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Issue No. 0009
Presents


MOTES & QUOTES IX
BARSOOMIAN QUOTES
Compiled by Bill Hillman

From the Mouths of ERBabes...Ejaculations, Exclamations, Emissions, Exchanges, Eloquence, Enumerations, Endorsements, Elaborations, Embellishments, Enlightenments, Entanglements, Enticements, Entreatments, Evincements, Exonerations, Explanations...and...ah...other neat stuff...and even quotes from and around...
JOHN CARTER - WARLORD OF MARS



"I know that you are interested and that you believe, and I know that the world, too, is interested, though they will not believe for many years; yes, for many ages, since they cannot understand." (GMFW) Carter's words to ERB.


John Carter’s Favourite Jasoom Colloquialisms
John Carter made relatively few visits to Earth after his miraculous transportation to his beloved adopted home Barsoom. His formative years (and the occasional contact with his former planet), however, left him with a legacy of Terranian colloquialisms. Here is a partial list of some of the phrases which reflect his North American English heritage: Keep in mind that Burroughs had a hand in many of the Carter manuscripts and that Synthetic Men of Mars was translated into English and sent by Gridley Wave to ERB.)


“It was all Greek to me...,” PM
“What do you make of it all?...Where in the deuce are we?” GM
“In the nick of time,” WM
“Right you are,” WM
“God alone knows...” SM
“...in cold blood” SM
“Sultan of Swat” ( Babe Ruth influence here) LG
“...I surely could not respect a bag of bones” JCM
“...he came back with a haymaker that I ducked, “ JCM
"As Earth men say, we are between the devil and the deep blue sea, Tars Tarkus," GM
"There is no question about it, John Carter." MMM14 (The first words spoken by one Earthman, Paxton, to another, JC, on Barsoom.)
The term “fagged out” appears numerous times in Carter’s speech.



Barsoomian Terms Similar to Those Used On Jasoom
"In the name of the ninth day..." PM20
"By the mother of the further moon..." PM21
"We are between the wild thoat of certainty and the mad zitidar of fact." GM3
"A warrior may change his metal, but not his heart." PM13
"...a creature who could not polish the teeth of her grandmother's sorak." PM14
"Give Martian woman a chance and death must take a back seat." (In reference to their skill in healing the wounded) PM16
"...I had but jumped from purgatory into gehenna." PM18
"My sword is at your feet." LG-1/10
"I have the disposition of a thoat." CM2

"Shadow of my first ancestor." CM4
"Our ancestors are with us to-night" FMM4
"May my ancestors forgive me!" FMM/5
"Blood of our first ancestor!" FMM12

"The Gods sent you." CM8
"...the head is useless when the heart usurps its functions..." CM14
"You have no right to assume aught else than my lips testify." CM18
"The eyes are oftimes more eloquent than the lips..." CM18
"To be abused, even by the mistress of one's heart is better than to be ignored." CM18
"...the voiceless message in the air..." CM20 (Rumours)
"I admire the will, but fear that the flesh is without sufficient strength." MMM8
"Dark as the depths of Omean." FMM4
"...first thoughts are often inspirations, while sober afterthought may lead to failure, or so delay action as to nullify all its effect." FMM11 (Similar to He who hesitates is lost.)
"You shall find a home in the house of my father and a mother in my mother." FMM14
"You haven't the brains of a sorak." SMM7
"It is the character that makes the man, not the clay which is its abode." SMM30
"I want to make more than enough to feed my wife's sorak." LG-2/7
"...he's as mean as an ulsio." LG-3/5
"...that son of a calot..." LG-3/5
"If it has happened or is going to happen, the market place knows it." LG-3/11
"We have the Princess." (LG-4/8) (Jetan term similar to our "It's in the bag.")


John Carter and the Barsoomian Language
"The Martian language... is extremely simple, and in a week I could make all my wants known and understand nearly everything that was said to me. Likewise, under Sola's tutelage, I developed my telepathic powers so that I shortly could sense practically everything that went on around me. ...relatively few spoken words [are] exchanged even in long conversations." JC

"All Barsoomians speak the same tongue from the ice-clad south to the ice-clad north, though their written languages differ. Only in the valley Dor, where the river Iss empties into the lost sea of Korus, is there supposed to be a different language spoken, and, except in the legends of our ancestors, there is no record of a Barsoomian returning up the river Iss." DT 


