The Diameter of the Bomb - Yehuda Amichai

The poem, “The Diameter of the Bomb”, is a poem written by acclaimed Israeli author Yehuda Amichai. It explores the impact of war, and subsequently the ever-magnified effect that death has on humanity.

                Yehuda Amichai’s first encounter with war was at the young age of 15. Being a Jewish citizen dwelling in the depths of Berlin, he and his family narrowly managed to flee the country, escaping the Nazi driven holocaust of his people. Later on, near the end of the war, he joined the British army, serving in a Jewish brigade. Later on in his life, he served in the Israeli army many times during the Arab-Israeli struggles. As is apparent by his writing style, the sheer enormity of violence and bloodshed that he witnessed greatly influenced his work.

                The poet begins with a cold and rather calculative approach to the bomb’s explosion, reciting the bomb’s characteristics mechanically, and without as much as a speck of compassion. This tone is prominent throughout the first three lines.

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The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

And the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,

With four dead and eleven wounded.

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                The method in which the bomb’s properties are described seems awfully cold and dehumanized.  The way in which it is presented brings to mind the bomb-maker, or the government official who sanctioned the attack, assessing the explosive capabilities of the weapon. The first two lines in particular, portray the bomb as a weapon holding limited capacity for damage, as shown by the statistical data presented. As a result of this, the bomb is depicted as being relatively ineffective, as the casualties that it may inflict are fairly insignificant as compared to the total fatalities in a war. Also, by beginning the poem with cold numerical facts, the poet gives the reader’s mind something concrete and objective to grasp, when trying to comprehend the enormity of the attack.

                Suddenly, the poet segues from the cold statistical facts to a humanistic and compassionate approach. This is portrayed in the following lines:

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                And around these, in a larger circle

                Of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered

And one graveyard. But the young woman

Who was buried in the city she came from,

At a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,

Enlarges the circle considerably,

And the solitary man mourning her death

At the distant shores of a country far across the sea

Includes the entire world in the circle.

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                The transition of the poet from harsh, technical facts to deep human emotions is facilitated by a personal sketch of one of the victims and her grieving lover. "The solitary man mourning her death / at the distant shores of a country far across the sea”, are two lines which poignantly epitomize the effect of the explosion on mankind.

                An image of a circle is effectively employed by the author as a means of pictorial representation of the gradual spread of hurt and pain, in the wake of the bomb’s explosion. The image of the ever-expanding circle, gradually growing, continuously, slowly enveloping the entire world, can be likened to the shockwaves of an explosion.

                All in all, the poem, in the above verses at least, depicts the growing effect of the explosion on humankind. The poet begins this section by speaking of, “…a larger circle”. The larger circle is a reference to the extended range of the blast. While the first section dealt with the cold technical capabilities of the bomb, the second section deals with the other capabilities of the bomb, primarily its emotionally-harming capabilities. The poet contemplates on how, in the aftermath of the bomb blast, two hospitals are affected, owing to the victims being admitted there. The one graveyard widens the circle further still. One young woman however, killed in the explosion, was buried in her home town, a couple hundred kilometers away. This extends the circle of people affected indirectly by the explosion a lot. This women’s lover, a man living on the other side of the world, is devastated by the news of his lover’s death, encompassing the entire world in the circle of devastation, all a result of a single explosion, one that was thought to possess only limited destructive capabilities, as reflected in the tone of the first section. The image of the circle expanding, one person at a time, infinitely, evokes a sense of disbelief in the reader, disbelief in the fact that such a relatively small explosion can affect so many people all over the world. To sum it up, the image induced in the reader’s mind by words like diameter, radius, and circle, is that of a lone bomb's detonation, one that technically should affect only a certain amount of people, ends up enveloping the entire world, indirectly, in its blast radius.

The next and final section of the poem, delves into the metaphysical and surrealistic effects of the bomb.

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                And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans

                That reaches up to the throne of God and

                Beyond, making

                A circle with no end and no God.

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                Throughout the poem, Amichai presents the facts in a conversational and somewhat detached tone. An example of this would be the first line of the third section, “And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans”. By use of such a tone, the poet greatly intensifies the horror of a sudden violent death and the raw emotional loss that accompanies it.

                During the course of this section, the author further pursues the image of the ever-expanding circle, the extent to which the bomb affects all of humanity. The crying orphans, doomed to sadness and misery by no fault of their own, are orphans presumably because one, or both, parents were killed in the explosion. The horrid fate that has befallen these children, leads one to question the existence of a God who would allow such terrorism. The crying orphans are used as an extremely jarring vivid image, induced in the reader’s mind. Previously in his description of the circle, the jumps, the paths through which the circle gradually grew larger and larger, dealt only with earth and its inhabitants. In the case of the crying orphans however, the crying, “Reaches up to the throne of god and beyond”. Perhaps the reason for this jump from the comprehensible to the metaphysical is the sheer injustice that has been meted out upon innocent children. There seems no justice, nothing in our power that could be done to help or right this wrong. Thus, God is introduced by the poet, an omnipotent symbol of eternal justice and righteousness, a personification, of sorts, of the very qualities lacking in the human race. The powerful final line, “…Creating a circle with no end and no God”, is the poets way of saying that the bomb indirectly affected everyone, all the way from those killed initially to God. The use of the phrase, “…no god”, is to raise doubt in the minds of the reader. Doubt as to how God, a divine, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient being, who exists as an embodiment of all that is good, could allow such a monstrosity to occur.  Images, those of mourning loved ones and crying orphans, aptly crafted by the poet, evoke strong senses of sympathy in the reader.

                The overall tone of the poem is an extremely somber one. Powerful themes such as those of violence, war, death, and loss pervade the poem. The poem is an effective juxtaposition of a dispassionate view of the physical capacity of the bomb with the much larger emotional and spiritual impact of such violence. The poem powerfully portrays the ‘ripple’ effect of violence that will, eventually, envelop all of humanity and beyond.