"Give me your tired, your poor, / Your
huddled masses yearning to breathe free," proclaims the
"Mother of Exiles" in Emma Lazarus's sonnet "The New
Colossus." Her best-known contribution to mainstream American
literature and culture, the poem has contributed to the belief that
America means opportunity and freedom for Jews, as well as for other
"huddled masses." Through this celebration of the
"other," Lazarus conveyed her deepest loyalty to the best
of both America and Judaism.
Born on July 22, 1849, Lazarus was the fourth of
Esther (Nathan) and Moses Lazarus's seven children. She grew up in
New York and Newport, Rhode Island, and was educated by private
tutors with whom she studied mythology, music, American poetry,
European literature, German, French, and Italian. Her father, who was
a successful sugar merchant, supported her writing financially as
well as emotionally. In 1866, when Emma was only seventeen, Moses had Poems and Translations: Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and
Sixteen printed "for private circulation." Daughter
Emma dedicated the volume "To My Father."
Soon after Poems and Translations was
published, Lazarus met Ralph Waldo Emerson. The two corresponded
until Emerson's death in 1882. During the early years of their
relationship, Lazar-us turned to Emerson as her mentor, and he in
turn praised and encouraged her writing. In 1871, when she published Admetus
and Other Poems, she dedicated the title poem "To My
Friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson." Despite his support, Emerson
failed to include any of Lazarus's poetry in his 1874 anthology, Parnassus, but he did include authors such as Harriet Prescott Spofford and
Julia C.R. Dorr. Lazarus responded with an uncharacteristically angry
letter and subsequently modified her idealized image of Emerson.
However, student and mentor obviously reconciled; in 1876, Lazarus
visited the Emersons in Concord, Massachusetts.
Admetus and Other Poems includes "In
the Jewish Synagogue at Newport" and "How Long" as
well as translations from the Italian and German (Goethe and Heine).
"In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport" echoes in form and
meter Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Jewish Cemetery at
Newport." Yet where Longfellow's meditation closes with
"the dead nations never rise again," Lazarus's reverie
concludes by announcing that "the sacred shrine is holy
yet." "In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport" is one of
Lazarus's earliest creative expressions of a Jewish consciousness.
"How Long" is significant because its proclamation of the
need for a "yet unheard of strain," one suitable to
prairies, plains, wilderness, and snow-peaked mountains places
Lazarus among those mid-nineteenth century American writers who
wanted to create literature that did not depend on British outlines.
Lazarus published her next book, Alide: An
Episode of Goethe's Life, in 18 74. Her only novel, Alide is
based on Goethe's own autobiographical writings and focuses on a love
affair between the young Goethe and a country woman. The lovers part
at the end, because the poet must be free to fulfill his "sacred
office." Lazar-us's only other piece of fiction, a story titled
"The Eleventh Hour," was published in 1878 in Scribner's. The story raises questions about the needs and rights of the
artist, like Alide, and about the status of American art,
like "How Long."
In 1876, Lazar-us privately published The
Spagnoletto, a tragic verse drama. Throughout the 1870s and
early 1880s, Lazarus's poems appeared in American magazines. Among
these are "Outside the Church" (1872) in Index; "Phantasmagoria"
(1876) and "The Christmas Tree" (1877) in Lippincott's; "The Taming of the Falcon" (1879) in the Century; and
"Progress and Poverty" (18 8 1) in the New York Times.
Lazarus's most productive period was the early
1880s. In addition to numerous magazine poems, essays, and letters,
she published a highly respected volume of translations, Poems
and Ballads of Heinrich Heine, in 1881, and Songs of a
Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems, in 1882. This was
also the period in which Lazarus most obviously spoke out as
self-identified Jew and American writer simultaneously.
Until this period, Lazarus's "interest and
sympathies were loyal to [her] race," but, as she explained in
1877, "my religious convictions ... and the circumstances of my
life have led me somewhat apart from my people." Although her
family did belong to the Sephardic Shearith Israel synagogue in New
York, and she did write "In the Jewish Synagogue in
Newport" when she was young, it appears that learning of the
Russian pogroms in the early 1880s kindled Lazarus's commitment to
Judaism. This change in attitude is evident in her writing, as well
as in her work with the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society-meeting Eastern
European immigrants on Wards Island-and in her efforts to help
establish the Hebrew Technical Institute and agricultural communities
for Eastern European Jews in the United States.
Songs of a Semite was published by the American
Hebrew. The title, as well as many of the poems in the
collection, publicly proclaimed Lazarus's identity as a Jewish poet.
In that role, Lazarus battled against both anti-Semitic non-Jews and
complacent Jews. In "The Banner of the Jew," she urged
"Israel" to "Recall today / The glorious Maccabean
rage," and she reminded readers that "With Moses's law and
David's lyre" Israel's "ancient strength remains
unbent." And in The Dance to Death, a poetic
dramatization of Richard Reinhard's 1877 prose narrative Der Tanz
zum Tode, Lazarus celebrated the courage and faith of the Jews
who were condemned to die in Nordhausen, Germany, in 1349 for
allegedly causing the plague. The Dance to Death was
dedicated to George Eliot, "who did most among the artists of
our day towards elevating and ennobling the spirit of Jewish
nationality" with her novel Daniel Deronda.
