ERB's Eternal Truth

(Please note that originally the story had been presented in two parts, The Eternal Lover and the Sweetheart Primeval. Later both stories were combined under the title: The Eternal Savage. I prefer the title: The Eternal Lover for the rest of this article because it refers most appropriately to the subject matter I am dealing with.)

What do the words eternal lover mean? For me they conjure other words: soul mate. The theme of perfect love seems to run through ERB's books like a river giving life to a green valley. Always there are lovers in his books. Lovers meant to be with each other. Finding each other and merging their diverse lives into one life was a road full of danger and adventure, but it was the road all of ERB's readers wanted to travel on. It was a road that led to his eternal success.

There are many inconsistencies in the Eternal Lover. One of the greatest that most ERB fans notice is that Tarzan is not quite normal. At least he is not the Tarzan as he was known in his own series of books. Tarzan is not the main thrust of the message in this book. However, his strange behavior is an indicator that points to the central story theme as I will bring up below.

This story deals with higher concepts than those that are traditionally found in ERB's books. It deals with star crossed lovers or soul mates linked romantically by bonds that are stronger than time and space. The Eternal Lover is a strange book. Philip Jose Farmer seems to consider it no more than a dream of Victoria Custer. I think it is more than that. Remember, the book started with Nu, son of Nu. Victoria was introduced after Nu. For this reason I believe that Nu is the hub around which the story wheel rotates, not Victoria Custer. The reason this is true may be the sexual identity of the author. ERB was a man, and as a man may have been writing about his own dreams through the identity of the powerful, young Cliff Dweller.

It might be worthwhile to note that in Porges book on ERB the idea is presented that it was Victoria who was the hub of the wheel in this story. Her experiences in the 20th Century in the Eternal Lover and later she awakes as Nat-ul in the Stone Age and the story progresses from there. I have my own opinions about how that occurred. Victoria's dream is only a half truth. There is far more to the story than just her dream. It was a dream shared by three other people: Nu and Nat-ul. It might be argued that Nat-ul and Victoria were the same person, or at least the same soul. Remember in the second part of the book where Nat-ul reaches for a barrette in her hair. It wasn't there. It was in Victoria's hair forward in the Twentieth Century. Did this mean that Victoria was still dreaming and was now Nat-ul in that dream, or does it mean that Nat-ul and Victoria had shared the same dream and both remembered it when they had awakened. I believe it is the latter. In fact, Nu, Nat-ul and Victoria all shared the same dream. Remember Tarzan? In their dream Tarzan was only a shadow. A minor player, because Victoria thought of him that way.

Let's take a look at the way ERB presented this tragic, romantic tale. One of the primary elements in the story is Victoria's fear of earthquakes:

"And I dare say there were only two things on God's green earth that Victoria Custer feared, or beneath it or above it, for that matter-- mice and earthquakes."

"She readily admitted the deadly terror which the former aroused within her; but of earthquakes she seldom if ever would speak. To her brother Barney, her chum and confidant, she had on one or two occasions unburdened her soul."

Is it a coincidence that the author used the word soul as something burdened by a fear of earthquakes?

Other than these two fears, Victoria seemed devoid of normal fears. She "possessed a perfect coolness in the face of danger". But something did bother her when on these hunting trips in the jungles of Africa, near Greystoke�s plantation. As she herself explains,

"Barney, there is something about those hills back there that fills me with the strangest sensation of terror imaginable. Today I passed an outcropping of volcanic rock that gave evidence of a frightful convulsion of nature in some bygone age. At the sight of it I commenced to tremble from head to foot, a cold perspiration breaking out all over me. But that part is not so strange-you know I have always been subject to these same silly attacks of unreasoning terror at the sight of any evidence of the mighty forces that have wrought changes in the earth's crust, or of the slightest tremor of an earthquake; but today the feeling of unutterable personal loss which overwhelmed me was almost unbearable- it was as though one whom I loved above others had been taken from me."

"And yet," she continued, "through all my inexplicable sorrow there shone a ray of brilliant hope as remarkable and unfathomable as the deeper and depressing emotion which still stirred me."

Victoria experienced terror whenever she encountered earthquakes, but it was at this particular place that she experienced a deep sense of personal loss as well.

And Victoria had another peculiarity:

"her strange contempt for the men who had sued for her hand. ...Victoria had liked them, but as for loving them? Perish the thought!"

In combination with these strange peculiarities, Victoria had a dream. Hers was a strange dream about a tall handsome man who lived in an equatorial land by a restless sea. All the other men who have pursued her she regarded as "pusillanimous weaklings" in comparison to this 'avatar' she both desired and feared.

There was one man who wooed her by the name of Billy Curtiss. He came as close as any to her image of perfection: her avatar. It is interesting that when Billy finally proclaimed his love for her, and wished for her to answer him regarding the possibility of her love for him, that the earthquake occurred that sent her swooning. And it is that point where reality fades and the dreamlike sequence begins.

It is my contention that this was more than just a 'dream'. Nu awakens in the 20th century and proceeds to have an adventure that involves typical ERB elements. Lord Greystoke assumes a minor role in the story. In comparison to Nu, Curtiss becomes a sort of villain. The great hound Terkoz becomes a link between truth and guilt as the hound allies with Nu and they both adventure forth in an effort to find their friend Victoria.

If it is true that a living, Stone Age Nu shared this dream with Victoria, we cannot ignore Nu's thoughts in this dream. His greatest concern was that Nat-ul/Victoria should not consider him an inferior. He had reached the conclusion that the 'white' men of this land equated him with the blacks that inhabited the jungle. In that sense they considered him a 'white nigger', as Curtiss had already called him. This was because Nu's culture and lifestyle was much closer to that of the contemporary blacks than it was to the modern 20Th Century whites. Yet it is interesting that ERB places Nu's love for his woman as an example of the way that

"normal white men have always loved--with a devotion that placed the object of his affection upon a pedestal before which he was happy to bow down and worship. His passion was not the brute type of the inferior races which oftentimes solemnizes the marriage ceremony with a cudgel and ever places the woman in the position of an inferior and a chattel."

