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Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish and Georgist causes. She is remembered for writing the sonnet "The New Colossus", which was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, in 1883.[1] Its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque, installed in 1903,[2] on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.[3] The last lines of the sonnet were set to music by Irving Berlin as the song "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" for the 1949 musical Miss Liberty, which was based on the sculpting of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World). The latter part of the sonnet was also set by Lee Hoiby in his song "The Lady of the Harbor" written in 1985 as part of his song cycle "Three Women".

Emma Lazarus
Lazarus, c. 1872
Born(1849-07-22)July 22, 1849
New York City, New York, U.S.
DiedNovember 19, 1887(1887-11-19) (aged 38)
New York City
Resting placeBeth Olam Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York City
OccupationAuthor, activist
LanguageEnglish
Genrepoetry, prose, translations, novels, plays
SubjectGeorgism
Notable works"The New Colossus"
RelativesJosephine Lazarus, Benjamin N. Cardozo
Signature

Lazarus was also the author of Poems and Translations (New York, 1867); Admetus, and other Poems (1871); Alide: An Episode of Goethe's Life (Philadelphia, 1874); Poems and Ballads of Heine (New York, 1881); Poems, 2 Vols.; Narrative, Lyric and Dramatic; as well as Jewish Poems and Translations.[4]

Early years and education

Emma Lazarus was born in New York City, July 22, 1849,[5] into a large Sephardic Jewish family.[a] She was the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus, a wealthy Jewish merchant[7] and sugar refiner,[8] and Esther Nathan.[9] One of her great-grandfathers on the Lazarus side was from Germany;[10] the rest of her Lazarus and Nathan ancestors were originally from Portugal and they were resident in New York long before the American Revolution, they were among the original twenty-three Portuguese Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam after they had fled from their settlement in Recife, Brazil in an attempt to flee from the Inquisition.[11][8] Lazarus's great-great-grandmother on her mother's side, Grace Seixas Nathan (born in Stratford in 1752) was also a poet.[12] Lazarus was related through her mother to Benjamin N. Cardozo, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Her siblings included sisters Josephine, Sarah, Mary, Agnes and Annie, and a brother, Frank.[13][14][15]

Privately educated by tutors from an early age, she studied American and British literature as well as several languages, including German, French, and Italian.[16] She was attracted in youth to poetry, writing her first lyrics when eleven years old.[17]

Career

Writer

 
Poems and ballads of Heinrich Heine

The first stimulus for Lazarus's writing was offered by the American Civil War. A collection of her Poems and Translations, verses written between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, appeared in 1867 (New York), and was commended by William Cullen Bryant.[9] It included translations from Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich Heine, Alexandre Dumas, and Victor Hugo.[7][5] Admetus and Other Poems followed in 1871. The title poem was dedicated "To my friend Ralph Waldo Emerson", whose works and personality were exercising an abiding influence upon the poet's intellectual growth.[7] During the next decade, in which "Phantasies" and "Epochs" were written, her poems appeared chiefly in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine and Scribner's Monthly.[9]

By this time, Lazarus's work had won recognition abroad. Her first prose production, Alide: An Episode of Goethe's Life, a romance treating of the Friederike Brion incident, was published in 1874 (Philadelphia), and was followed by The Spagnoletto (1876), a tragedy. Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine (New York, 1881) followed, and was prefixed by a biographical sketch of Heine; Lazarus's renderings of some of Heine's verse are considered among the best in English.[18] In the same year, 1881, she became friends with Rose Hawthorne Lathrop.[19] In April 1882, Lazarus published in The Century Magazine the article "Was the Earl of Beaconsfield a Representative Jew?" Her statement of the reasons for answering this question in the affirmative may be taken to close what may be termed the Hellenic and journeyman period of Lazarus's life, during which her subjects were drawn from classic and romantic sources.[20]

Lazarus also wrote The Crowing of the Red Cock,[5] and the sixteen-part cycle poem "Epochs".[21] In addition to writing her own poems, Lazarus edited many adaptations of German poems, notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine.[22] She also wrote a novel and two plays in five acts, The Spagnoletto, a tragic verse drama about the titular figure and The Dance to Death, a dramatization of a German short story about the burning of Jews in Nordhausen during the Black Death.[23] During the time Lazarus became interested in her Jewish roots, she continued her purely literary and critical work in magazines with such articles as "Tommaso Salvini", "Salvini's 'King Lear'", "Emerson's Personality", "Heine, the Poet", "A Day in Surrey with William Morris", and others.[24]

