He also cites from the latter poem three full lines, as opposed to the mere three-quarters of one line from “14.” Sellars thus already makes a large assumption in drawing from the test’s codename the entirety of “14” and presenting it as a map of Oppenheimer’s mind.
He cites the poetry as part of what appears to have been a greater number of “thoughts.in my mind ” moreover, it is not “14” but Donne’s “Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness” that Oppenheimer mentions first, introducing it explicitly and adding that he “know and love” it (Rhodes 571-2). However, while Donne’s “three-personed God” obviously refers to the Trinity of Christian mythology, Oppenheimer’s letter does not suggest so unequivocal or simple a connection between “14” as a whole and his thoughts behind the name. Informing Sellars’ use of this material was a 1962 letter from Oppenheimer to the General of the Manhattan Project, in which he cites the sonnet’s opening line-“Batter my heart, three-personed God.”-as an influence in his suggestion to name the test “Trinity” (Rhodes 571-2 The Metropolitan Opera International Radio Broadcast Information Centre 1). Robert Oppenheimer and the first atomic bomb test, the protagonist, Oppie (baritone Gerald Finley), sings the signature aria, “Batter My Heart.” In Peter Sellars’ libretto, the aria is adapted from the seventeenth-century Anglican priest John Donne’s sonnet “ 14” (1633).
At the end of Act I of Doctor Atomic (2005), John Adams’ opera on nuclear physicist J.
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