In her new book, THE CLOUD THAT CONTAINED THE LIGHTNING, Cynthia Lowen uses the character of J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the "father of the atomic bomb," as a jumping-off point for her collection of poetry. The collection explores the kinds of ethical choices we face as individuals and as a society with respect to the innovations and inventions we pursue. Of these poems, Pultizer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes writes, "No biographer in 600 pages has come closer to understanding him [Oppenheimer]—and the bomb—than does Cynthia Lowen in these subtle, resonant poems."Here is a Q&A with Lowen about her new book.
Q: Why did you want to write about the atomic bomb and Oppenheimer in particular?
Although I never met him, I understood from a very young age that my grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project. He was a young physicist in Eugene Wigner’s theoretical group at Met Lab in Chicago. When the scientists began to clash with the military over the management of the Project—the scientists were convinced it would only take one atomic bomb to beat the Nazis, while the military wanted to develop an entire industrial production line of bombs—my grandfather leaked the Manhattan Project’s existence to first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, in the hopes she would take up the scientists’ cause. For this security breech, he was kicked of the Project, followed by the FBI who suspected him of communist sympathy, and died shortly after the war at the age of 38, of causes my family has never determined.
Having the atomic bomb as part of my family history was something that I always felt deeply conflicted about. It also prompted me to wonder, what drove these scientists to create such a terrible weapon? What were the fears, prejudices, hubris and very human qualities that came together at that juncture in history, to produce such a thing? And furthermore, what prompted it to be used? While the earliest drafts of the poems in the book were originally about my grandfather, I soon decided that I wanted this collection to revolve, rather, around the character of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Although the atomic bomb had thousands of creators, it was Oppenheimer who came to be known as ‘the father of the atomic bomb,’ and I wanted to use this emblematic status as a way to explore these questions. Oppenheimer is such a complicated, rich figure, and the more I found out about him, the more I felt his life encapsulated the intersection of ambition, violence, conscience, and ultimately, tragedy, that touched so many people involved with the atomic bomb’s creation and use.
Q: Richard Rhodes, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his landmark book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, has said “No biographer in six hundred pages has come closer to understanding him—and the bomb—than does Cynthia Lowen in these subtle, resonant poems.” What kind of research did you do into Oppenheimer’s life in order to get this close?
Richard Rhodes’s own watershed book is where my research began—in fact, years before I ever started the poetry collection, when I was trying to learn more about my grandfather, who is mentioned therein. I continued to turn to this book often in the course of writing the collection, not just for information about Oppenheimer, but also to develop an understanding of the science behind the bomb, and the timeline leading up to its use. Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus was absolutely instrumental in learning about Oppenheimer’s personality, character, beliefs, insecurities, relationships, and really, in developing a sense of him as a person. From there I watched documentaries, clips I found of Oppenheimer online, I read papers, letters, articles—really, anything I could get my hands on. Both the plays In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Copenhagen helped me look at the scientist from a dramatic standpoint, and think about how to develop the distinct voice that would become that of Oppenheimer’s in the book. I also read biographies about other scientists working on the Manhattan Project, such as Eugene Wigner and Leo Szilard, and the military heads of the project, including General Groves and Vannevar Bush, and histories of life at Los Alamos. Of course, in writing a book of poetry, rather than hard history, I was able to take the historical record as a jumping-off point to imagine the psychological dimensions of this man and his work.
That said, as I was learning more about Oppenheimer and the making of the bomb, I felt it was essential to write also from the perspective of the hibakusha, Japanese for “explosion-affected people.” The Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima has done an incredible job of archiving the testimonies of the people who witnessed the bombing on August 6, 1945, many of whom lost their children and loved ones. I also read several collections of essays by the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as poems by authors including Sankichi Toge, an activist who used poetry to advocate for peace.
Q. What were the most surprising things you came across during your research?
There were many things that surprised me in the course of researching this book. One of the things that really stands out—though I suppose it’s not really surprising at all—is that documentary footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki filmed shortly after the bombings and bearing witness to the human toll, was suppressed and confiscated by the Americans and taken out of the country. A ban was also imposed in Japan on the publication of written works referring to the atomic bombings, as well as criticism of the Allied forces. This lasted throughout the U.S. occupation and reconstruction, until the early 1950s. As a result, during the ban, poetry and art became an important way to talk about the bomb, and to write critically of the U.S. and Japanese governments.
I was also surprised to discover the extent to which the hibakusha were discriminated against, as reminders of defeat and humiliation. They often had a difficult time finding jobs, getting married, and even getting support for their medical needs from the government.
In terms of Oppenheimer, I was surprised to discover that he himself wrote and loved poetry. Of course, he famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita upon the first testing of an atomic bomb at Trinity, “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” I think his passion for poetry gave me a kind of permission to address his life through this form, and gave me hope that perhaps, from somewhere in the great beyond, he might approve.
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