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Lines from her sonnet "The New Colossus" appear on a bronze plaque which was placed in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903.[2] The sonnet was written in 1883 and donated to an auction, conducted by the "Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty" in order to raise funds to build the pedestal.[b][c] Lazarus's close friend Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was inspired by "The New Colossus" to found the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.[26]

She traveled twice to Europe, first in 1883 and again from 1885 to 1887.[27] On one of those trips, Georgiana Burne-Jones, the wife of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, introduced her to William Morris at her home.[28] She also met with Henry James, Robert Browning and Thomas Huxley during her European travels.[16] A collection of Poems in Prose (1887) was her last book. Her Complete Poems with a Memoir appeared in 1888, at Boston.[5]

Activism

Lazarus was a friend and admirer of the American political economist Henry George. She believed deeply in Georgist economic reforms and became active in the "single tax" movement for land value tax. Lazarus published a poem in the New York Times named after George's book, Progress and Poverty.[29]

Lazarus became more interested in her Jewish ancestry as she heard of the Russian pogroms that followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. As a result of this anti-Semitic violence, and the poor standard of living in Russia in general, thousands of destitute Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from the Russian Pale of Settlement to New York. Lazarus began to advocate on behalf of indigent Jewish immigrants. She helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York to provide vocational training to assist destitute Jewish immigrants to become self-supporting. Lazarus volunteered in the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society employment bureau; she eventually became a strong critic of the organization.[30] In 1883, she founded the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews.[8]

The literary fruits of identification with her religion were poems like "The Crowing of the Red Cock", "The Banner of the Jew", "The Choice", "The New Ezekiel", "The Dance to Death" (a strong, though unequally executed drama), and her last published work (March 1887), "By the Waters of Babylon: Little Poems in Prose", which constituted her strongest claim to a foremost rank in American literature. During the same period (1882–87), Lazarus translated the Hebrew poets of medieval Spain with the aid of the German versions of Michael Sachs and Abraham Geiger, and wrote articles, signed and unsigned, upon Jewish subjects for the Jewish press, besides essays on "Bar Kochba", "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow", "M. Renan and the Jews", and others for Jewish literary associations.[20] Several of her translations from medieval Hebrew writers found a place in the ritual of American synagogues.[5] Lazarus's most notable series of articles was that titled "An Epistle to the Hebrews" (The American Hebrew, November 10, 1882 – February 24, 1883), in which she discussed the Jewish problems of the day, urged a technical and a Jewish education for Jews, and ranged herself among the advocates of an independent Jewish nationality and of Jewish repatriation in Palestine. The only collection of poems issued during this period was Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems (New York, 1882), dedicated to the memory of George Eliot.[24]

Death and legacy

 
Lazarus Public School, Brooklyn

Lazarus returned to New York City seriously ill after she completed her second trip to Europe, and she died two months later, on November 19, 1887,[4] most likely from Hodgkin's lymphoma. She never married.[31][32] Lazarus was buried in Beth Olam Cemetery in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. The Poems of Emma Lazarus (2 vols., Boston and New York, 1889) was published after her death, comprising most of her poetic work from previous collections, periodical publications, and some of the literary heritage which her executors deemed appropriate to preserve for posterity.[24] Her papers are kept by the American Jewish Historical Society, Center for Jewish History,[33] and her letters are collected at Columbia University.[34]

A stamp featuring the Statue of Liberty and Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus", was issued by Antigua and Barbuda in 1985.[35] In 1992, she was named as a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.[36] Lazarus was honored by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President in March 2008, and her home on West 10th Street was included on a map of Women's Rights Historic Sites.[37] In 2009, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[38] The Museum of Jewish Heritage featured an exhibition about Lazarus in 2012.

Biographer Esther Schor praised Lazarus' lasting contribution:

The irony is that the statue goes on speaking, even when the tide turns against immigration — even against immigrants themselves, as they adjust to their American lives. You can’t think of the statue without hearing the words Emma Lazarus gave her.[39]

Style and themes

 
Alide: an episode of Goethe's life (1874)

Lazarus contributed toward shaping the self-image of the United States as well as how the country understands the needs of those who emigrate to the United States. Her themes produced sensitivity and enduring lessons regarding immigrants and their need for dignity.[40] What was needed to make her a poet of the people as well as one of literary merit was a great theme, the establishment of instant communication between some stirring reality and her still-hidden and irresolute subjectivity. Such a theme was provided by the immigration of Russian Jews to America, consequent upon the proscriptive May Laws of 1882. She rose to the defense of her ethnic compatriots in powerful articles, as contributions to The Century (May 1882 and February 1883). Hitherto, her life had held no Jewish inspiration. Though of Sephardic ancestry, and ostensibly Orthodox in belief, her family had till then not participated in the activities of the synagogue or of the Jewish community. Contact with the unfortunates from Russia led her to study the Torah, the Hebrew language, Judaism, and Jewish history.[20] While her early poetry demonstrated no Jewish themes, her Songs of a Semite (1882) is considered to be the earliest volume of Jewish American poetry.[41]