Lazarus published Songs of a Semite in
the same year that she adopted a more public Jewish identity in the
realm of American magazines, particularly in the Century. Three
essays published in that magazine over a ten-month period attest to
Lazar-us's concerns. In the first, "Was the Earl of Beaconsfield
a Representative Jew?" (April 1882), Lazarus offered an
ambivalent portrait of Benjamin Disraeli; she defined
"representative" as embodying the best as well as the worst
of Jewish traits. In the second essay, "Russian Christianity vs.
Modem Judaism" (May 1882), Lazarus included a personal plea for
informed understanding of Russian Jews and their situation. And in
the third essay, "The Jewish Problem" (February 1883), she
observed that Jews, who are always in the minority, "seem fated
to excite the antagonism of their fellow countrymen." To this
problem she offered a solution: the founding of a state by Jews for
Jews in Palestine. Lazarus promoted Zionism throughout the 1880s.
Although Lazarus had published occasionally in the
Jewish press, she became a regular contributor to the American
Hebrew in the early 1880s. This weekly, edited by Philip Cowan,
printed "Judaism the Connecting Link Between Science and
Religion" and "The Schiff Refuge" in 1882, "An
Epistle to the Hebrews" in 1882-1883, "Cruel Bigotry"
in 1883, and "The Last National Revolt of the Jews" as well
as "M. Renan and the Jews"-an essay, which won first prize
in a contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Young Men's Hebrew
Association-in 1884. In "An Epistle to the Hebrews," a
series of fifteen open letters that appeared between November 1882
and February 1883, Lazarus suggested that assimilated American Jews
should recognize their privileged status as well as their
vulnerability in America, that all Jews should understand their
history in order not to be misled by anti-Semitic generalizations,
and that Eastern European Jews should emigrate to Palestine.
At the same time that Lazarus was writing more
self-consciously as a Jew, she was also writing as an American. Her
1881 essay "American Literature" (Critic) defended
American literature against the charge that America had no literary
tradition and that America's poets had left no mark. "American
Literature" was followed by "Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow" (American Hebrew) and the eulogy
"Emerson's Personality," both published in 1882. The latter
appeared in the Century, three months after "Was the
Earl of Beaconsfield a Representative Jew?" and two months after
"Russian Christianity vs. Modern Judaism." Lazarus also
published the poem "To R.W.E." in 1884 (Critic).
Lazarus wrote "The New Colossus" in 1883
"for the occasion" of an auction to raise money for the
Statue of Liberty's pedestal. The poem was singled out and printed in
the Catalogue of the Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition at the
National Academy of Design because event organizers hoped it
would "awaken to new enthusiasm" those working on behalf of
the pedestal.
In the following year, Lazarus published the essay
"The Poet Heine" in the Century. Lazarus explained
her fascination with Heine, born a Jew and later baptized and
educated as a Catholic: "A fatal and irreconcilable dualism
formed the basis of Heine's nature.... He was a Jew, with the mind
and eyes of a Greek." Lazarus admired Heine's ability to
understand the "internal incongruity" of his mind as well
as his Jewish "pathos" and worldly sensibility.
Lazarus traveled to Europe twice, the first time
in 1883. During her stay in England and France, she met Robert
Browning, William Morris, and Jewish leaders. Her essay "A Day
in Surrey with William Morris" (the Century, 1886)
paints a positive portrait of the English socialist. Noting that
Morris's "extreme socialistic convictions" elicited
criticism, Lazarus explained that English inequalities were more
"glaring" than American ones and therefore more in need of
dramatic reform.
Lazarus's second trip to Europe was a longer one,
lasting from May 1885 until September 1887. According to her sister
Josephine Lazarus's biographical sketch, Emma "decided to go
abroad again as the best means of regaining composure and
strength" after Moses Lazarus died in March 1885. This journey
included visits to England, France, Holland, and Italy. Lazarus
returned to New York very ill, probably with cancer. She died two
months later, on November 19, 1887. Two of Lazarus's sisters, Mary
and Annie, published The Poems of Emma Lazarus, I and II posthumously,
in 1888. Volume I contains the biographical sketch written by sister
Josephine. In the same year, the sketch also appeared in the Century. Volume 11 includes her final work, "By the Waters in
Babylon, Little Poems in Prose," which had previously appeared
in the Century in March 1887. This set of Prose poems
suggests that Lazarus was exploring new directions for her art.
Volume 11 also contains translations of "Hebrew poets of
mediaeval Spain," Solomon Ben Judah Gabirol, Abul Hassan Judah
Ben Ha-Levi, and Moses Ben Esra.
Lazar-us's work received consistently positive
reviews. By the late 1870s and 1880s, American writers and readers
knew Lazar-us as a frequent contributor to periodicals such as Lippincott's, the Century, and the American Hebrew. She
corresponded with writers and thinkers of the time, including Ivan
Turgenev, William James, Robert Browning, and James Russell Lowell.
When she 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."
Lazar-us 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.
More than any other Jewish woman of the nineteenth
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.
