I’ve also got copies of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune that are older than me. I want to put it in an archival bag, and probably will when my re-read is done. I don’t care - it smells like a real book, and it’s a great reading copy, with the early cover artwork. My paperback copy of Dune was re-published in 1971 and is tattered and torn, with a broken spine. It was a pleasant shock to have it re-spool into my neurons now it’s written on a note in my own wallet, like my friend kept his, long ago. I might have forgotten the Litany’s usefulness as the years slipped by, but in my current re-read it’s come to my attention again. When I got married later on, I found someone who may not have kept the Litany on his person, but for whom the book Dune is his favorite science-fiction touchstone of all time. I’d ended up more impressed with him than before: you can have a lot of fun with someone, but also find unplumbed depths together in the strangest moments. I made a best friend after those days, in my old town of Flagstaff, AZ, who I learned kept a copy of the Litany on a note in his wallet. In my college years, the Litany was something I’d scrawled on a Post-it and pasted to my mirror. Well, has fear gone away since 1965? I’d even posit we’ve found more things to be afraid of with the ease we now devour world news and calamitous global misery. Is this the kind of thing anyone should care about? Or use? And why would we? Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.Īnd when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Here is the Litany Against Fear, directly from the (1965) Dune novel, by Frank Herbert:įear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. (And yes, there have been several attempts to turn this into film…we’re still waiting for the one to do it right.) And while Dune’s author Frank Herbert might have had a lesson in mind more about planetary politics or the future of humanity than the test of one young human, the Litany he penned resonates now, as it did then, and will continue to touch people newly discovering this great tome of a book. Wisdom from not so long ago in our literary past can absolutely help us today.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |