Donne and Robert Oppenheimer

Date: Tue Jul 19 7:44 AM, 2005

Donne and Robert Oppenheimer

Date: Mon Jul 25 9:42 AM, 2005

Oppenheimer was reading "Batter my heart" when he was asked for a name

for the project.

Date: Mon Sep 5 12:31 PM, 2005

Okay, I'll bite. How do we know that it was "Batter my Heart" that he was reading? Not to imply disbelief, since that sonnet certainly fits the bill. Just a request to satisfy my own curiousity and guide me to deeper waters -- how do we know?

Thanks!

Date: Thu Sep 8 8:37 AM, 2005

We know from comments Oppenheimer made about the subject. I came across this many years ago when I was doing some work on Frank Waters. I can't remember the source but much has been written on the Trinity project so further information shouldn't be too difficult to find.

Date: Thu Sep 8 9:06 AM, 2005

Thanks for the info. I have never hear of Frank Waters before. Nor have I read on the Trinity project. New directions to wander -- how fun.

Leslie

Date: Thu Sep 29 6:27 PM, 2005

Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God.

This is the Trinity..

Date: Fri Oct 7 6:54 AM, 2005

The conclusion of my book, THE VIRGIN MARY AS ALCHEMICAL AND LULLIAN REFERENCE IN DONNE (just published by the Susquehanna University Press), connects Donne with J. Robert Oppenheimer (and with Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi). Oppenheimer was one who "put the phoenix under the microscope" (p. 178). Like Donne before him, he discovered "the glue, the binding energy, behind matter." In this sense, both Oppenheimer and Donne have performed the "true 'alchemical work.'"

I did not know of the connection with "Batter my heart." Thank you.

Date: Sat Oct 27 2:53 PM, 2007

I notice that John Stubbs' John Donne: The Reformed Soul (W.W. Norton, 2007) observes the connection between Donne and Oppenheimer. My book forthcoming (The Edwin Mellen Press) discusses the concept of Trinity as it pertains to alchemico-Lullian signs in Donne, Herbert, and Crashaw. Here I am particularly interested in ways that Lull's red triange represents "the end, for which all mankind yearns." Although Oppenheimer may not have been aware of Lull's system of spiritual logic, he most certainly was aware of the irony "when he chose that very name for the project at Los Alamos."

Date: Thu May 7 8:39 AM, 2009

In 1962, General Groves wrote to Oppenheimer about the origin of the name, asking if he had chosen it because it was a name common to rivers and peaks in the West and would not attract attention, and elicited this reply:

I did suggest it, but not on that ground... Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: "As West and East / In all flatt Mapsand I am oneare one, / So death doth touch the Resurrection."

He continued

That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, "Batter my heart, three person'd God;.