A review of Alide by Lippincott's Monthly Magazine was critical of Lazarus's style and elements of technique.[42]

Selected works

  • Lazarus, Emma (1888). The Poems of Emma Lazarus. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Emma Lazarus.
  • "In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport"
  • "In Exile"
  • "Progress and Poverty"
  • "The New Colossus"
  • "By the Waters of Babylon"
  • "1492"
  • "The New Year"
  • "The South"
  • "Venus of the Louvre"

Notes

  1. ^ According to Vogel, the father's family was probably Sephardic.[6]
  2. ^ Auction event named as "Lowell says poem gave the statue "a raison d'être'"; fell into obscurity; not mentioned at statue opening; Georgina Schuyler's campaign for the plaque.[2]
  3. ^ Solicited by "William Maxwell Evert" [sic; presumably William Maxwell Evarts] Lazarus refused initially; convinced by Constance Cary Harrison[25]

References

Citations

  1. ^ Cavitch, Max (February 1, 2006). "Emma Lazarus and the Golem of Liberty". American Literary History. 18 (1): 1–28. Retrieved January 12, 2018.
  2. ^ a b c Young 1997, p. 3.
  3. ^ Watts 2014, p. 123.
  4. ^ a b Sladen & Roberts 1891, p. 434.
  5. ^ a b c d e Gilman, Peck & Colby 1907, p. 39.
  6. ^ Vogel 1980, p. 13.
  7. ^ a b c D. Appleton & Company 1887, p. 414.
  8. ^ a b c Goodwin 2015, p. 370.
  9. ^ a b c Singer & Adler 1906, p. 650.
  10. ^ "Four Founders: Emma Lazarus". Jewish Virtual Library.
  11. ^ Appel, Phyllis (January 21, 2013). The Jewish Connection. Graystone Enterprises LLC. ISBN 9781301060931. Retrieved January 7, 2019.
  12. ^ Schor 2008, p. 1.
  13. ^ Wheeler 1889, p. 176.
  14. ^ Schor 2017, pp. 8, 226.
  15. ^ Weinrib, Henry. "Emma Lazarus". www.jewishmag.com. Jewish Magazine. Retrieved January 12, 2018.
  16. ^ a b Walker 1992, p. 332.
  17. ^ Lazarus & Eiselein 2002, p. 15.
  18. ^ World's Congress of Religions 1893, p. 976.
  19. ^ Young 1997, p. 186.
  20. ^ a b c Singer & Adler 1906, p. 651.
  21. ^ "The Poems of Emma Lazarus in Two Volumes". Century Magazine. ASIN B0082RVVJ2.
  22. ^ The Poems of Emma Lazarus in Two Volumes, Kindle ebooks ASIN B0082RVVJ2 and ASIN B0082RDHSA.
  23. ^ Parini 2003, p. 1.
  24. ^ a b c Singer & Adler 1906, p. 652.
  25. ^ Felder & Rosen 2005, p. 45.
  26. ^ . The Tidings. Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Catholic News Service. September 17, 2010. p. 16. Archived from the original on September 21, 2010. Retrieved September 20, 2010.
  27. ^ Schor 2006, p. 1.
  28. ^ Flanders 2001, p. 186.
  29. ^ "Progress and Poverty". The New York Times. October 2, 1881. p. 3. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
  30. ^ Esther Schor, Emma Lazarus (2008), Random House (Jewish Encounters series), ISBN 0805242759. p. 148 et. seq.; quotation from Lazarus is on p. 149-150.
  31. ^ Hewitt 2011, p. 55.
  32. ^ Snodgrass 2014, p. 321.
  33. ^ "Guide to the Emma Lazarus, papers". Center for Jewish History. Retrieved January 12, 2018.
  34. ^ Young 1997, p. 221.
  35. ^ Eisenberg 2002, p. 52.
  36. ^ "Past Women's History Month Honorees". National Women's History Project. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
  37. ^ . Archived from the original on July 18, 2011.
  38. ^ "Lazarus, Emma". National Women's Hall of Fame. Retrieved November 1, 2016.
  39. ^ "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Poet". The Attic. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
  40. ^ Moore 2005, p. xvi.
  41. ^ Gitenstein 2012, p. 3.
  42. ^ Vogel 1980, p. 103.

