Dune

I must admit, no matter what anyone could tell me, that Dune was a brilliant novel. Yes, was a really brilliant one! The comparison with humanity from Frank Herbert's present, which is anyway so alike with our present, is ''crysknife'' clear. All inside of this book is based on similarities and sometimes even on identities. Humankind has been spread into a good part of the Milky Way, but remained essentially the same, one whole, a single entity. Does exist just one form of intelligent life species in the entire known Universe. Some individuals have suffered genetic mutations determined by their way of living, professionally determined mutations - which is the case of Spacing Guild employees/spacemen - but the truth of the oneness of human beings remained untouched. The countries from present were replaced by planets, the counties by planetary systems and domains from cosmic space, the races by Houses, Major or Minor ones - the Houses Major may be also compared with dynasties because they were despotic and unrepresentative regarding the populations ruled by them for so many times during the fictional history conceived by the author - .

The balance of power lends between Lansdraad, the assembly of all imperial Houses or ruling families, the Emperor, as a representative for a House Major, member of Landsraad, the Guild, as the institution of space-travellers, and Bene Gesserit, which is a religious order, but having hard implications in State and in social matters as well.

Each one of them, each one of these pillars of power, has its own monopoly: the Lansdraad rules over citizen's money and lives, yet the Guild possesses the exclusivity of space travel, with all what this should and could involve, starting with the physical technology and including the qualities of foreseeing space-time's isodynamics - which are requested by their purpose of sailing in the endless blackness of cosmic space - . Bene Gesserit, instead, uses to apply the religious technology, controlling human crowds through their well spread and carefully developed religious myths, easing in this way the task of ruling Houses. Still, Bene Gesserit is faraway of being just a religious sisterhood, an order of nuns which are continent and dedicated to the goals of Landsdraad and of the current Emperor. No way! They have their own purposes! But first of all they have hidden strong physical and mental skills, and, at the other hand, they keep trying to achieve one peculiar product, the supreme purpose of their work-schedule: they want to give life to what could be called a super-human being, a sort of hero, but having a well confined political goal. They want to use this SiFi hero in their attempt to earn the control over humankind. Fact which will happen finally, with the mention that their toy will escape from control bringing sisterhood itself in a very bad situation, fighting for its own existence. The Space Guild, at its turn, gives the impression that is only an appendant element because isn't able to provide for itself the necessary amount of spice melange, which is needed as mental fuel for their pilots - the single substance in the whole extended world which makes them seers and which is managed by the Great Houses - . Though, the space travellers are the only ones which own inter-planetary spaceships and the requested know-how for using their foreseeing skills provided by their intensive consumption of spice melange.

This fragile equilibrium of power will be broken finally by Bene Gesserit, which will succeed to breed, even using a different genetic line than the scheduled one, the strongly wished super-human being, a male having within his bodily cells both paternal and maternal memories and endowed also with powerful mental skills.
Categorically, the spice melange from Dune could be a subject of comparison with oil or gold more likely than with another type of earthly substance.

The oil is essential for contemporary world's economy, its price making changes of prices for all economical products which are sold or saleable. Sand warms are nothing than allegories of oil probes. Bene Gesserit itself is a metaphor of Popedom, but in a distorted manner, but though more refined and more influenced by Far-East's conceptions in the same time. Bene Gesserit's order has something from the features of international and occult brotherhoods and from those ones of the institutional forms belonging to the greatest religions of humanity, just that their intentions and methods are profane and they have been applied in a cruel and intellectual manner, with the obvious purpose to achieve concrete advantages, in many of the cases these benefits being scheduled for long periods of time. Even their main goal - producing the Kwisach Haderach - is one which was thought on long shot, its/his final destination being to deprive the Landsdraad of its political power and to establish in this way a new type of state - a form of political power where a new super-human dynasty will rule over the fates of humankind, this dynasty being though under Bene Gesserit's secret control.

Eventually this dynasty, alike Yuan dynasty from Middle Age's China, which had just one ruler, Kublai Khan, would include only one Emperor, but One which will keep the power in his hands more than three thousand years. These alternate historical deeds can be compared only with royalty in its overall evolution in time, speaking in real history's terms. Thus, Bene Gesserit will earn political power just in a symbolic way.
A possible comparison with Jesus moment and with Christianity is indisputable.
The Buddhislam seems to be the prevailing religion in Dune's universe, world where, generally speaking, the religious technology plays a strong role in the whole drama, having a tremendous impact over the future of our race. A future so different from the manner in which we thought that should have to be that seems even believable! Koans from Zen Buddhism do play a significant role on the sandy landscapes of Dune, natural frames which are so well known by Muslims.

Therefore, the ''melange'' is complete, this at least from the point of view of the cultural atmosphere. And at last, but definitely not the least, Zen ''nowness'' and ''momentariness'' of Japanese Buddhism seems to coil the entire lexical fabric.
In Dune the humans are the ultimate weapons, and this is true speaking sensus strictiori: gholas, mentats, Bene Gesserit's nuns, space-travellers of Space Guild, everything and everybody reaching the climax with Kwisach Haderach.



Back to the main page

 Tweet this!
back to the main page