Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus engraving, 1872. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 - November 19, 1887) was a Jewish-American poet best known for "The New Colossus", a sonnet written in 1883, which is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

Life

Youth and education

Lazarus was born in New York City, the 4th of 7 children of Moshe Lazarus and Esther (Nathan), Portuguese Sephardic Jews whose families had been settled in New York since the colonial period. She was related through her mother to Benjamin N. Cardozo, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

From an early age, she studied American and British literature, as well as several languages, including German, French, and Italian. Her writings attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He corresponded with her until his death.

Literary career

Lazarus wrote her own poems and edited many adaptations of German poems, notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine. She also wrote a novel and 2 plays.

Her most famous work is "The New Colossus", which is inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The sonnet was solicited by William Maxwell Evarts as a donation to an auction, conducted by the "Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty" to raise funds to build the pedestal.

By the late 1870s and 1880s, American writers and readers knew Lazarus as a frequent contributor to periodicals such as Lippincott's, The Century Magazine, and The American Hebrew. She corresponded with writers and thinkers of the time, including Ivan Turgenev, William James, Robert Browning, and James Russell Lowell.

Lazarus began to be more interested in her Jewish ancestry after reading George Eliot's novel, Daniel Deronda, and as she heard of the Russian pogroms in the early 1880s. This led Lazarus to write articles on the subject. She also began translating the works of Jewish poets into English. In the winter of 1882, multitudes of destitute Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from the Russian Pale of Settlement to New York; Lazarus taught technical education to help them become self-supporting.

She is known as an important forerunner of the Zionist movement. She argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland 13 years before Theodor Herzl began to use the term Zionism.

She traveled twice to Europe: in May 1885, after the death of her father in March; and again in September 1887. She returned to New York seriously ill after her 2nd trip, and died 2 months later on November 19, 1887, most likely from Hodgkin's lymphoma.

She is buried in Beth-Olom Cemetery in Ridgewood, Queens county, New York City.

Writing

As a Jewish American woman, Emma Lazarus faced the challenge of belonging to 2 often conflicting worlds. As a woman she dealt with unequal treatment in both. Lazarus used these difficult experiences to lend power and depth to her work. At the same time, her complicated identity has obscured her place in American culture.

Lazarus dedicated her life to her work. Yet she still had to contend with American and Jewish middle-class prescriptions for womanly behavior. These gender expectations included limitations on a woman artist's expression. In "Echoes" (probably written in 1880) Lazarus spoke self-consciously about women as poets, describing the boundaries drawn around a woman poet who cannot share with men the common literary subjects of the "dangers, wounds, and triumphs" of war and must therefore transform her own "elf music" and "echoes" into song. Successful at that act of transformation, Lazarus found some space in the American literary world.

She inherited a rich pride in her Sephardic heritage, and often wrote about the medieval scholars and poets of her ancestors' land. But more than any other Jewish woman of the 19th century, Lazarus identified herself and was recognized by readers and critics as an American writer. She was also an increasingly outspoken Jew, and she was a woman. Lazarus's writing benefited from the complexities of her identity. She would not have been as effective on behalf of Jews if she had not believed deeply in America's freedoms, and she could not have been as passionate a writer if she had not uncovered her own meaningful response to Judaism.

Recognition

Lazarus' close friend Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (the wife of poet George Parsons Lathrop) was inspired by "The New Colossus" to found the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.

When Lazarus died, the American Hebrew published the "Emma Lazarus Memorial Number." In it, John Hay, John Jay Whittier, and Cyrus Sulzberger, among others, praised Lazarus for her contributions to American literature as well as to "her own race and kindred."

A bronze plaque with the words to "The New Colossus" was affixed to the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1903.

Lazarus was honored by the Office of the Manhattan borough president in March 2008, and was included in a map of historical sites related or dedicated to important women.

Publications

Emma Lazarus, Songs of a Semite The Dance to Death, and other poems, 1882. Courtesy Internet Archive.

