Analyzing these assumptions occupied much of the novice's time. For example, the aspirant might be asked to divide a set of sentences into two groups:
1. The emperor realizes that the plan has failed.
2. The emperor regrets that the plan has failed.
3. The emperor believes that the plan has failed.
4. The emperor knows that the plan has failed.
5. The emperor says that the plan has failed.
6. The emperor claims that the plan has failed.
The bright student would correctly group sentences 1, 2, and 4, and sentences 3, 5, and 6, pointing out that the verbs used tell us as much about the speaker as they do about the emperor, The use of realize, regret, or know tells us that the speaker accepts the truth of the object clause — that the plan has failed — but the use of believe, say, or claim expresses no commitment by the speaker about the success of failure of the plan.
Assumptions explained by reference to a single word are simple ones, of course; the presuppositions which lie in the syntax or morphology of a language lie deeper indeed.
The Bene Gesserit aim was not to change language or its use, but to understand it. Their philosophers had no patience with critics who viewed language as a barrier between the mind and reality: "Language, like sight or smell or hearing, does not cut us off from reality, it puts us in contact with it. Losing language, we would lose the largest window in the house of the soul. If the window is dirty, one does not refuse to look through it, one washes it."6
Thus, when the Lady Jessica came to the Fremen, she brought a sophisticated attitude toward the analysis of language to a people already disposed to receive such a philosophy. Paul and Alia Atreides learned the Bene Gesserit approach to language at their mother's knee, and its influence extended to Leto and Ghanima although, as will be discussed, in a different and sinister way.
THE FREMEN. To the Fremen, their language was a sacred trust, its study a virtuous act, and its students enjoyed the honor of the faithful. When the Fremen gathered on Arrakis in 7193, they encountered a climate that was to have an enormous impact on those attitudes. The climate of Dune was so ferocious that an awareness of it hovered in the background of every conversation. Their language naturally mirrored this changed awareness as their vocabulary multiplied the terms needed to express the new distinctions that allowed them to survive. Fremen terms for different kinds of sand, for example, or for wind conditions show the focus of their concerns. Pardot Kynes noted their linguistic adaptation early in his sojourn with the Fremen: "They were the first people anywhere to express climate in terms of a semi-mathematic language whose written symbols embody (and internalize) the external relationships. The language itself was part of the system it described. Its written form carried the shape of what it described."7
Kynes was right in general, if not in specifics: the vocabulary of the language had been adapted to Dune in response to the same forces to which its speakers had adapted. Yet for the most part, the Fremen were unselfconscious about their speech, moving through its transparent medium as a fish moves in water. All this changed when Jessica and Paul arrived.
Dune was a planet almost designed to promote a self-sufficient individualism. Farming is an activity that favors group action: the more laborers, the more ground that can be planted and the more abundant the harvest. But hunting and gathering (as the Fremen desert society practiced) favors the strong individual: the terrain itself sets limits on the number of organisms it will support. A cold climate drives people physically closer together for the warmth that means survival. But an arid, almost waterless climate means that some will survive while others die: the necessity of making and enforcing life-and-death decisions does not promote strong social ties. Every individual of whom we have record of intruding into Fremen territory — Pardot Kynes, Duncan Idaho, Gurney Halleck, Jessica and Paul, Leto II — had to overcome the imminent danger of being killed for his water, as many others in fact were.
Fremen as a language expresses this extreme individualism in a myriad of sayings: kull ahad yalumm al-nar li-qursu (everybody draws the coals closer to his own loaf); man galab-ak b-al-hafira glab-u b-al-tanqiyya (he who beat you in digging, beat him in pruning) — that is to say, in pruning the fruits of the other's labors; and most telling of all, and al-diq la ashu (in bad times there are no brothers). Into this milieu came Lady Jessica, instituting a new era of Bene Gesserit-inspired linguistic awareness among the desert peoples.
LETO II. To understand the nature of Leto II's rebellion in philosophy, it is necessary to understand one more facet of the Bene Gesserit teaching.
When the Bene Gesserit analyzed syntax, they used a system called generative grammar, a system already ancient when the empire was founded. It was adapted by the B.G. as much for its philosophy as for its usefulness in explaining linguistic phenomena. Its basic tenet was that the most ordinary speaker of any human language was a storehouse of creativity, capable of deriving an infinite number of unique sentences from a limited number of words and grammatical structures. These words and structures were combined and changed according to a finite number of rules, some of which were called transformations. The analogy to genetics is obvious: a limited number of genetic elements are combined according to the rules which govern DNA into a nearly limitless number of structures, each differing one from the other. Of the billions on billions of people in the inhabited worlds, no two are identical. From the name of the grammar, the B.G. took the name of their science of generative genetics.
