At the end of Act I of Doctor Atomic (2005), John Adams’ opera on nuclear physicist J. 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 “[Holy Sonnet] 14” (1633). 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).
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. 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[s] and love[s]” it (Rhodes 571-2). 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. Nonetheless, this is an assumption virtually all reviewers, interviewers, and critics accept at face value. This includes Robert Warren Lintott’s first scholarly study on the opera (the present article appears to be the second). Lintott’s musical analysis focuses on how Doctor Atomic constructs different perceptions of time, yet is uncritical of the Donne adaptation (e.g., 31ff). It also ignores a crucial way in which the opera constructs time: by excluding the Japanese timeline, presenting only American scenes (and largely as embodied by one highly privileged white male American).
By contrast, a close reading of “14” reveals many contradictions to Adams’ and Sellars’ sympathetic adaptation. My reading also suggests that the subject of the other poem cited in Oppenheimer’s letter, “Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness,” is more relevant and less one-sided with regard to the atomic bomb and its consequences. Distracted by the minor connection between the “three-personed god” line and the name of the Trinity Test, and by the dramatic sounds of “14,” Sellars neglects to closely consider the sonnet’s content and context, leading to a misrepresentation echoed by Adams’ unvaryingly sympathetic musical setting.