Attribution

  •   This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: D. Appleton & Company (1887). Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events (Public domain ed.). D. Appleton & Company.
  •   This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Gilman, Daniel Coit; Peck, Harry Thurston; Colby, Frank Moore (1907). The new international encyclopædia (Public domain ed.). Dodd, Mead and company.
  •   This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; Adler, Cyrus (1906). The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. Vol. 7 (Public domain ed.). Funk & Wagnalls Company.
  •   This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Sladen, Douglas Brooke Wheelton; Roberts, Goodridge Bliss (1891). Younger American Poets, 1830–1890 (Public domain ed.). Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh. p. 434.
  •   This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Wheeler, Edward Jewitt (1889). Current Opinion. Vol. 2 (Public domain ed.). Current Literature Publishing Company.
  •   This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: World's Congress of Religions (1893). The Addresses and Papers Delivered Before the Parliament, and an Abstract of the Congresses: Held in the Art Institute, Chicago, Ill., Aug. 25 to Oct. 15, 1893 (Public domain ed.). Conkey.

Bibliography

  • Beilin, Israel Ber. Dos lebn fun Ema Lazarus a biografye. 1946. Nyu-Yorḳ : Yidishn fraṭernaln folḳs-ordn
  • Cavitch, Max. (2008). "Emma Lazarus and the Golem of Liberty." The Traffic in Poems: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Transatlantic Exchange. Ed. Meredith McGill. Rutgers University Press. 97–122. ISBN 978-0813542300.
  • Eisenberg, Ronald L. (2002). The Jewish World in Stamps: 4000 Years of Jewish Civilization in Postal Stamps. Schreiber Publishing. ISBN 978-1-887563-76-5.
  • Felder, Deborah G.; Rosen, Diana (2005). Fifty Jewish Women Who Changed The World. Kensington Publishing Corporation. ISBN 978-0-8065-2656-0.
  • Flanders, Judith (2001). A Circle of Sisters: Alice Kipling, Georgiana Burne-Jones, Agnes Poynter and Louisa Baldwin. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-05210-7.
  • Gitenstein, R. Barbara (February 2012). Apocalyptic Messianism and Contemporary Jewish-American Poetry. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-0415-8.
  • Goodwin, Neva (July 17, 2015). Encyclopedia of Women in American History. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-47162-2.
  • Hewitt, S. R. (December 16, 2011). Jewish Treats: 99 Fascinating Jewish Personalities. BookBaby. ISBN 978-1-61842-866-0.
  • Moore, Hannia S. (January 1, 2005). Liberty's Poet: Emma Lazarus. TurnKey Press. ISBN 978-0-9754803-4-2.
  • Lazarus, Emma; Eiselein, Gregory (June 4, 2002). Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings. Broadview Press. ISBN 978-1-55111-285-5.
  • Parini, Jay (October 2003). The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-515653-9.
  • Schor, Esther H. (September 5, 2006). Emma Lazarus. Nextbook. ISBN 9780805242164.
  • Schor, Esther (October 21, 2008). Emma Lazarus. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8052-4275-1.
  • Schor, Esther (April 25, 2017). Emma Lazarus. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8052-1166-5.
  • Vogel, Dan (1980). Emma Lazarus. Thomson Gale. ISBN 978-0-8057-7233-3.
  • Snodgrass, Mary Ellen (May 14, 2014). Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-0910-7.
  • Walker, Cheryl (1992). American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology. Rutgers University Press. p. 332. ISBN 978-0-8135-1791-9.
  • Watts, Emily Stipes (September 10, 2014). The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-1-4773-0344-3.
  • Young, Bette Roth (August 1, 1997). Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters. Jewish Publication Society. ISBN 978-0-8276-0618-0.

External links

  • Works by Emma Lazarus at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by or about Emma Lazarus at Internet Archive
  • Works by Emma Lazarus at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
  • Jewish Virtual Library: Emma Lazarus
  • Jewish Women's Archive: HISTORY MAKERS: Emma Lazarus, 1849–1887
  • Finding aid to Emma Lazarus, 1868–1929, at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
  • National Public Radio: "Emma Lazarus, Poet of the Huddled Masses"
  • Jewish-American Hall of Fame: Virtual Tour: Emma Lazarus (1849–1887)
  • at the Wayback Machine (archived June 16, 2006)
  • "Who Was Emma Lazarus?" by Dr. Henry Henry Abramson
  • Emma Lazarus at Find a Grave

