The First and
Only Online Fanzine Devoted to the Life and Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs
Master of Imaginative
Fantasy Adventure
Creator of Tarzan
and "Grandfather
of American Science Fiction"
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ERBzine
0128a
The Many
Worlds of
"The
master of imaginative fantasy adventure...
...the
creator of Tarzan and...
...the
'grandfather of science-fiction'"
ERB COMPENDIUM
T7-8
TARZAN
THE UNTAMED
When necessity demanded, Tarzan of the Apes sloughed
the thin veneer of his civilization and with it the hampering apparel
that was its badge. In a moment the polished English gentleman reverted
to the naked ape-man. (5)
No particle had his shallow probing of English
society dulled his marvelous sense faculties. (6)
Even as the beasts, Tarzan of the Apes seemed to possess a sixth
sense. (7)
His was the suffering of the dumb brute -- mute; but though
voiceless no less poignant. (10)
Tarzan blamed his weakness, as he considered it, upon his association with
the effeminating influences of civilization... for in the bottom
of his savage heart he held in contempt both civilization and its
representatives....
It was Hate -- and it brought to [Tarzan] a measure of solace
and of comfort -- it centered about the slayer of his mate, of couirse;
but it included everything German, animate or inanimate....(11)
Never had his civilization been more than a thin veneer
put on for the sake of her he loved... In reality he had always held the
outward evidences of so-called culture in deep contempt. Civilization
meant to Tarzan of the Apes a curtailment of freedom in all its aspects
-- freedom of action, freedom of thought, freedom of love, freedom of
hate. (11)
...it had ever been beyond him to understand how clothes could be considered
more beautiful than a clear, firm, healthy skin, or coat and trousers more
graceful than the gentle curves of rounded muscles playing beneath a flexible
hide. (12)
The beast is actively interested only in now... there is an
eternity of time... when no emergency prompted him to swift action. (14)
...more jungle battles were won by hideous growling than by actual
combat, the law of bluff holding quite as good in the jungle as elsewhere...
(16)
So all work found Tarzan serious, though he still retained what the
other beasts lost as they grew older -- a sense of humor, which he gave
play to when the mood suited him. It was a grim humor and sometimes ghastly...
(56)
Tarzan possessed the ability to concentrate each of his five senses
upon its particular business. (56)
Tarzan brought the sharp point [of his knife] to the lower part of the
German's abdomen. "Thus you slew my mate," he hissed in a terrible voice.
"Thus shall you die!"
"Oh, God, no!" Not that. You are too brave -- you cannot be such a beast
as that!" [pleads Bertha Kircher/Patricia Canby].
Tarzan turned to her. "No," he said, "you are right, I cannot do it
-- I am no German," and he raised the point of his blade and sunk
it deep into the putrid heart of Hauptmann Fritz Schneider.
He won his way through his savage world by the might of his own muscle,
the superior keenness of his five senses, and his God-given power to reason.
(198)
.
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