Edwin Arlington Robinson. The Man Against the Sky

American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson was born just after the time of the Civil War and lived to see the dramatic transformation of the world he was born into through the influence of so-called Enlightenment philosophies and the development of early industrial technologies. Like William Blake before him, he came to perceive at an early age the destructive effects of new forms of power made available by the actions of big government, big business and big industry.

The Man Against the Sky was written in 1916 at a time when all informed citizens in the Western world had begun to grasp the immensity of destruction wrought by political will and the new machineries of death unleashed during the First World War. As a poet, Robinson was also deeply conscious of a widespread devaluation of human life and a growing dismissal of the more subtle dimensions of human experience as encompassed by such terms as soul and spirit.

Among other things, this dramatic poem carries Robinson's impassioned response to the growing worship of science and scientism and the widespread negation of any transcendent meaning to human life by those who at that time espoused and vociferously promoted a materialist view of life.

Although written nearly a century ago, Robinson's depth of questioning continues to resonate into the present time when the philosophical and existential divides as articulated in this poem have, if anything, deepened further.

The Man Against the Sky can be streamed using the media player below. A CD quality audio file is also available for downloading here




NOTES
 
Voice: vincentd
Music: Doc and Lena Selyanina, "Lofoten"
(Remix: vincentd)

With many thanks to Doc and Lena Selyanina who have so generously made available their creative and highly individuated music.

 

THE POEM

The Man Against the Sky

Between me and the sunset, like a dome

     Against the glory of a world on fire,

     Now burned a sudden hill,

     Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher,

     With nothing on it for the flame to kill

     Save one who moved and was alone up there

     To loom before the chaos and the glare

     As if he were the last god going home

     Unto his last desire.

     Dark, marvelous, and inscrutable he moved on

     Till down the fiery distance he was gone, -

     Like one of those eternal, remote things

     That range across a man's imaginings

     When a sure music fills him and he knows

     What he may say thereafter to few men, -

     The touch of ages having wrought

     An echo and a glimpse of what he thought

     A phantom or a legend until then;

     For whether lighted over ways that save,

     Or lured from all repose,

     If he go on too far to find a grave,

     Mostly alone he goes.

     Even he, who stood where I had found him,

     On high with fire all round him, -

     Who moved along the molten west,

     And over the round hill's crest

     That seemed half ready with him to go down,

     Flame-bitten and flame-cleft, -

     As if there were to be no last thing left

     Of a nameless unimaginable town, -

     Even he who climbed and vanished may have taken

     Down to the perils of a depth not known,

     From death defended though by men forsaken,

     The bread that every man must eat alone;

     He may have walked while others hardly dared

     Look on to see him stand where many fell;

     And upward out of that, as out of hell,

     He may have sung and striven

     To mount where more of him shall yet be given,

     Bereft of all retreat,

     To sevenfold heat, -

     As on a day when three in Dura shared

     The furnace, and were spared

     For glory by that king of Babylon

     Who made himself so great that God, who heard,

     Covered him with long feathers, like a bird.

     Again, he may have gone down easily,

     By comfortable altitudes, and found,

     As always, underneath him solid ground

     Whereon to be sufficient and to stand

     Possessed already of the promised land,

     Far stretched and fair to see:

     A good sight, verily,

     And one to make the eyes of her who bore him

     Shine glad with hidden tears.

     Why question of his ease of who before him,

     In one place or another where they left

     Their names as far behind them as their bones,

     And yet by dint of slaughter toil and theft,

     And shrewdly sharpened stones,

     Carved hard the way for his ascendency

     Through deserts of lost years?

     Why trouble him now who sees and hears

     No more than what his innocence requires,

     And therefore to no other height aspires

     Than one at which he neither quails nor tires?

     He may do more by seeing what he sees

     Than others eager for iniquities;

     He may, by seeing all things for the best,

     Incite futurity to do the rest.

     Or with an even likelihood,

     He may have met with atrabilious eyes

     The fires of time on equal terms and passed

     Indifferently down, until at last

     His only kind of grandeur would have been,

     Apparently, in being seen.

