Barbenheimer & a Three-Person'd God

 

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

  Batter my heart, three-person'd God -- John Donne

Barbenheimer. Who knew that this would be a trending phrase in the summer of 2023? It refers to yesterday's release of two films which have already received strong reviews and are now in theatres everywhere -- yes, even Belleville. 

We may go to see the Barbie film with its supposed feminist vibe despite the concerns we had as earnest parents of two daughters about the body image projected by their collection of dolls which may still be around somewhere. The Barbie of the late 50s was essentially the first doll which wasn't an infant or a child and over the years her persona changed to reflect the different decades.

We will definitely take in Oppenheimer, a brooding biopic of the figure who was central to bringing the atomic bomb into being. Robert Oppenheimer was a physicist who eventually regretted his involvement in what was known as the Manhattan Project, brought to fruition in the high desert of New Mexico. The test before the bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was called Trinity, which borders on blasphemous given the destruction which was unleashed. The website for the Los Alamos National Laboratory includes this description of Oppenheimer's use of the term Trinity: 

As he had done throughout his life, Oppenheimer continued to foster his love of literature during the Manhattan Project. Two of his influences were John Donne and the Hindu scripture "Bhagavad-Gita." Oppenheimer recalled both during the Trinity test.

John Donne and Trinity 

Seventeenth-century poet John Donne was one of Oppenheimer’s favorite writers and an inspiration during his work with the Manhattan Project. 

In 1962, Manhattan Project leader Gen. Leslie Groves wrote to Oppenheimer to ask about the origins of the name Trinity. According to a copy of the letter that is a part of the collections of the Lab’s National Security Research Center, Oppenheimer said, “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.” Oppenheimer then quoted the sonnet “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness” about a man unafraid to die because he believed in resurrection.

Oppenheimer continued, “That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, ‘Batter my heart, three person’d God.’ Beyond this, I have no clues whatever.” “Batter my heart” expresses the paradox that by being chained to God, the narrator can be set free. A great force could enthrall the narrator to do greater good. Richard Rhodes, who wrote the book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," proposed that “the bomb for [physicist Niels] Bohr and Oppenheimer was a weapon of death that might also end war and redeem mankind.”

John Donne poetry and the Bhagavad-Gita? I have to learn more, and I'm willing to sit through a three-hour film to further my education.