emma, lazarus, july, 1849, november, 1887, american, author, poetry, prose, translations, well, activist, jewish, georgist, causes, remembered, writing, sonnet, colossus, which, inspired, statue, liberty, 1883, lines, appear, inscribed, bronze, plaque, install. Emma Lazarus July 22 1849 November 19 1887 was an American author of poetry prose and translations as well as an activist for Jewish and Georgist causes She is remembered for writing the sonnet The New Colossus which was inspired by the Statue of Liberty in 1883 1 Its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque installed in 1903 2 on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty 3 The last lines of the sonnet were set to music by Irving Berlin as the song Give Me Your Tired Your Poor for the 1949 musical Miss Liberty which was based on the sculpting of the Statue of Liberty Liberty Enlightening the World The latter part of the sonnet was also set by Lee Hoiby in his song The Lady of the Harbor written in 1985 as part of his song cycle Three Women Emma LazarusLazarus c 1872Born 1849 07 22 July 22 1849New York City New York U S DiedNovember 19 1887 1887 11 19 aged 38 New York CityResting placeBeth Olam Cemetery in Brooklyn New York CityOccupationAuthor activistLanguageEnglishGenrepoetry prose translations novels playsSubjectGeorgismNotable works The New Colossus RelativesJosephine Lazarus Benjamin N CardozoSignatureLazarus was also the author of Poems and Translations New York 1867 Admetus and other Poems 1871 Alide An Episode of Goethe s Life Philadelphia 1874 Poems and Ballads of Heine New York 1881 Poems 2 Vols Narrative Lyric and Dramatic as well as Jewish Poems and Translations 4 Contents 1 Early years and education 2 Career 2 1 Writer 2 2 Activism 3 Death and legacy 4 Style and themes 5 Selected works 6 Notes 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 Attribution 7 3 Bibliography 8 External linksEarly years and education EditEmma Lazarus was born in New York City July 22 1849 5 into a large Sephardic Jewish family a She was the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus a wealthy Jewish merchant 7 and sugar refiner 8 and Esther Nathan 9 One of her great grandfathers on the Lazarus side was from Germany 10 the rest of her Lazarus and Nathan ancestors were originally from Portugal and they were resident in New York long before the American Revolution they were among the original twenty three Portuguese Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam after they had fled from their settlement in Recife Brazil in an attempt to flee from the Inquisition 11 8 Lazarus s great great grandmother on her mother s side Grace Seixas Nathan born in Stratford in 1752 was also a poet 12 Lazarus was related through her mother to Benjamin N Cardozo Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Her siblings included sisters Josephine Sarah Mary Agnes and Annie and a brother Frank 13 14 15 Privately educated by tutors from an early age she studied American and British literature as well as several languages including German French and Italian 16 She was attracted in youth to poetry writing her first lyrics when eleven years old 17 Career EditWriter Edit Poems and ballads of Heinrich Heine The first stimulus for Lazarus s writing was offered by the American Civil War A collection of her Poems and Translations verses written between the ages of fourteen and seventeen appeared in 1867 New York and was commended by William Cullen Bryant 9 It included translations from Friedrich Schiller Heinrich Heine Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo 7 5 Admetus and Other Poems followed in 1871 The title poem was dedicated To my friend Ralph Waldo Emerson whose works and personality were exercising an abiding influence upon the poet s intellectual growth 7 During the next decade in which Phantasies and Epochs were written her poems appeared chiefly in Lippincott s Monthly Magazine and Scribner s Monthly 9 By this time Lazarus s work had won recognition abroad Her first prose production Alide An Episode of Goethe s Life a romance treating of the Friederike Brion incident was published in 1874 Philadelphia and was followed by The Spagnoletto 1876 a tragedy Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine New York 1881 followed and was prefixed by a biographical sketch of Heine Lazarus s renderings of some of Heine s verse are considered among the best in English 18 In the same year 1881 she became friends with Rose Hawthorne Lathrop 19 In April 1882 Lazarus published in The Century Magazine the article Was the Earl of Beaconsfield a Representative Jew Her statement of the reasons for answering this question in the affirmative may be taken to close what may be termed the Hellenic and journeyman period of Lazarus s life during which her subjects were drawn from classic and romantic sources 20 Lazarus also wrote The Crowing of the Red Cock 5 and the sixteen part cycle poem Epochs 21 In addition to writing her own poems Lazarus edited many adaptations