In fact it was a elementary social principle among Nu's people that "the men of the tribe of Nu had not taken their mates by force for many generations. There was a strong belief among them that the children of women who mated through their own choice were more beautiful, better natured and braver than those whose mothers were little better than prisoners and slaves."

It is important that the elements of love and choice be acknowledged. They are the key elements in the story of these Eternal Lovers.

Further evidence of the Victoria/Nat-ul connection is near the end of the first part of the novel.

"The man spoke in a tongue so ancient that in all the world there lived no man who spoke or knew a word of it, yet to Victoria Custer it was as intelligible as her own English, nor did it seem strange to her that she answered Nu in his own language."

But the crucial evidence is in Victoria's own statements.

"My heart tells me that I am yours, Nu, but my judgment and my training warn me against the step that my heart prompts. I love you; but I could not be happy to wander, half naked, through the jungle for the balance of my life, and if I go with you now, even for a day, I may never return to my people. Nor would you be happy in the life that I lead--0it would stifle and kill you."

"By some strange freak of fate you have remained unchanged during all these ages until now you step forth from your long sleep an unspoiled cave man of the stone age into the midst of the twentieth century, while I, doubtless, have been born and reborn a thousand times, merging from one incarnation to another until in this we are again united. Had you, too, died and been born again during all these weary years no gap of ages would intervene between us now and we should meet again upon a common footing as do other souls, and mate and die to be born a gain to a new mating and a new life with its inevitable death."

Nu didn't understand the abstract meaning of what she told him. He did understand that his Nat-ul was in the past, and that a great span of time separated him from his true mate. It is apparent that it was not time that was important, after all Nu spanned the time to join Victoria in their dreamlike reunion. What is important is the psychological space that separated the two lovers. The dreamlike state that united them was founded on a common ground of soul sharing, and the thing that eventually tore them apart was the disparity between their respective psychological constructions and how they defined who they were and how they lived their lives.

We know that Nat-ul shared the dream connection between Nu and Victoria. When she awakes in the cave of her family, in the second part of the story, she spoke to Ra-el, a friend, about her odd dream.

"I dreamed that I was not Nat-ul. I dreamed of a strange world and strange people. I was one of them. I was clothed in many garments that were not skin at all..."

In the second book, Nu searches for Nat-ul and eventually finds her. Their journey takes them through several cultures of Stone Age people which afford ERB a chance to contrast his beloved tribe of feral men, the Cliff Dwellers, with tribes that are less meritorious or noble. But in the end, Nu goes out again to search for the head of Oo to prove his love for Nat-ul. In the beginning of the book, Nat-ul desired that Nu prove his love for her by bringing him the head of the great saber-toothed mankiller. At the end of the book, she has changed her mind. Now she wants Nu more than the trophy. Yet Nu insists on keeping his pledge to bring her the head. This proves to be the final cleaving of their relationship, as the earthquake shatters the Cliffs and separates the lovers forever. Nu and Nat-ul meet their deaths apart from each other. Nu in the cave of Oo with his bloody head, and Nat-ul waiting for him to return in the cave of her family as water rushed in to drown her.

In another time Virginia still waits for Nu to return.

The book ends with Victoria leading her brother to the bones of Nu; the final prove that Nu had existed in the past. And the final proof that she had linked her soul with Nu and Nat-ul and that her experiences were those of a soul reunion, not those that might have been derived from a poor deluded fantasy.

Nor is Nu and Nat-ul/Victoria the only lovers that ERB was speaking about. I believe that the Eternal Lover/Savage was also a tale about Tarzan. Or rather an explanation to his readers about who Tarzan would really be if he was real. Nu was Tarzan.

I believe that ERB presented Tarzan as a mediocre character to provide proof that he was only part of Victoria's dream. As stated above, the ape-man was present in a capacity equal to Victoria's perception of him. Nu was the true hero of the story, yet nowhere in ERB's stories is there another character as close to Tarzan as Nu. Nu was Tarzan as he should have been written. A hero born in a tribe of heroes. A feral man whose origin was realistically placed in a society of feral men. As pointed out in a previous essay, the Cliff Dwellers were a tribe of Tarzans.

The society of the Cliff Dwellers must be examined to further understand the mystery. Love was cherished among these savage people. As stated above mating between couples in love was encouraged because the Cliff Dwellers believed that the strongest, fittest children were born from parents in love. Women were regarded as equals to the men. They were treasured, not treated as possessions as they were in the other Stone Age cultures in the book. Nu and Nat-ul were brought up in this atmosphere. This could not have been a coincidence. ERB finally answered his critics. The Eternal Lover is the answer to the origin of Tarzan and Tarzan's soul-mate love for Jane. How wonderful that Tarzan, a natural Cliff Dweller, met and merged with his soul-mate in true time and space. Of course there were the problems that Jane and Tarzan had in blending their widely diverse cultures. Problems such as these were a great part of the Eternal Lover. In the Tarzan mythos, these problems are inadequately answered. Was the Eternal Lover an apologetic explanation for the unrealistic, almost comic book origin of the fabulous ape-man? Was it an answer to the question of how did Tarzan become such a noble savage considering his feral, simian origins.

The final question remains. Just whose dream were we really reading about in the Eternal Lover? The answer might be ERB's.

copyright by Rod Hunsicker 3/29/1998
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