     He may have had for evil or for good

     No argument; he may have had no care

     For what without himself went anywhere

     To failure or to glory, and least of all

     For such a stale, flamboyant miracle;

     He may have been the prophet of an art

     Immovable to old idolatries;

     He may have been a player without a part,

     Annoyed that even the sun should have the skies

     For such a flaming way to advertise;

     He may have been a painter sick at heart

     With Nature's toiling for a new surprise;

     He may have been a cynic, who now, for all

     Of anything divine that his effete

     Negation may have tasted,

     Saw truth in his own image, rather small,

     Forbore to fever the ephemeral,

     Found any barren height a good retreat

     From any swarming street,

     And in the sun saw power superbly wasted;

     And when the primitive old-fashioned stars

     Came out again to shine on joys and wars

     More primitive, and all arrayed for doom,

     He may have proved a world a sorry thing

     In his imagining,

     And life a lighted highway to the tomb.

     Or, mounting with infirm unsearching tread,

     His hopes to chaos led,

     He may have stumbled up there from the past,

     And with an aching strangeness viewed the last

     Abysmal conflagration of his dreams, -

     A flame where nothing seems

     To burn but flame itself, by nothing fed;

     And while it all went out,

     Not even the faint anodyne of doubt

     May then have eased a painful going down

     From pictured heights of power and lost renown,

     Revealed at length to his outlived endeavor

     Remote and unapproachable forever;

     And at his heart there may have gnawed

     Sick memories of a dead faith foiled and flawed

     And long dishonored by the living death

     Assigned alike by chance

     To brutes and hierophants;

     And anguish fallen on those he loved around him

     May once have dealt the last blow to confound him,

     And so have left him as death leaves a child,

     Who sees it all too near;

     And he who knows no young way to forget

     May struggle to the tomb unreconciled.

     Whatever suns may rise or set

     There may be nothing kinder for him here

     Than shafts and agonies;

     And under these

     He may cry out and stay on horribly;

     Or, seeing in death too small a thing to fear,

     He may go forward like a stoic Roman

     Where pangs and terrors in his pathway lie, -

     Or, seizing the swift logic of a woman,

     Curse God and die.

     Or maybe there, like many another one

     Who might have stood aloft and looked ahead,

     Black-drawn against wild red,

     He may have built, unawed by fiery gules

     That in him no commotion stirred,

     A living reason out of molecules

     Why molecules occurred,

     And one for smiling when he might have sighed

     Had he seen far enough,

     And in the same inevitable stuff

     Discovered an odd reason too for pride

     In being what he must have been by laws

     Infrangible and for no kind of cause.

     Deterred by no confusion or surprise

     He may have seen with his mechanic eyes

     A world without a meaning, and had room,

     Alone amid magnificence and doom,

     To build himself an airy monument

     That should, or fail him in his vague intent,

     Outlast an accidental universe -

     To call it nothing worse -

     Or, by the burrowing guile

     Of Time disintegrated and effaced,

     Like once-remembered mighty trees go down

     To ruin, of which by man may now be traced

     No part sufficient even to be rotten,

     And in the book of things that are forgotten

     Is entered as a thing not quite worth while.

     He may have been so great

     That satraps would have shivered at his frown,

     And all he prized alive may rule a state

     No larger than a grave that holds a clown;

     He may have been a master of his fate,

     And of his atoms, - ready as another

     In his emergence to exonerate

     His father and his mother;

     He may have been a captain of a host,

     Self-eloquent and ripe for prodigies,

     Doomed here to swell by dangerous degrees,

     And then give up the ghost.

     Nahum's great grasshoppers were such as these,

     Sun-scattered and soon lost.

     Whatever the dark road he may have taken,

     This man who stood on high

     And faced alone the sky,

     Whatever drove or lured or guided him, -

     A vision answering a faith unshaken,

     An easy trust assumed of easy trials,

     A sick negation born of weak denials,

     A crazed abhorrence of an old condition,

     A blind attendance on a brief ambition, -

     Whatever stayed him or derided him,

     His way was even as ours;

     And we, with all our wounds and all our powers,

     Must each await alone at his own height

     Another darkness or another light;

     And there, of our poor self dominion reft,

     If inference and reason shun

     Hell, Heaven, and Oblivion,

     May thwarted will (perforce precarious,

     But for our conservation better thus)

     Have no misgiving left

     Of doing yet what here we leave undone?