The Philosophy of John Carter

"I still live!"
"While you live, hope will live." SMJ5  (Dejah upon learning JC is still alive.)
"Cowardice is of a surety its own punishment." PM
". . . a man's way with women is in inverse ratio to his prowess among men." PM16
"The one on whom all responsibility rests is apt to endure the most". GM7

"My sword, my body, my life, my soul are yours to do with as you wish. Until death after death I look to you alone for authority for my every act. Be you right or wrong, your word shall be my only truth. Whoso raises his hand against you must answer to my sword..."
"...accept from John Carter upon his sacred honor the assurance that he will never call upon you to draw this sword other than in the cause of truth, justice and righteousness." GM16

"War never brought peace--it but brings more and greater wars. War is Nature's natural state--it is folly to combat it." MMM9
"The fate of a friend transcends that of a planet." SMM30
"It is the character that makes the man, not the clay which is its abode." SMM30
"...if one of them ever dropped his egotism and broke it it would take a week to fumigate Helium." CM6 (JC on intellectual snobbery)

"Nonchalance is a corollary of poise." SM7
"Eyes speak the truth more often than the lips." SM9
"The fate of a friend transcendds that of a planet." SMM30
"No matter how instinctively gregarious one may be there are times when one longs for solitude." LG-1/1
"Moping seems to be the natural state of all lovers." LG-3/1


JOHN CARTER'S AGE
"I am a very old man, how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more, but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty." PM

ERB: "This man...who had dandled my granfather's great grandfather upon his knee...."

PM Narrator: "My first recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months he spent at my father's home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of the Civil War. I was then a child of but five years."

"Why attempt to explain the inexplicable?" CMFW

"...I do not know how old I am. I recall no childhood. I have always appeared to be about thirty years old. I still do.... Perhaps I am the materialization of some long dead warrior of another age. Who knows?"  LG


BARSOOMIAN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
"This is the valley of love and peace and rest to which every Barsoomian since time immemorial has longed to pilgrimage at the end of a life of strife and bloodshed." GM3 (Description of Barsoomian paradise by Tars Tarkas)

"There is no hope, there is no hope, the dead return not, the dead return not, nor is there any resurrection. Hope not, fo rthere is not hope." GM3 (Thern warning to those who reach "Heaven" in the Valley Dor)

"Leave to a Thark his head and one hand and he may yet conquer." GM4

"Man builds naught that man may not destroy." TMM2

"...the lower orders that stupidly float down an unknown river to an unknown land..." GM8 (The contempt shown by priests for the Barsoomians of the outside world)

"...that pitiful purgatory peopled by the poor unfortunates who dare not continue their abandoned pilgrimage to Dor..." (WM4) Reference to the Valley of Lost Souls by JC

"The Martians are a happy people; they have no lawyers." PM9

"...absolute perfection is as little to be desired as its its antithesis." CM6 (Tara's observations on the Kaldanes.)
"If there is an Almighty God he may resent this usurpation of his prerogatives." SMM7 (JC about Ras Thavas' experiments.)

"But wars are not won by defensive methods." SMJ4


BARSOOMIAN FOLKLORE ~ MYTHOLOGY ~ FIGURES OF SPEECH
"...mad queen of heaven!" CM4 (Description of Thuria, the fast-moving, nearer moon of Barsoom)
"...Thuria left the heavens to her lord and master, hurrying on to keep her tryst with the Sun in other skies." CM4
"Came Thuria again and after a while the great Sun -- a flaming lover, pursuing his heart's desire. And Cluros, the cold husband, continued his serene way, as placid as before his house had been violated by this hot Lothario." CM4 (Romantic fantasy of the eternal triangle of Thuria, the wife and coquette ~ Cluros, the cold husband ~ and Sol, the brazen paramour.)

"Cluros, the further moon, rode high in the heavens, lighting dimly the streets of Zodanga like a dusty bulb in a huge loft..." (SM8) JC

"The last of the great oceans... Its eventual passing will doubtless mark the passing of a world, and Mars will hurtle on through all eternity peopled by not even a memory of its past grandeur." SMM30 JC while in the Toonolian Marshes.)

"The knowledge and the arts of the ancients are beyond the ken of modern man." LG-1/5


MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES FROM ERB

"Man is but a comic little figure hopping from the cradle to the grave" Lys LaRue to Bowen Tyler in THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT
"When I was young, I used to dream of living an adventurous life, and it may be that these youthful dreams more or less shape up one's later life." --ERB (The Living Dead/Escape on Venus, 1941)



BILL HILLMAN
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