[Madness]

Just found this review of Dune:

The density of this book, both of unfamiliar terms and philosophy, sociology, and political intrigue, can be off putting, but I highly recommend working through it. On the first page alone there are at least ten terms or names which are from Herbert’s created universe, and the second page has quite a few more, but the long haul is worth it.

Is there no hope for The Second Apocalypse ?

[Wilshire]

  well replace "first page" with "first book", and "ten" with "hundreds".

Come on humanity,  you can do it!

[Madness]

Lol - I'm definitely tearing up over the injustice .

[Srancy]

The Solitary God created Earwa to train the faithful.

[Madness]

Lol - welcome to the Dune thread, Srancy .

[locke]

The Solitary God created Earwa to train the faithful.

One cannot go against the word of god.

What is the word of god?  The logos.  And the universe is the uttering of the logos.



my favorite Dune quote has always been this:

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never persistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.

[Madness]

Someday I promise I will start seriously collecting quotes from my books to document what tickled my specific brain.

But I couldn't even begin to think of all the amazing Dune quotes. That's something I always enjoyed about Herbert and enjoy now about Bakker.

[mrganondorf]

There's a lot of wiggle room for moe, but it's simpler to just assume he's gone.

there's the question of whether the Serwe that leaps for Kellhus is Serwe from the Outside or the-thing-called-serwe.  That's a pet theory of mine I haven't really outlined.

Kellhus toppled into something when he cast his spell and rent the inward, after that moment his POV is excised from the narrative, and the next time we see him it's with descriptions akin to the no-god (whirlwind etc). 

Moenghus sought out Cnaiur for his strength before being touched by the chorae

unlike all the other deaths by chorae we've seen, Moe is not inhumed more-or-less instantly, he sticks around.

blackness engulfed Cnaiur at the end. 

Kellhus stumbled on a rock/skull on the way to the final encounter, so he's more fallible than usual.

Moe's three snakes come to him after he's stabbed.

Moenghus has the Skinspies suspended over a pit and has chosen this location, deep underground, next to an even deeper bottomless pit as the ideal location to confront kellhus.  Pits have an inordinate importance in the second trilogy and seem to facilitate movement between the inward and outward.  In the preview chapter of TUC, Shauriatus suspends his circle of amputees over a pit so there is metaphysical importance to them for certain, particularly in regards to survival  (if a pit occluds the sight of gods, perhaps it also occulds the ability of a chorae to assert reality, note that chorae was more or less useless at the GATES of the the Great Medial Screw, at the bottom of a giant pit until Mimara transfigured it.  Perhaps Moenghus has found a loop-hole--literally, a loop and a hole.  It's also worth mentioning that the synthese can find any skin spy, but all their skin spies have disappeared in Kianene, Moe probably figured out that they couldn't be located when suspended over a pit.  Also, Shauriatus has illustrated the ability to self move his soul through a circuit of other bodies, so a soul can be transported from one body to another, at least in the presence of a pit.

locke, are you thinking that Moe translated into Cnaiur or into a skin spy or something else?

[Royce]

Anyone of you seen Jodorowskys Dune?

[Ciogli]