     Or if unto the last of these we cleave,

     Believing or protesting we believe

     In such an idle and ephemeral

     Florescence of the diabolical, -

     If, robbed of two fond old enormities,

     Our being had no onward auguries,

     What then were this great love of ours to say

     For launching other lives to voyage again

     A little farther into time and pain,

     A little faster in a futile chase

     For a kingdom and a power and a Race

     That would have still in sight

     A manifest end of ashes and eternal night?

     Is this the music of the toys we shake

     So loud, - as if there might be no mistake

     Somewhere in our indomitable will?

     Are we no greater than the noise we make

     Along one blind atomic pilgrimage

     Whereon by crass chance billeted we go

     Because our brains and bones and cartilage

     Will have it so?

     If this we say, then let us all be still

     About our share in it, and live and die

     More quietly thereby.

     Where was he going, this man against the sky?

     You know not, nor do I.

     But this we know, if we know anything:

     That we may laugh and fight and sing

     And of our transience here make offering

     To an orient Word that will not be erased,

     Or, save in incommunicable gleams

     Too permanent for dreams,

     Be found or known.

     No tonic and ambitious irritant

     Of increase or of want

     Has made an otherwise insensate waste

     Of ages overthrown

     A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste

     Of other ages that are still to be

     Depleted and rewarded variously

     Because a few, by fate's economy,

     Shall seem to move the world the way it goes;

     No soft evangel of equality,

     Safe cradled in a communal repose

     That huddles into death and may at last

     Be covered well with equatorial snows -

     And all for what, the devil only knows -

     Will aggregate an inkling to confirm

     The credit of a sage or of a worm,

     Or tell us why one man in five

     Should have a care to stay alive

     While in his heart he feels no violence

     Laid on his humor and intelligence

     When infant Science makes a pleasant face

     And waves again that hollow toy, the Race;

     No planetary trap where souls are wrought

     For nothing but the sake of being caught

     And sent again to nothing will attune

     Itself to any key of any reason

     Why man should hunger through another season

     To find out why 'twere better late than soon

     To go away and let the sun and moon

     And all the silly stars illuminate

     A place for creeping things,

     And those that root and trumpet and have wings,

     And herd and ruminate,

     Or dive and flash and poise in rivers and seas,

     Or by their loyal tails in lofty trees

     Hang screeching lewd victorious derision

     Of man's immortal vision.

     Shall we, because Eternity records

     Too vast an answer for the time-born words

     We spell, whereof so many are dead that once

     In our capricious lexicons

     Were so alive and final, hear no more

     The Word itself, the living word no man

     Has ever spelt,

     And few have ever felt

     Without the fears and old surrenderings

     And terrors that began

     When Death let fall a feather from his wings

     And humbled the first man?

     Because the weight of our humility,

     Wherefrom we gain

     A little wisdom and much pain,

     Falls here too sore and there too tedious,

     Are we in anguish or complacency,

     Not looking far enough ahead

     To see by what mad couriers we are led

     Along the roads of the ridiculous,

     To pity ourselves and laugh at faith

     And while we curse life bear it?

     And if we see the soul's dead end in death,

     Are we to fear it?

     What folly is here that has not yet a name

     Unless we say outright that we are liars?

     What have we seen beyond our sunset fires

     That lights again the way by which we came?

     Why pay we such a price, and one we give

     So clamoringly, for each racked empty day

     That leads one more last human hope away,

     As quiet fiends would lead past our crazed eyes

     Our children to an unseen sacrifice?

     If after all that we have lived and thought,

     All comes to Nought, -

     If there be nothing after Now,

     And we be nothing anyhow,

     And we know that, - why live?

     'Twere sure but weaklings' vain distress

     To suffer dungeons where so many doors

     Will open on the cold eternal shores

     That look sheer down

     To the dark tideless floods of Nothingness

     Where all who know may drown.

Gerard Manley Hopkins. The Windhover

This is the second Dante's Ghost interpretation of the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. It follows on from an earlier posting of his Binsley Poplars, a poignant lament for the destruction of the natural world.