of German poems notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine 22 She also wrote a novel and two plays in five acts The Spagnoletto a tragic verse drama about the titular figure and The Dance to Death a dramatization of a German short story about the burning of Jews in Nordhausen during the Black Death 23 During the time Lazarus became interested in her Jewish roots she continued her purely literary and critical work in magazines with such articles as Tommaso Salvini Salvini s King Lear Emerson s Personality Heine the Poet A Day in Surrey with William Morris and others 24 The New Colossus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame With conquering limbs astride from land to land Here at our sea washed sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning and her name Mother of Exiles From her beacon hand Glows world wide welcome her mild eyes command The air bridged harbor that twin cities frame Keep ancient lands your storied pomp cries she With silent lips Give me your tired your poor Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free The wretched refuse of your teeming shore Send these the homeless tempest tost to me I lift my lamp beside the golden door Lines from her sonnet The New Colossus appear on a bronze plaque which was placed in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903 2 The sonnet was written in 1883 and donated to an auction conducted by the Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty in order to raise funds to build the pedestal b c Lazarus s close friend Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was inspired by The New Colossus to found the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne 26 She traveled twice to Europe first in 1883 and again from 1885 to 1887 27 On one of those trips Georgiana Burne Jones the wife of the Pre Raphaelite painter Edward Burne Jones introduced her to William Morris at her home 28 She also met with Henry James Robert Browning and Thomas Huxley during her European travels 16 A collection of Poems in Prose 1887 was her last book Her Complete Poems with a Memoir appeared in 1888 at Boston 5 Activism Edit Lazarus was a friend and admirer of the American political economist Henry George She believed deeply in Georgist economic reforms and became active in the single tax movement for land value tax Lazarus published a poem in the New York Times named after George s book Progress and Poverty 29 Lazarus became more interested in her Jewish ancestry as she heard of the Russian pogroms that followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 As a result of this anti Semitic violence and the poor standard of living in Russia in general thousands of destitute Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from the Russian Pale of Settlement to New York Lazarus began to advocate on behalf of indigent Jewish immigrants She helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York to provide vocational training to assist destitute Jewish immigrants to become self supporting Lazarus volunteered in the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society employment bureau she eventually became a strong critic of the organization 30 In 1883 she founded the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews 8 The literary fruits of identification with her religion were poems like The Crowing of the Red Cock The Banner of the Jew The Choice The New Ezekiel The Dance to Death a strong though unequally executed drama and her last published work March 1887 By the Waters of Babylon Little Poems in Prose which constituted her strongest claim to a foremost rank in American literature During the same period 1882 87 Lazarus translated the Hebrew poets of medieval Spain with the aid of the German versions of Michael Sachs and Abraham Geiger and wrote articles signed and unsigned upon Jewish subjects for the Jewish press besides essays on Bar Kochba Henry Wadsworth Longfellow M Renan and the Jews and others for Jewish literary associations 20 Several of her translations from medieval Hebrew writers found a place in the ritual of American synagogues 5 Lazarus s most notable series of articles was that titled An Epistle to the Hebrews The American Hebrew November 10 1882 February 24 1883 in which she discussed the Jewish problems of the day urged a technical and a Jewish education for Jews and ranged herself among the advocates of an independent Jewish nationality and of Jewish repatriation in Palestine The only collection of poems issued during this period was Songs of a Semite The Dance to Death and Other Poems New York 1882 dedicated to the memory of George Eliot 24 Death and legacy Edit Lazarus Public School Brooklyn Lazarus returned to New York City seriously ill after she completed her second trip to Europe and she died two months later on November 19 1887 4 most likely from Hodgkin s lymphoma She never married 31 32 Lazarus was buried in Beth Olam Cemetery in Cypress Hills Brooklyn The Poems of Emma Lazarus 2 vols Boston