 After reading this thread I was inspired to reread the Dune series, they were always my favorite books growing up. I had not rea them since I started with the second apocalypse books although I recognized the influence when reading them, the homages are deeper and more numerous than I imagined.
Kellhus is mainly inspired by Leto II who has come to complete the work started by his father, where Paul turned away from the Golden Path because he could not bare the cost of being subdivided into the worms in an endless dream while Kellhus theorized that Moenghus will turn away from The Thousandfold Thought when he learns of his own damnation. Although this is fluid thing as in the triumvirate of Paul, Chani, and Irulan, with that of Kellhus, Esmenet, and Serwe. Esmenet seems to Chani the dark haired true wife of the prophets heart while his blonde haired public wife Serwe who is the daughter of a chief. The Anasurimbor are the new Atreides, that family that holds the destiny of humanity in its hands. Esmenet is in a similar situation as that of Alia, the regent of a toppling empire trying to hold it together from internal rebellion after the Prophet who created the empire departs, and in her distress she begins to listen to the counsel of a family member. In Dune it is Alia’s maternal grandfather Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, while in Esmenet’s case it is her son Kelmommas. Kelmommas is interesting because he is the possessor and the possessed, the voice that leads Esmenet to ruin and the one who is haunted by an internal monologue that leads him in his madness. He was born staring into the eyes of his twin like the birth of Leto and Ghanima where they looked at each other in the womb. In the case of Kellhus he controls the Legion within himself, like Leto controls the legions of inner lives of his ancestors.  And the Circumfixion of Kellhus where he first grasps the TTT is similar to the introduced spice agony of Leto where he chooses the Golden Path. And in Shulloch where Leto takes on the sand trout skin and establishes the Golden Path, whereas in the abandoned mansion of Kyudea where Kellhus speaks to Moenghus and solidifies TTT. But unlike Leto who we have a viewpoint from in the books and can empathize with his ultimate designs, Kellhus gradually loses his viewpoint and becomes opaque as he grows in power and occludes his designs. Both Paul and Moenghus speak of the sleeping God, while the Divided God that was one is similar to the God shattered into a million slivers. I think Serwa is like Ghanima, could she give birth to a future royal line.
The similarities that struck me most were those of Stillgar and Duncan Idaho both helped the ascent of Paul Atreides. In Earwa Proyas brings to mind Stillgar, the old stalwart who is the first to discover Kellhus and helps in his ascent to Godhood, and then is the person entrusted with secret knowledge that is to help in a future without his living God. And Meppa who seems to be a riff on Hayt the ghola of Duncan Idaho. Both do not know their past identity, and is the confidant of a king, and while the ghola has metal Tleilaxu eyes that give him greater vision, Meppa has a silver shield over his missing eyes. The Bene Gesserit seems to be broken into two pieces, one is the Dunyain and the other seems to be the Mandate. There is a quote where someone says “the Bene Gesserit want what they always want, for the universe to leave them alone” which it is the same goal of the Dunyain. That along with all of the obvious physical and mental capabilities of a Reverend Mother. While the Mandate has the other memory in the form of Seswatha’s homunculus inside, giving them access to things coveted by their rivals. The Bene Gesserit call the Honored Matres the whores just as the Mandate call the Scarlett Spire the whores. Melange seems to be the Gnosis; the Honored Matres want the abilities that the spice agony gives new Reverend Mothers, while the Scarlett Spires want the Gnosis.
Farradan the grandson of Shaddam has similarities to two characters, one Fanayal the son of a deposed monarch trying to restore his line to the throne, and Sorweel who is an enemy of the Anasurimbor and yet can’t help to be seduced by them. Yet Sorweel seems also to be partly based upon Siona, who could disappear from the prescience of Leto who is like Sorweel who can disappear from the sight of Kellhus and his children. The relationship of Xerius and Conphas seems to be inspired by Baron Vladimir and Feyd Rautha, the young heir who wants kill the monarch to take their place yet who has a relationship of familial ambition.   
And now for some other random observations, there is a part where Sheena and Odrade ride a sandworm into the desert, and Odrade thinks about the place where the God-Emperor fell to his death and muses that many people died there but the death of Leto marked this place. This brings to mind the death of the No-God and of the topoi in general. There is a place in Dune Messiah where the Fremen women of the southern sietch in reaction to Alia, in which they use the quote about witches which is very similar to the quote about whores. While reading a book about alchemy I came across the name of Abraham Eleazar the Jew, a mythical priest who brought the secrets of alchemy Nicholas Flamel, very similar to Eleazareas the grandmaster of the Scarlett Spires. In one conversation Leto states that prophecy creates events to bring itself about. In Dune Messiah at the beginning of the book, Bronso of Ix has written a book about Paul Atreides that has been banned as heretical much like the book of Achamian. And finally the Golden Lion Throne of Shaddam, which brings to mind the Golden Throne Room of Sil in the Ark.     

[Madness]

Really awesome post, Ciogli.

I did a Dune read-through a couple years ago, it might be soon time to do another.

[mrganondorf]

Ciogli, there was a lot more there than I suspected!  Maybe I'm due for a Dune reread too...

[Wilshire]

Wow, good things Ciogli. Some of that seems a bit of a stretch, but there is plenty of good similarities.

I never thought about Siona and Sorweel. I wonder if Sorweel was somehow chosen  for a role by Kellhus specifically because he knew he wouldn't be able to be sure what he did, much like how Leto II and Siona.

The Kell/Esmi/Serwa triangle is also a good one, though Serwa has less clout than Irulan. Though, like you said, they both served a purpose, which was to appease the masses. While Paul was using Irulan to bolster his political relationship with powerful players, Kellhus used Serwa to appease the masses.

Thanks for the words.

[Francis Buck]

Great post Cigoli, lots of little things I remember noticing briefly while reading and then totally forgetting (and also I plenty I never thought of at all, like the Siona/Sorweel stuff and Esmi/Serwe being Chiani/Irulan). I personally think the Dune connections in TSA are pretty huge overall, and that the plot and characters actually draw more from Dune than any other existing work, whereas the setting and lore of TSA is more where the LOTR connections come in. It's pretty crazy how much of the series is really a mixture of these two works, which is not to insult the ingenuity of Bakker's stuff -- to me, Bakker's way of taking inspiration from earlier stuff is kind of the best way, since there's always some kind of unique little twist or inversion to everything that makes it his own. The end result is something that feels (and is) wildly fresh and unique. It's strange to say but I totally believe that more writers could learn from this method, and more importantly, writers could UNDERSTAND the process underlying it. Plenty of authors do the exact same thing, but they lack the self-awareness of it. Bakker's self-awareness is what allows him to reinvent this stuff.

It's part of why even now I still lean towards Meppa being Moe. This arc in particular for me just fits way too perfectly with the arc between Leto II and Paul, all the way down to the father (Moe/Paul) coming back from the desert as a blind, weathered religious figure opposing the very ideals which he initially gave birth to. Even if Meppa isn't Moe, there's NO WAY that Bakker was unaware of the connection here, and so it serves as a red herring. Either way, there had to be some intent there. Bakker's self-awareness of these inspirations is just too precise for it to be an accident, in my opinion.

[locke]

Yawn. Meppa isn't moe.  The twist on dune is that meppa is Moe's dad. Grand sire anasurimbor.   Further the Bakker style riff twist you're discussing is that he has combined Duncan Idaho and the atreides into a single unit. Every generation gets an idaho clone. Every generation gets an anasurimbor clone, and like kellhus they all think they are special unique snowflakes.



All typ0s courtesy of Samsung.