The Windhover, written in 1877, draws powerfully from Hopkins' experience of nature, specifically of his observations of the dawn-time flight of a falcon. Hopkins the poet describes in unforgettable terms the gracefulness and exquisite perfection of movement embodied by the bird. Hopkins the Jesuit priest views that perfection as an expression of the greater perfection embodied by his Lord and Master, Jesus of Nazareth.

Hopkins himself described The Windhover as "the best thing I ever wrote," an extraordinary affirmation considering the depth and density of the rest of his canon. Scottish existential psychiatrist R.D. Laing is known to have voiced this poem literally hundreds of times while sober and while drunk, while at work and while at rest.

Music:  Nico Di Stefano
Voice:  Vincent Di Stefano

The Windhover can be streamed using the media player below. A CD quality audio file is also available for downloading here.

 

The Poem

The Windhover 

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple dawn-drawn falcon, in
his riding 
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and 
gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding, 
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume here 
Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Empedocles. A Song of Aetna

This original piece was inspired by a hand-sized fragment of crystalline sulphur gathered from the slopes of Mount Aetna, near the place of my birth. It brought forth a remembrance of the story of Empedocles of Akragas, the Sicilian poet, philosopher and healer who was considered by the Roman physician Galen to be the founder of the science of medicine in Italy. Empedocles was born during the remarkable time that brought forth such powerful teachers as Pythagoras, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Gautama Buddha.

Empedocles generated the doctrine of four elements - air earth, fire and water - as an elaboration of the monism of Parmenides. This notion was to be highly influential in both Western philosophy and in the theory and practice of European medicine for a period of over 2,000 years.

Among his remarkable achievements, Empedocles made life easier for the inhabitants of his native Akragas (present-day Agrigento) by draining the fetid swamps that surrounded the town thereby freeing the population from the scourge of malaria that swept through local communities every year. He also directed a massive engineering project to construct a series of berms which deflected the searing winds of the Saharan Sirocco away from the cultivated fields that supplied the town thereby securing food supplies in the region.

According to legend, Empedocles quietly slipped away from an evening celebration held in his honour at a location near Mount Aetna. A few days later, a search party discovered his bronze sandals placed carefully on the edge of the crater of the erupting volcano.

The music that accompanies this piece was composed and performed by Nico Di Stefano.



Empedocles. A Song of Aetna can be streamed using the media player above. A CD quality mp3 file is available for download here.

The Poem

I     Sulphur

Glistening brimstone
Brought from the great rim of my native Aetna
And other stones of cauldron mountains
Fix stories of the earth.

Tiny mirrors break the light to myriad points of subtle hue
In fire-born stone of yellow vapour
Fused to fine array and perfect order.
What are we to make of you, already made?

Where are those heavens, where are those hells
So openly hidden within you?
Look not for now to fire mountains or distant galaxies
But let us see what is here, at hand.

I call and you appear in unexpected forms
Man and lion framed in fine fold of old yellow stone
Gathered from the scattered atoms of earth's fury.
How came you here to be?

II    Salt

The scatter points call us to attention without fail
But we must first stop for it to begin.

You sealed the cleft from fiery breath of hot Sahara
You brought some comfort to those in valleys of the north
You sang your song anew in the old stone temple
You burned with Aetna in the end.

Alone upon that cauldron mountain
The ground around you heaved and shook
As red worlds streaked the fiery night.
What fate did you dare test,
When you danced and flew into the thunder,
When earth shone brighter than heaven?

And here again are tales untold
Scenes unseen for ages long.

In silence we find the unexpected.

III   Mercury

How will it be when flesh is spent
When caul of jewelled light draws us more strongly on
Than ever we knew
In promise rings and precious stones?

Our scarlet sins bleed slow from open wounds
And fall hard upon the earth.
Yet through it all we are drawn on
By the beauty of faint forms
And the soft fires of fixed earths
Gathered as gifts from flaming mountains.

Songs for Vannuzzu

Vannuzzu, 4 days before his final transition

The death of a parent can be a turning point in any given life. For a surviving son or daughter, the nature of the experience can range from the grief of losing a beloved friend and confidant, to the ambivalence resulting from an abrupt loss of all further possibilities for resolving a conflicted and unsatisfactory relationship, to a sense of relief at being finally freed of the perceived domination and judgement of an overbearing parent. Regardless of one's position, to live through the death of one's parents represents a difficult act of emancipation, a call to ultimate maturation, a transmission of both freedom and responsibility, an entry into the domain of eldership.

