SWORDS BROKEN
“May Thy Knife Chip and Shatter” (Dune)
This the fourth issue of “Swords Broken,” a series of blog posts about broken swords. The first post can be found here.
January 11th, 2025
This’ll be a quick one, I think. We’ve probably all heard enough about Dune. I haven’t really read it with any depth (abridged audiobook four years ago) and my whole Dune take is not relevant. Furthermore, there aren’t actually any broken swords involved. There aren’t swords at all, as a matter of fact―we’re talking here about knives. Daggers, more specifically. Blades, anyhow. They’re used and spoken of breaking in a dueling context synonymous with a heroic swordfight.
In Dune, when the exiled Paul and Jessica meet a group of Fremen people, Paul is quickly challenged to a duel by a member of the party who refuses to accept them. We are re-introduced to the local blade, the crysknife, and it is from the dissenting challenger Jamis that we first hear a certain expression:
Dune, p.303
Paul glanced at the crysknife. (...) he realized that he did not know the breaking tension of this blade, did not even know if it could be broken.
(...)
Jamis called out in ritual challenge: “May thy knife chip and shatter!”
This knife will break then, Paul thought.
Later, in the climactic duel of the book, Paul repeats the line before crossing blades with Feyd-Rautha:
Dune, p.484
“Is the Atreides ready?” Feyd-Rautha called, using the words of the ancient kanly ritual.
Paul chose to answer him in the Fremen way: “May thy knife chip and shatter!” He pointed to the Emperor’s blade on the floor, indicating that Feyd-Rautha should advance and take it.
(...)
[Feyd-Rautha] saluted Paul with the Emperor’s blade. “Meet your death, fool.”
In the story, as a story, I guess the purpose of the line repeated is little more than to dramatically signify Paul’s arc of joining with the Fremen cause (a thing somewhat more complicated than its very tropey baseline read, as Paul is a Bene Gesserit plant and explicitly and consciously a studied mass-manipulator). Nevertheless, it’s an evocative phrase, and I began to wonder what sentiment, specifically, the speaker/s are meant to be expressing. Herbert doesn’t dwell on any particular meaning or range of meanings―it’s just “ritual”―but we can read a bit into it.
You might hear it straightforwardly as trash-talking your adversary, literally wishing bad luck. The knife has great significance to the Fremen, so as a sort of synecdoche for the life of the adversary (or their failure and death), the meaning seems plain. However, two special aspects of the knife tie it, by way of its fragility/integrity, to a deeper theme.
First, the crysknife, similar in its biological origins to the previously discussed ohmu shell blades in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, holds special ecological significance to the Fremen and is deeply rooted in their beliefs and their way of life. That way of life is generally conveyed to us as starkly efficient and survivalist in the fantastically severe environment of their desert homeworld. In a strictly technical sense, simple blades are said to be a more reliable weapon in the harsh conditions on Arrakis. The crysknife in particular is made from a tooth of the sandworm―colossal, godlike creatures that are the originators of the valuable spice of Dune and central to the Fremen mythology of one day turning their world to a paradise. A sandworm is called a “Maker” by the Fremen.
Second, unless chemically treated for storage, a crysknife must be kept on your person to maintain the durability of the blade. As explained in the appendix “Terminology of the Imperium” in the original 1965 publication of Dune, the electrical field generated by the living body of the knife’s owner keeps it from gradually disintegrating. There’s an individual and group thing going on with the importance of the knife (and personally keeping it close) to your utility as a fighter for a cause, and as a thing made from the Maker.
Illustration by John Schoenherr, Frank Herbert’s favored artist of Dune, depicting a victorious duelist with a crysknife and his fallen opponent.
Why, then, are Fremen wishing each other’s knives chip and shatter? Well, there is a practical angle. I’m summarizing here a bunch of speculation I pulled from anonymous internet commentary. Generally speaking, this category of readings takes it as an expression of good-natured competitive grit in the best interests of the people. The Fremen, being so survival-oriented, would wish that the best fighter win, that both would put forward their strongest effort and thus risk shattering a blade to prove themselves fit to lead or otherwise sway a group decision. Like, “break a leg,” but actually. I’m not totally sure how I feel about this one, since we’re not really parrying with knives, and the most chance they have of chipping and shattering would seem to be against my bones or jammed in between pieces of my armor. I wouldn’t wish that, not even for the greater good. But those very efficient and collectively-minded people we’re imagining would also wish that any who neglect to care for (or truly live by) the blade prove themselves inadequate to the task and drop out ...by dying.
The more I think about it, this starts to come back around to the straightforward taunt / wish of bad luck. In contrast to the perfunctory, honorable procedure around duels exhibited by other, non-Fremen people of the stories of Dune, the Fremen fighter simply hopes that they win by whatever means necessary, as quickly and efficiently as possible, as willed by the guidance of their worm gods’ tooth... which takes us back out in a metaphysical direction, as if to say that the breaking of the blade realizes a break between the loser and their god, ipso facto justifying their losing the duel―in a manner of speaking, since no one’s knife ever actually breaks.
But like, all our knives are gonna break someday, right? This is my favorite read, as a taunt-flavored expression of both certainty and ambiguity, of collective and individual fate, weirdly at peace with the very violent process. This may be my own subjectivity, but it seems to make a wry nod toward the ironic foolishness and lack of self-reflection inherent in wishing death upon another mortal being. Not necessarily disparaging, just chattering into the void on the edge of life and death. Just ritual, just a thing you say. My friend Joshua (hello) who has actually read the books gave it some thought, and he ended up translating it as “I hope one way or another, after this, you will have no more use for your knife.”
Okay, I’ve managed to find for myself something almost-enough to get over my gripes with Herbert and his ideas. But no, I’m big mad at him forever, and this is my challenge. Frank, may your knife, well, you know. I’m not actually going to say it.
←︎ Previously: Video Games and The Green Knight