Leto II, however, abhorred the Bene Gesserit and all their works. How much of this hatred was caused by his sufferings at the hands of Gurney Halleck, directed by Jessica, will probably never be known, but the fact of the hatred cannot be doubted. Hence, though Leto was forced to use much of the B.G. methods and terminology in his own breeding program, his dependence on his sources was a cause of chagrin to him, and he lost no opportunity to denigrate even the tools the B.G. had provided him. Leto's Journals contain the gist of a conversation he had with Moneo, his last chamberlain, which gives us an instance of Leto's discomfort, showing how terms used by the B.G. provoked his contempt almost automatically. As the passage is read, these points should be kept in mind: first, rule-governed creativity was the phrase used by the B.G. to denote the power of each individual to be infinitely creative in language. Leto arrogated to himself the power of creativity and resented its unplanned appearance. Second, linguistic structures as spoken or written were called derived, meaning that they were developed by transformational rules from more basic structures. In the narrative, some words have been editorially italicized for emphasis:
I told Moneo, "It is clear to me that you do not yet understand what I hope to achieve in my breeding program." But he answered with some nonsense about understanding its rules. I said, "Laws tend to be temporary over the long haul, Moneo. There is no such thing as rule-governed creativity."
"But Lord," he said, "you yourself speak of laws which govern your breeding program."
"What have I just said to you, Moneo?" I asked him. "Trying to find rules for creation is like trying to separate mind from body." [The existence of the mind, questioned or scorned by earlier linguists, was an important part of generative philosophy. This is a doubly strange comment for one who contained a multitude of minds within his body. — Ed.]
I continued: to question him: "Why do you always seek after absolutely derivative translations, Moneo?"
He answered, "I have heard you speak of transformational evolution, Lord. That is the label on your stock book. But what of surprise—"
I was forced to remonstrate: "Moneo! Rules change with each surprise."8
Leto could not discard the eminently workable B.G. genetics — hence the label on his "stock book" — nor did he enjoy their notion of an inalienable creativity which he shared with the humblest peon, hence he reacted with distaste when his dependence on their methods and terminology was pointed out, even if pointed out unwittingly.
; Moreover, another essential difference manifested itself. Leto was triply set apart from all others: by his longevity, by his racial awareness, and by his distorted form. The extreme individualism wrought by these factors was reinforced by his Fremen upbringing, with the emphasis on self which that language fostered. But the Bene Gesserit was a group, and a group with much reliance on codes and secret and common languages. From both their training and their organization, to the B.G. "understanding" meant understanding others. From both his heritage and his nurture, for Leto "understanding" meant the formidable task of understanding himself. It is no surprise, therefore, that the B.G. should embrace a theory of meaning heavily dependent on the social contact, the system of shared meanings for words that makes communication possible. But definition for Leto was much more like stipulative definition.
Many of Leto's statements underscore this difference. He remarked on various occasions, "Words can carry any burden we wish," or again, "All words are plastic. Word images begin to distort in the instance of utterance."9 Leto was perhaps the most divided creature the universe has known: he was pulled always in two opposing directions. With a lifespan of millennia, he was himself witness to linguistic changes that go unnoticed to ordinary men and women: the Galach of 13700 would have been unintelligible to those born in 10208, the year of Leto's birth. To talk to others (and it must be remembered that it was only through speech that he could commune with others) he had to continuously revise his languages in pace with the changes of those around him. On the one hand, this feeling that his native speech, part of his own personality, was slipping steadily away from him could be stopped only if language change was stopped. But this was impossible, although he tried with the immense powers at his command to bring social change to a halt. On the other hand, this one cause of separation from his fellows could be removed if everyone shared his problem — if language change was fast enough so that all would feel that speech was a foundation that shifted beneath their feet. Hence his emphasis on plasticity of meaning, and his hatred of systems: "Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change."10 Yet this observation would bring his attention back to the fact that he was creating and maintaining the most rigorous system the worlds have ever seen.
The Fremen and the Atreides illustrate well the conclusion that Duke Leto came to at the juncture of their histories: "You can plumb us by our language."11
W.E.M.
NOTES
1Cited in Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino, Conversations with Muad'Dib (Work-in-Progress, Arrakis Studies, Lib. Conf. Temp. Ser. 346), p. 189.
2Zhana Feliin, trans., Liber Ricarum, B.G. Foundation Studies 4 (Diana: Tevis), p. 206.
3This example is drawn from Haravars H. Kluursh and Eewa W. Kluursh, Psychology and Language (Topaz: Ludlow), ch. 14.
4Rakis Ref. Cat. 89-M844.
5Cited with numerous examples in Ruuvars Shaigal, ed., Fundamentals of the Way: A Bene Gesserit Mental Exercise Book (Grumman: Lodni), p. 498.
6Shaigal, p. 117.
7Cited in Harq al-Ada, The Story of Kynes (Work-in-Progress, Arrakis Studies, Lib. Conf. Temp. Ser. 109), p. 245. Pardot Kynes was a romantic at heart; there is no special iconic quality of Fremen which allows its writing system to picture that which it represents, although a fanciful imagination may well be stimulated by its graceful forms, for example, the Fremen for "grove" (literally, "the place where trees are gathered"; trees were rare on Dune, and there was no single word for the concept) was mawda jami l-al-timar; in the Fremen script——one may picture trunks and roots, but the resemblance rests in one's eye, not in the language.