Poetry

• Poems and Translations: Written between the Ages of Fourteen and Seventeen. New York: privately printed, 1866; New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1867.
• Admetus, and other poems. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1871.
• Songs of a Semite, The Dance to Death, and other poems. New York: The American Hebrew, 1882.
  • Songs of a Semite. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Literature House, 1970.
• Poems (edited by Josephine Lazarus). (2 volumes), Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1888. Volume I, Volume II.
• Selected Poems (edited by John Hollander). London: Secker & Warburg, 1972; New York: Library of America, 2005.
• Emma Lazarus: Poet of the Jewish people (edited by Emma Klein). Arthur James, 1997.

Plays

• The Spagnoletto: A play in five acts. 1876 (unpublished ms)

Novel

• Alide: An episode of Goethe's life. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1874.

Non-fiction

• An Epistle to the Hebrews. New York: Press of Philip Cowen, 1900.
  • (edited by Morris U. Schappes). New York: Jewish Historical Society, 1987.
• Disraeli the Jew: Essays by Benjamin Cardozo and Emma Lazarus (edited by Michael Selzer). Great Barrington, MA: Selzer & Selzer, 1993.

Translated

• Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine. New York, 1881.

Collected editions

• Selections from her poetry and prose (edited by Morris U. Schappes). New York: Cooperative Book League, Jewish American Section, International Workers Order, 1944.
  • 2nd edition (revised & expanded). New York: Book League, Jewish People's Fraternal Order of the International Workers Order, 1947.
  • 3rd edition (revised & expanded). New York: Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs, 1967.
• Selected Poems, and other writings (edited by Gregory Eiselein). Peterborough, ON & Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2002.

Letters

• Letters, 1868-1885 (edited by Morris U. Schappes). New York: New York Public Library, 1949.
• Bette Roth Young, Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and letters. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1995.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Poems by Lazarus

The New Colossus - Emma Lazarus

1. The New Colossus

See also

• List of U.S. poets

References

• Cavitch, Max. "Emma Lazarus and the Golem of Liberty," American Literary History 18.1 (2006), 1-28
• Eiselein, Gregory. Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings. USA: Broadview Press, 2002. ISBN 1-55111-285-X.
• Jacob, H.E. The World of Emma Lazarus. New York: Schocken, 1949; New York: Kessing Publishers, 2007, ISBN 1-4325-1416-4.
• Moore, H.S. Liberty's Poet: Emma Lazarus. USA: TurnKey Press, 2004. ISBN 0-9754803-4-0.
• Schor, Esther. Emma Lazurus. New York: Schocken, 2006. ISBN 0-8052-4216-3. Randomhouse.com
• Young, B.R. Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters. USA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1997. ISBN 0-8276-0618-4.
• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.. Original article is at:

External links

Poems

• 5 poems by Lazarus: "Long Island Sound," "August Moon," "The New Colossus," "A June Night," "The New Year"
• Poem of the Week: "The New Colossus" at The Guardian
• Lazarus, Emma (1849-1887) (4 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Emma Lazarus 1849-1887 at the Poetry Foundation
• Emma Lazarus: profile & 16 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Emma Lazarus at PoemHunter (93 poems)
• Emma Lazarus at AllPoetry (104 poems)

Audio / video

• National Public Radio: Emma Lazarus, Poet of the Huddled Masses
• Emma Lazarus Memorial Near the Statue of Liberty

Books

• Works by Emma Lazarus at Project Gutenberg
• Emma Lazarus at Amazon.com

About

• Emma Lazarus in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Emma Lazarus at NNDB
• Emma Lazarus at the Jewish Virtual Library
• Emma Lazarus, 1849 – 1887 in the Jewish Women's Archive
• Jewish-American Hall of Fame: Virtual Tour: Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)
• Dr. David P. Stern: Welcome to my World: Emma Lazarus
• On Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus" at the Los Angeles Review of Books