These two original poetic reflections, Just Man and Luce Magra, were written during the latter weeks of my father's final sickness in 2008. They offer a personal reflection on the ineffability of fully encompassing the depth of experience carried in the life of another, the sense of helplessness often experienced in the face of progressive mental and physical dissolution, and a tentative poetic exploration of the more transcendent meanings carried in human embodiment.

This post is offered as a 4th anniversary remembrance of old Vannuzzu, a warrior in temperament and spirit who knew fully the degradations of war, and who only sought thereafter the small satisfactions of a peaceful life. He died a few days before his 91st birthday.

The music that accompanies both pieces was composed and performed by Coastal Slipstream (David Capon and Peter Popko)



Just Man can be streamed using the media player above. A CD quality mp3 file is available for download here.



Luce Magra (Thin Light) can be streamed using the media player above. A CD quality mp3 file is available for download here.

William Blake. Death's Door

The Poems

Just Man

"Sugnu na bomb'atomica" (Vannuzzu ca. 2006)

My father was fearless.

When sent through strafe and whistle of bullet

Flesh-flaying crash of mortar and metal

He carried his message well.

He knew the ropes

He knew the whips

And the slash of hissing blade.

His ageing frame now buckles.

Enfrailed, it fails, near useless to this world.

Still it holds a tethered wrath that seethes at all injustice.

Hold hard my strong good man

Lest this storm of rain and ruin

That steels and lashes earth

Too deep cuts the tender lines

That hold it all together.

You may be old, but you still hold

Your wild and youthful ways.

The sharp thrust of anger

Cuts more deeply than any steel.

The grieving, the groaning,

The pointless lashings that stung your young frame

Gave to your eyes a fire that could burn cities.

No man-made fire this.

Blasts of mind can raze the future

As surely as flash of fiery metal.

Come soften now good man

While yet your warm tide turns.

Luce Magra (Thin Light)

Cos'e questa vita

Questo falimento di corpo, materia vivente?

Cos'e questa vita

Quest'ardore incarnato, aggiornament'oscurato?

Carne delitto, derelitto

Diluvio di fuoco spento

Carne delitto, derelitto

Fulmine senza potenza.

Forza sciupata, pienezza svuotata, speranza abandonata

Si spegne, s'estingue, si spegne,

Stella smarita d'una notte anuvolata.

S'appanna la memoria di giorni piu piacevole

Piu difficile riprendere,

R'incendere, rivivere, r'incendere.

Dov'e la via dolorosa

Che chiama silenziosa

A un immenso ineluttabile?

E dov'e la via numinosa

Che si apre luminosa

A un infinito inconoscibile?

Cos'e questa vita?

William Blake. The Grave

Thomas Merton and the Original Child Bomb

Original Child Bomb is one of a small number of pieces written by Thomas Merton which he described as "anti-poems." This unusual group of poems includes "Chant to be Used in Processions around a Site with Furnaces" an interpretation of which can be accessed in an earlier posting of "Dante's Ghost."

Merton's anti-poems are characterised by the conscious and ironic use of the debased but now-commonplace language that masks the horror of genocide.

In his essay War and the Crisis of Language, Merton wrote: "Poets are perhaps the ones who, at the present moment, are most sensitive to the sickness of language - a sickness that, infecting all literature with nausea, prompts us not so much to declare war on conventional language as simply to pick up and examine closely a few chosen pieces of linguistic garbage."

Original Child Bomb was first published in his friend Robert Lax's magazine "Pax" in 1961, but was soon picked up by "New Directions" and re-published a year later in 1962, thereby reaching a far wider audience.

Music:
Sentimental Journey by Les Brown with Doris Day (1945)
Hell, Fire and Damnation by Jocelyn Pook from "Untold Things" Real World Records, 2001
Only the Devil Laughed by Hildegard von Bingen. Performers: Catherine King, Emily Van Evera and Sister Germaine Fritz from "Vision. The Music of Hildegard von Bingen" Angel Records, 1994

Voice:
Vincent Di Stefano




Original Child Bomb can be streamed using the media player above. A CD quality mp3 audio file is available for download here, and both CD quality and LoFi mp3 files are available for download here.

