THE SHORTENING OF THE WAY

Every other year, I re-read Frank Herbert’s Dune books¹ because I thoroughly enjoy their richly crafted, imaginative worlds and always find something new in their intelligent writing. Now we also have a fresh film adaptation, this time directed by Denis Villeneuve (reviewed p.66), who is also overseeing a companion TV series Dune: The Sisterhood.

The engine of Dune’s main story arc – the mysterious process or person Herbert calls Kwisatz Haderech – is introduced early on in an encounter between Leto (Duke of House Atreides), his concubine Jessica (mother of the boy-hero Paul) and Liet Kynes (the Imperially-appointed planetologist to the ultra-dry world of Arrakis).²

The story of Dune begins some 20,000 years into our future and Paul Atreides is no ordinary lad. He is the product of a eugenics programme spanning thousands of years, deliberately selecting for a paranormally gifted leader. This ambitious project is engineered by another of Herbert’s memorable creations: the venerable, cultish, female-only organisation known as the Bene Gesserit (a name influenced by Latin and Hebrew linguistics). They are an obvious parody of the influential orders of Catholic nuns; Herbert apparently thought of them as “female Jesuits” and modelled them on his “Irish Catholic aunts”.

Despite their considerable talents – gained through rigorous mental and physical training, and the use of the nootropic substance called “spice melange” – the prescience of the “Reverend Mothers” was always limited. They could experience the ‘genetic’ memories of a female lineage but not that of any male line. Indeed, the very thought of accessing the male ‘Other’ memories terrified them.

This inhibition became the impetus for them to breed a male – the Kwisatz Haderech – whom they could control; one who could also venture into the hidden region of the future they found blocked to them. He would also have the combined abilities of a Reverend Mother, a “Mentat” (a human computer), and a “Guild Navigator” (the spaceship pilots who used melange to find ideal routes through space).

HERBERT BASED THE BENE GESSERIT ON HIS IRISH CATHOLIC AUNTS

The reader is left in no doubt about the importance of the Kwisatz Haderech and his mysterious ability to “shorten the way”, but the explanation that it relates to a type of visionary teleportation comes much later. A few enterprising readers, however, soon discovered that the famously erudite Herbert had borrowed the phrase kefitzat haderech (or ha-derekh)– Hebrew: kefitzat to jump or clench; haderech a path or way – from an ancient Jewish rabbinical tradition and dressed it in futuristic robes. My aim here is to reveal the historical and mystical idea of “shortening the way” and its origins in Hasidic and Islamic mysticism in greater detail. To do that effectively, we need to have some context: a brief portrait of Frank Herbert (1920-1986)³ and his complex fiction, and a summary of those ancient motifs themselves.

THE DREAMER OF DUNE

Dune enjoys an exalted place in the annals of science fiction. Historically, Herbert’s magnum opus was one of the first great best-sellers of the genre for good reason. It was the product of a “speculative and passionate intellect,” wrote the editors of the SF Encyclopedia, “a novel of extraordinary complexity… [and] intensity of intellectual discourse.” Besides its memorable story, the series has appealed to several generations of modern readers specifically because of its futuristic discussion of large-scale environmental issues, sectarian violence, and the rise of both fundamentalist guerrilla armies and anti-authoritarian social action groups. “So completely did Mr Herbert work out the interactions of man and beast and geography and climate,” noted Gerald Jonas, “that became the standard for a new sub-genre of ‘ecological’ science fiction.”