and New York 1889 was published after her death comprising most of her poetic work from previous collections periodical publications and some of the literary heritage which her executors deemed appropriate to preserve for posterity 24 Her papers are kept by the American Jewish Historical Society Center for Jewish History 33 and her letters are collected at Columbia University 34 A stamp featuring the Statue of Liberty and Lazarus s poem The New Colossus was issued by Antigua and Barbuda in 1985 35 In 1992 she was named as a Women s History Month Honoree by the National Women s History Project 36 Lazarus was honored by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President in March 2008 and her home on West 10th Street was included on a map of Women s Rights Historic Sites 37 In 2009 she was inducted into the National Women s Hall of Fame 38 The Museum of Jewish Heritage featured an exhibition about Lazarus in 2012 Biographer Esther Schor praised Lazarus lasting contribution The irony is that the statue goes on speaking even when the tide turns against immigration even against immigrants themselves as they adjust to their American lives You can t think of the statue without hearing the words Emma Lazarus gave her 39 Style and themes Edit Alide an episode of Goethe s life 1874 Lazarus contributed toward shaping the self image of the United States as well as how the country understands the needs of those who emigrate to the United States Her themes produced sensitivity and enduring lessons regarding immigrants and their need for dignity 40 What was needed to make her a poet of the people as well as one of literary merit was a great theme the establishment of instant communication between some stirring reality and her still hidden and irresolute subjectivity Such a theme was provided by the immigration of Russian Jews to America consequent upon the proscriptive May Laws of 1882 She rose to the defense of her ethnic compatriots in powerful articles as contributions to The Century May 1882 and February 1883 Hitherto her life had held no Jewish inspiration Though of Sephardic ancestry and ostensibly Orthodox in belief her family had till then not participated in the activities of the synagogue or of the Jewish community Contact with the unfortunates from Russia led her to study the Torah the Hebrew language Judaism and Jewish history 20 While her early poetry demonstrated no Jewish themes her Songs of a Semite 1882 is considered to be the earliest volume of Jewish American poetry 41 A review of Alide by Lippincott s Monthly Magazine was critical of Lazarus s style and elements of technique 42 Selected works EditLazarus Emma 1888 The Poems of Emma Lazarus Houghton Mifflin and Company Emma Lazarus In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport In Exile Progress and Poverty The New Colossus By the Waters of Babylon 1492 The New Year The South Venus of the Louvre Notes Edit According to Vogel the father s family was probably Sephardic 6 Auction event named as Lowell says poem gave the statue a raison d etre fell into obscurity not mentioned at statue opening Georgina Schuyler s campaign for the plaque 2 Solicited by William Maxwell Evert sic presumably William Maxwell Evarts Lazarus refused initially convinced by Constance Cary Harrison 25 References EditCitations Edit Cavitch Max February 1 2006 Emma Lazarus and the Golem of Liberty American Literary History 18 1 1 28 Retrieved January 12 2018 a b c Young 1997 p 3 Watts 2014 p 123 a b Sladen amp Roberts 1891 p 434 a b c d e Gilman Peck amp Colby 1907 p 39 Vogel 1980 p 13 a b c D Appleton amp Company 1887 p 414 a b c Goodwin 2015 p 370 a b c Singer amp Adler 1906 p 650 Four Founders Emma Lazarus Jewish Virtual Library Appel Phyllis January 21 2013 The Jewish Connection Graystone Enterprises LLC ISBN 9781301060931 Retrieved January 7 2019 Schor 2008 p 1 Wheeler 1889 p 176 Schor 2017 pp 8 226 Weinrib Henry Emma Lazarus www jewishmag com Jewish Magazine Retrieved January 12 2018 a b Walker 1992 p 332 Lazarus amp Eiselein 2002 p 15 World s Congress of Religions 1893 p 976 Young 1997 p 186 a b c Singer amp Adler 1906 p 651 The Poems of Emma Lazarus in Two Volumes Century Magazine ASIN B0082RVVJ2 The Poems of Emma Lazarus in Two Volumes Kindle ebooks ASIN B0082RVVJ2 and ASIN B0082RDHSA Parini 2003 p 1 a b c Singer amp Adler 1906 p 652 Felder amp Rosen 2005 p 45 Exhibit highlights connection between Jewish poet Catholic nun The Tidings Archdiocese of Los Angeles Catholic News Service September 17 2010 p 16 Archived from the original on September 21 2010 Retrieved September 20 2010 Schor 2006 p 1 Flanders 2001 p 186 Progress and Poverty The New York Times October 2 1881 p 3 Retrieved May 21 2013 Esther Schor Emma Lazarus 2008 Random House Jewish Encounters series ISBN 0805242759 p 148 et seq quotation from Lazarus is on p 149 150 Hewitt 2011 p 55 Snodgrass 2014 p 321 Guide to the Emma Lazarus papers Center for Jewish History Retrieved January 12 2018 Young 1997 p 221 Eisenberg 2002 p 52 Past Women