"Original Child Bomb" was recorded and produced collaboratively by vincentd of Integral Reflections and chazk of Virtual Renderings.

The Poem

ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB

Points for meditation to be scratched on the walls of a cave

Fat Man, Nagasaki August 1945

1: In the year 1945 an Original Child was born. The name Original Child was given to it by the Japanese people, who recognized that it was the first of its kind.

2: On April 12th, 1945, Mr. Harry Truman became the President of the United States, which was then fighting the Second World War. Mr. Truman was a vice president who became President by accident when his predecessor died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He did not know as much about the war as the President before him did. He knew a lot less about the war than many people did.

About one hour after Mr. Truman became President, his aides told him about a new bomb which was being developed by atomic scientists. They called it the “atomic bomb.” They said scientists had been working on it for six years and that it had so far cost two billion dollars. They added that its power was equal to that of twenty thousand tons of TNT. A single bomb could destroy a city. One of those present added, in a reverent tone, that the new explosive might eventually destroy the whole world. But Admiral Leahy told the President the bomb would never work.

3: President Truman formed a committee of men to tell him if this bomb would work, and if so, what he should do with it. Some members of this committee felt that the bomb would jeopardize the future of civilization. They were against its use. Others wanted it to be used in demonstration on a forest of cryptomeria trees, but not against a civil or military target. Many atomic scientists warned that the use of atomic power in war would be difficult and even impossible to control. The danger would be very great. Finally, there were others who believed that if the bomb were used just once or twice, on one or two Japanese cities, there would be no more war. They believed the new bomb would produce eternal peace.

4: In June 1945 the Japanese government was taking steps to negotiate for peace. On one hand the Japanese ambassador tried to interest the Russian government in acting as a go-between with the United States. On the other hand, an unofficial approach was made secretly through Mr. Allen Dulles in Switzerland. The Russians said they were not interested and that they would not negotiate. Nothing was done about the other proposal, which was not official. The Japanese High Command was not in favor of asking for peace, but wanted to continue the war, even if the Japanese mainland were invaded. The generals believed that the war should continue until everybody was dead. The Japanese generals were professional soldiers.

5: In the same month of June, the President’s committee decided that the new bomb should be dropped on a Japanese city. This would be a demonstration of the bomb on a civil and military target. As “demonstration” it would be a kind of a “show.” “Civilians” all over the world love a good “show.” The “destructive” aspect of the bomb would be “military.”

6: The same committee also asked if America’s friendly ally, the Soviet Union, should be informed of the atomic bomb. Someone suggested that this information would make the Soviet Union even more friendly than it was already. But all finally agreed that the Soviet Union was now friendly enough.

7: There was discussion about which city should be selected as the first target. Some wanted it to be Kyoto, an ancient capital of Japan and a center of the Buddhist religion. Others said no, this would cause bitterness. As a result of a chance conversation, Mr. Stimson, the Secretary of War, had recently read up on the history and beauties of Kyoto. He insisted that this city should be left untouched. Some wanted Tokyo to be the first target, but others argued that Tokyo had already been practically destroyed by fire raids and could no longer be considered a “target.” So it was decided Hiroshima was the most opportune target, as it had not yet been bombed at all. Lucky Hiroshima! What others had experienced over a period of four years would happen to Hiroshima in a single day! Much time would be saved, and “time is money!”

8: When they bombed Hiroshima they would put the following out of business: the Ube Nitrogen Fertilizer Company; the Ube Soda Company; the Nippon Motor Oil Company; the Sumitoma Chemical Company; the Sumitoma Aluminum Company, and most of the inhabitants.

9: At this time some atomic scientists protested again, warning that the use of the bomb in war would tend to make the United States unpopular. But the President’s committee was by now fully convinced that the bomb had to be used. Its use would arouse the attention of the Japanese military class and give them food for thought.

10: Admiral Leahy renewed his declaration that the bomb would not explode.

11: On the 4th of July, when the United States in displays of fireworks celebrates its independence from British rule, the British and Americans agreed together that the bomb ought to be used against Japan.

