; a truism, perhaps, but perhaps also a bit less of one than it would be with another building. People sometimes get lost in forests.

What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frost-work that might vanish with a breath! How sharply its pinnacled angles and its wilderness of spires were cut against the sky, and how richly their shadows fell upon its snowy roof! It was a vision!—a miracle!—an anthem sung in stone, a poem wrought in marble!

to be continued

Full Many a Spiry Pinnacle

Milan Cathedral
by John Ruskin

The heat of summer day is sped ;
On far Mont Rose the sun is red ;
And mark you Milan's marble pile
Glow with the mellow rays awhile !
Lo, there relieved, his front so high
On the blue sky of Italy !
While higher still above him bear,
And slender in proportion fair,
Fretted with Gothic carving well,
Full many a spiry pinnacle ;
And dazzling bright as Rosa's crest,
Each with his sculptured statue prest,
They seem to stand in that thin air
As on a thread of gossamer.
You think the evening zephyr's play
Could sweep them from their post away,
And bear them on its sportful wing
As autumn leaves, wild scattering.

Ruskin was not a fan of the Milan Cathedral, however; he regarded it as a barbarous mish-mash, and the "spiry pinnacles" were practically the only thing he thought good in it.

Mark Twain on the Duomo of Milan

At last, a forest of graceful needles, shimmering in the amber sunlight, rose slowly above the pygmy housetops, as one sometimes sees, in the far horizon, a gilded and pinnacled mass of cloud lift itself above the waste of waves, at sea,—the Cathedral! We knew it in a moment.

Half of that night, and all of the next day, this architectural autocrat was our sole object of interest.

What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frost-work that might vanish with a breath! How sharply its pinnacled angles and its wilderness of spires were cut against the sky, and how richly their shadows fell upon its snowy roof! It was a vision!—a miracle!—an anthem sung in stone, a poem wrought in marble!

Howsoever you look at the great cathedral, it is noble, it is beautiful! Wherever you stand in Milan or within seven miles of Milan, it is visible and when it is visible, no other object can chain your whole attention. Leave your eyes unfettered by your will but a single instant and they will surely turn to seek it. It is the first thing you look for when you rise in the morning, and the last your lingering gaze rests upon at night. Surely it must be the princeliest creation that ever brain of man conceived.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, Chapter XVIII

Two New Poem Drafts and Some Poem Re-Drafts

(The second is based on a rare version of the apocryphal Psalm 151.)

Vale

Elusive is the vale,
an evening-colored petal
quivering in violet breezes.

The moon is full tonight
over fireflies in the air,
drunken stars in inky darkness,
iridescence on the petal.

A Song of David

Less was I than all my brothers,
youngest of my father's sons,
a simple shepherd of the flock,
a ruler of kids and goats.

I fashioned from the reed a pipe;
my fingers shaped a fair harp;
thus gave I glory to the Lord.
The mountains cannot tell Him.
The hills cannot proclaim His Name.

Take up my words, tall-topped trees,
sing my melodies, baaing sheep.
Who will else declare or speak?
The Lord our God has seen all things;
our God gives His attention.

He sent His anointing prophet:
Samuel came to grace me.
My brothers went out to meet him,
handsome-formed and handsome-faced.
They were tall and their hair was thick,
but God did not make them kings.

He fetched me from behind the flock,
anointed me with pure oil,
and made me prince of His people,
ruler in his covenant.

Birds Hunting Crickets

The sky is so blue you could dive right in and swim,
the sun so bright that it burns like hidden sin,
the breeze so cool upon harsh, sunburned skin;

I'd give a penny for your thoughts,
but you're probably thinking of him,

so instead I'll muse on truth and rule of law
and watch birds hunting crickets outside the coffee shop.

The Moon Sang Soprano

The moon sang soprano to the bass of the sea:
The fish danced in schools and pavaned ecstasy
As the waves crashed the shore with a drum-beaten bliss
That was voiced by a deep and unending abyss.
The tide measured time and the waves measured shore
As the song like a chorus resounded the more;
The moon sang its light, and that moonlight was borne
By the weight of the sea in the sound of its horn.

Astraea

The stars fell down; we felt
the light shift vivid red
and somewhere in Orion's belt
you fell down dead.
Your dreams whispered in ears
not made to hear your song,
beyond their sundry fears;
self-destroying, headlong,
they sullied face and name
with thoughts good sense would quell,
like moth to nova-flame,
like unfound souls to hell;
still you stood, stood still,
unchanged by the changing winds,
a quiet rill
opposing rushing tides of men.
All stars fail; in sharp light
they will forever fall
into eternal night,
that deepest night that conquers all;
and all too soon.
Your words ring in our heads.
Beneath some strange and weirding moon
your spirit fled.

Willow

The hollow-laden willow waves the leaflets of its limbs
in winds that whip around it through the shadowed evendim;
my heart is hale and singing with a hymn of hope and praise,
a hymn of hope and praise that I have learned from summer rain,
a healing psalm so soulful that it saves from fear and pain
and lengthens out like prayer all the wonders of my days.
With the waving of the willow I with spirit rise and sway
as the raindrops, kissed by moonlight, on my eyelids leap and play.