s History Month Honorees National Women s History Project Retrieved August 3 2017 Manhattan Borough President Home Archived from the original on July 18 2011 Lazarus Emma National Women s Hall of Fame Retrieved November 1 2016 Give Me Your Tired Your Poor Your Poet The Attic Retrieved November 5 2019 Moore 2005 p xvi Gitenstein 2012 p 3 Vogel 1980 p 103 Attribution Edit This article incorporates text from this source which is in the public domain D Appleton amp Company 1887 Appletons Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events Public domain ed D Appleton amp Company This article incorporates text from this source which is in the public domain Gilman Daniel Coit Peck Harry Thurston Colby Frank Moore 1907 The new international encyclopaedia Public domain ed Dodd Mead and company This article incorporates text from this source which is in the public domain Singer Isidore Adler Cyrus 1906 The Jewish Encyclopedia A Descriptive Record of the History Religion Literature and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day Vol 7 Public domain ed Funk amp Wagnalls Company This article incorporates text from this source which is in the public domain Sladen Douglas Brooke Wheelton Roberts Goodridge Bliss 1891 Younger American Poets 1830 1890 Public domain ed Griffith Farran Okeden amp Welsh p 434 This article incorporates text from this source which is in the public domain Wheeler Edward Jewitt 1889 Current Opinion Vol 2 Public domain ed Current Literature Publishing Company This article incorporates text from this source which is in the public domain World s Congress of Religions 1893 The Addresses and Papers Delivered Before the Parliament and an Abstract of the Congresses Held in the Art Institute Chicago Ill Aug 25 to Oct 15 1893 Public domain ed Conkey Bibliography Edit Beilin Israel Ber Dos lebn fun Ema Lazarus a biografye 1946 Nyu Yorḳ Yidishn fraṭernaln folḳs ordn Cavitch Max 2008 Emma Lazarus and the Golem of Liberty The Traffic in Poems Nineteenth Century Poetry and Transatlantic Exchange Ed Meredith McGill Rutgers University Press 97 122 ISBN 978 0813542300 Eisenberg Ronald L 2002 The Jewish World in Stamps 4000 Years of Jewish Civilization in Postal Stamps Schreiber Publishing ISBN 978 1 887563 76 5 Felder Deborah G Rosen Diana 2005 Fifty Jewish Women Who Changed The World Kensington Publishing Corporation ISBN 978 0 8065 2656 0 Flanders Judith 2001 A Circle of Sisters Alice Kipling Georgiana Burne Jones Agnes Poynter and Louisa Baldwin W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0 393 05210 7 Gitenstein R Barbara February 2012 Apocalyptic Messianism and Contemporary Jewish American Poetry SUNY Press ISBN 978 1 4384 0415 8 Goodwin Neva July 17 2015 Encyclopedia of Women in American History Routledge ISBN 978 1 317 47162 2 Hewitt S R December 16 2011 Jewish Treats 99 Fascinating Jewish Personalities BookBaby ISBN 978 1 61842 866 0 Moore Hannia S January 1 2005 Liberty s Poet Emma Lazarus TurnKey Press ISBN 978 0 9754803 4 2 Lazarus Emma Eiselein Gregory June 4 2002 Emma Lazarus Selected Poems and Other Writings Broadview Press ISBN 978 1 55111 285 5 Parini Jay October 2003 The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 515653 9 Schor Esther H September 5 2006 Emma Lazarus Nextbook ISBN 9780805242164 Schor Esther October 21 2008 Emma Lazarus Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group ISBN 978 0 8052 4275 1 Schor Esther April 25 2017 Emma Lazarus Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group ISBN 978 0 8052 1166 5 Vogel Dan 1980 Emma Lazarus Thomson Gale ISBN 978 0 8057 7233 3 Snodgrass Mary Ellen May 14 2014 Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature Infobase Publishing ISBN 978 1 4381 0910 7 Walker Cheryl 1992 American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century An Anthology Rutgers University Press p 332 ISBN 978 0 8135 1791 9 Watts Emily Stipes September 10 2014 The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945 University of Texas Press ISBN 978 1 4773 0344 3 Young Bette Roth August 1 1997 Emma Lazarus in Her World Life and Letters Jewish Publication Society ISBN 978 0 8276 0618 0 External links EditWorks by Emma Lazarus at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Emma Lazarus at Internet Archive Works by Emma Lazarus at LibriVox public domain audiobooks Jewish Virtual Library Emma Lazarus Jewish Women s Archive HISTORY MAKERS Emma Lazarus 1849 1887 Finding aid to Emma Lazarus 1868 1929 at Columbia University Rare Book amp Manuscript Library National Public Radio Emma Lazarus Poet of the Huddled Masses Jewish American Hall of Fame Virtual Tour Emma Lazarus 1849 1887 Dr David P Stern Welcome to my World Emma Lazarus at the Wayback Machine archived June 16 2006 Who Was Emma Lazarus by Dr Henry Henry Abramson Emma Lazarus at Find a Grave Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Emma Lazarus amp oldid 1143464499, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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