12: On July 7th the Emperor of Japan pleaded with the Soviet Government to act as mediator for peace between Japan and the Allies. Molotov said the question would be “studied.” In order to facilitate this “study” Soviet troops in Siberia prepared to attack the Japanese. The Allies had, in any case, been urging Russia to join the war against Japan. However, now that the atomic bomb was nearly ready, some thought it would be better if the Russians took a rest.

13: The time was coming for the new bomb to be tested, in the New Mexico desert. A name was chosen to designate this secret operation. It was called “Trinity.”

Trinity, Alamogordo 1945

14: At 5:30 A.M. on July 16th, 1945, a plutonium bomb was successfully exploded in the desert at Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was suspended from a hundred-foot steel tower which evaporated. There was a fireball a mile wide. The great flash could be seen for a radius of 250 miles. A blind woman miles away said she perceived light. There was a cloud of smoke 40,000 feet high. It was shaped like a toadstool.

15: Many who saw the experiment expressed their satisfaction in religious terms. A semi-official report even quoted a religious book—the New Testament—“Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” There was an atmosphere of devotion. It was a great act of faith. They believed the explosion was exceptionally powerful.

16: Admiral Leahy, still a “doubting Thomas,” said that the bomb would not explode when dropped from a plane over a city. Others may have had “faith,” but he had his own variety of “hope.”

17: On July 21st a full written report of the explosion reached President Truman at Potsdam. The report was documented by pictures. President Truman read the report and looked at the pictures before starting out for the conference. When he left his mood was jaunty and his step was light.

18: That afternoon Mr. Stimson called on Mr. Churchill, and laid before him a sheet of paper bearing a code message about the successful test. The message read “Babies satisfactorily born.” Mr. Churchill was quick to realize that there was more in this than met the eye. Mr. Stimson satisfied his legitimate curiosity.

19: On this same day sixty atomic scientists who knew of the test signed a petition that the bomb should not be used against Japan without a convincing warning and an opportunity to surrender.

At this time the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which had left San Francisco on the 18th, was sailing toward the Island of Tinian, with some U 235 in a lead bucket. The fissionable material was about the size of a softball, but there was enough for one atomic bomb. Instructions were that if the ship sank, the uranium was to be saved first, before any life. The mechanism of the bomb was on board the U.S.S. Indianapolis, but it was not yet assembled.

20: On July 26th the Potsdam declaration was issued. An ultimatum was given to Japan: “Surrender unconditionally or be destroyed.” Nothing was said about the new bomb. But pamphlets dropped all over Japan threatened “an enormous air bombardment” if the army would not surrender. On July 26th the U.S.S. Indianapolis arrived at Tinian and the bomb was delivered.

21: On July 28th, since the Japanese High Command wished to continue the war, the ultimatum was rejected. A censored version of the ultimatum appeared in the Japanese press with the comment that it was “an attempt to drive a wedge between the military and the Japanese people.” But the Emperor continued to hope that the Russians, after “studying” his proposal, would help to negotiate a peace. On July 3Oth Mr. Stimson revised a draft of the announcement that was to be made after the bomb was dropped on the Japanese target. The statement was much better than the original draft.

Assembly of Little Boy, Tinian 1945

22: On August 1st the bomb was assembled in an air-conditioned hut on Tinian. Those who handled the bomb referred to it as “Little Boy.” Their care for the Original Child was devoted and tender.

23: On August 2nd President Truman was the guest of His Majesty King George VI on board the H.M.S. Renown in Plymouth Harbor. The atomic bomb was praised. Admiral Leahy, who was present, declared that the bomb would not work. His Majesty George VI offered a small wager to the contrary.

24: On August 2nd a special message from the Japanese Foreign Minister was sent to the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow. “It is requested that further efforts be exerted. . . . Since the loss of one day may result in a thousand years of regret, it is requested that you immediately have a talk with Molotov.” But Molotov did not return from Potsdam until the day the bomb fell.

25: On August 4th the bombing crew on Tinian watched a movie of “Trinity” (the Alamogordo Test). August 5th was a Sunday but there was little time for formal worship. They said a quick prayer that the war might end “very soon.” On that day, Col. Tibbetts, who was in command of the B-29 that was to drop the bomb, felt that his bomber ought to have a name. He baptized it Enola Gay, after his mother in Iowa. Col. Tibbetts was a well-balanced man, and not sentimental. He did not have a nervous breakdown after the bombing, like some of the other members of the crew.