8Rakis Ref. Cat, 70-A392.
9Rakis Ref. Cat. 10-A3H and 34-A218.
10Rakis Ref. Cat. 34-A218.
11Quoted in Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino, Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries (Work-in-Progress, Arrakis Studies, Lib. Conf. Temp, Ser. 437), p. 186.
FREMEN MENSTRUATION
Like so many other bodily functions to which people on less arid worlds gave little thought, menstruation was a matter of great concern to the Fremen, Their approach to it was partly evolutionary, partly cultural — and entirely unique.
Following their move to Arrakis in 7193, the Fremen recognized immediately that they were more imperiled by water loss than by any other threat which faced them. It was because of that recognition that their Water Discipline was created and their water-conserving devices developed. Primary among those was the stillsuit, that amazing garment which was a Fremen's second skin (more carefully guarded at times than the first) and was capable of holding total water loss to under a thimbleful a day in the desert. From their earliest designs, stillsuits for women were constructed differently from those of the men: in addition to the thigh pads which processed urine and feces, the women's suits included a third processing unit for reclaiming the water lost in menstrual blood. In the later, even more efficient versions, these units kept female water loss on a par with that of the male, in spite of their physiological handicap.
The suits did not eliminate all of the danger to a menstruating woman, however. Reclaimed the moisture might be, but it was still water leaving the body in far greater quantities than would occur at any other time. During their first two generations on the desert planet, the Fremen watched a depressing number of their women perish from shock and dehydration when they were unable to return the water to their systems quickly enough.
By the third generation, they had discovered a partial solution. During the two weeks that bracketed a woman's flow, she could be put on a carefully regulated diet which decreased the water level of her body even below the Fremen norm, to bare minimum. This regimen both lessened the amount of moisture available to be passed and dropped the level gradually, to avoid the sudden shock.
The Fremen also discovered during these years that the bodies of the women were making their own effort to adjust. The length of the menstrual cycle gradually lengthened, increasing the interval between flows and thus decreasing the number of times a woman would menstruate between puberty and menopause; by 8570, the average cycle had leveled off at fifty-six days, double the Imperial norm.
Education concerning this aspect of a Fremen girl's life, along with that involving such related issues as pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing, was considered too vital to be left to the individual parents. At puberty, the girls were taken on a week's retreat by the Reverend Mother of their sietch. During this week, the special functioning of their stillsuits was explained to them along with the ingredients and preparation the moisture-reducing diet demanded; the birth-control method their male counterparts were being taught was also explained, as was the most reliable means of determining the most fertile days during their cycle. The Reverend Mothers' ancestral memories could be expected to contain information on almost any possible variation on these themes, and that information was passed on to their pupils.
On their return to the sietch, the young women were welcomed as new adults and received their own yali (living quarters) in their parents' households. More responsible tasks were assigned them, and they were considered eligible for marriage. (Those selected by their Reverend Mothers on the hajra [journey of seeking] during the last day of the retreat were also considered eligible for the Sayyadina.)
A certain amount of ritual was involved in every cycle. Prayers were offered to Shai-Hulud at its beginning for the proof of fertility it gave; other prayers, at its conclusion, for the woman's continuing good health. The next time menstruation dramatically affected a Fremen woman was when she reached menopause, a passage considered nearly as important as puberty, though more for its effect on the individual than on the tribe. It was customary for a woman's mate, children, and friends to gather for a small party celebrating the safe completion of her fertile years.
C.W.
Further references: ATREIDES, CHANI; CONTRACEPTION; R. Semajo, "Ritual and Fertility." Sofia 42U: 61-86
.
FREMEN, MUSEUM
The intentions of Leto II to preserve Fremen culture and social organization in the absence of the necessary environmental and social conditions produced a hollow life for those subjects of the God Emperor known as the Museum Fremen. The limited depictions of these people provided in the recovered ridulian crystals confirm the social law that disembedded sociocultural forms lose all vitality.
The motives of the God Emperor in creating the Museum Fremen deserve some scrutiny. Gillian Lieuw has argued in her Last Years of the Imperium (Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak) that Leto planned to ultimately restore Arrakis (Rakis) to its former status as the planet of Dune and therefore needed some cadres to carry on the old ways until they could be "refunctionalized." Gweleder Dadas-Nerm has strongly challenged this interpretation with his penetrating study of the God Emperor's mental state, A Life Through the Millennia (Yorba: Rose). He suggests that during the more-than-3,000-year reign of Leto II, so many radical changes occurred that the God Emperor yearned for the simplicity of his fully human youthful years. According to Dadas-Nerm, while he may have justified his plan rationally, the utter aloneness of Leto II in a world of his own alienated construction motivated him to recreate as best he could a familiar sociocultural pattern. Finding comfort in the Museum Fremen, Leto proceeded to treat them as his playthings, nurturing them while constraining the scope of their lives for his own nostalgic uses.
Although Dadas-Nerm's interpretation cannot be substantiated, there is little in the record to indicate that the Museum Fremen understood, appreciated, or even accurately preserved the ethos of the true Fremen.
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