26: On Sunday afternoon “Little Boy” was brought out in procession and devoutly tucked away in the womb of Enola Gay. That evening few were able to sleep. They were as excited as little boys on Christmas Eve.

27: At 1:37 A.M. August 6th the weather scout plane took off. It was named the Straight Flush, in reference to the mechanical action of a water closet. There was a picture of one, to make this evident.

28: At the last minute before taking off, Col. Tibbetts changed the secret radio call sign from “Visitor” to “Dimples.” The Bombing Mission would be a kind of flying smile.

29: At 2:45 A.M. Enola Gay got off the ground with difficulty. Over Iwo Jima she met her escort, two more B-29s, one of which was called the Great Artiste. Together they proceeded to Japan.

30: At 6:40 they climbed to 31,000 feet, the bombing altitude. The sky was clear. It was a perfect morning.

31: At 8:09 they reached Hiroshima and started the bomb run. The city was full of sun. The fliers could see the green grass in the gardens. No fighters rose up to meet them. There was no flak. No one in the city bothered to take cover.

Hiroshima, mid-August 1945

32: The bomb exploded within 100 feet of the aiming point. The fireball was 18,000 feet across. The temperature at the center of the fireball was 100,000,000 degrees. The people who were near the center became nothing. The whole city was blown to bits and the ruins all caught fire instantly everywhere, burning briskly. 70,000 people were killed right away or died within a few hours. Those who did not die at once suffered great pain. Few of them were soldiers.

33: The men in the plane perceived that the raid had been successful, but they thought of the people in the city and they were not perfectly happy. Some felt they had done wrong. But in any case they had obeyed orders. “It was war.”

34: Over the radio went the code message that the bomb had been successful: “Visible effects greater than Trinity. . . . Proceeding to Papacy.” Papacy was the code name for Tinian.

35: It took a little while for the rest of Japan to find out what had happened to Hiroshima. Papers were forbidden to publish any news of the new bomb. A four-line item said that Hiroshima had been hit by incendiary bombs and added: “It seems that some damage was caused to the city and its vicinity.”

36: Then the military governor of the Prefecture of Hiroshima issued a proclamation full of martial spirit. To all the people without hands, without feet, with their faces falling off, with their intestines hanging out, with their whole bodies full of radiation, he declared: “We must not rest a single day in our war effort. . . . We must bear in mind that the annihilation of the stubborn enemy is our road to revenge.” He was a professional soldier.

37: On August 8^th Molotov finally summoned the Japanese Ambassador. At last neutral Russia would give an answer to the Emperor’s inquiry. Molotov said coldly that the Soviet Union was declaring war on Japan.

Nagasaki, mid-August 1945

38: On August 9th another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, though Hiroshima was still burning. On August 11th the Emperor overruled his high command and accepted the peace terms dictated at Potsdam. Yet for three days discussion continued, until on August 14ththe surrender was made public and final.

39: Even then the soviet troops thought they ought to fight in Manchuria “just a little longer.” They felt that even though they could not, at this time, be of help in Japan, it would be worthwhile if they displayed their good will in Manchuria or even in Korea.

40: As to the Original Child that was now born, President Truman summed up the philosophy of the situation in a few words. “We found the bomb” he said “and we used it.”

41: Since that summer many other bombs have been “found.” What is going to happen? At the time of writing, after a season of brisk speculation, men seem to be fatigued by the whole question.


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Hiroshima, mid-morning, August 6th 1945

1. Confronting the Unspeakable. Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Beyond

This post offers a remembrance of the atomic slayings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. It carries embedded audio of an edited version of a talk given by Setsuko Thurlow at the University of London in March 2017. She was 13 years of old and living in Hiroshima at the time of the explosion of the obscenely named Little Boy.

Setsuko Thurlow is one of the few remaining living witnesses of the horror unleashed in the city on the morning of August 6th 1945 and describes with both difficult and poignancy what occurred at ground level on the morning of that terrible day. Her life-long efforts for the cause of peace and disarmament were honoured in December 2017 when she received the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).