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Emma Lazarus

 
Emma Lazarus

 
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Emma Lazarus
 
 
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Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
 born in New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
.

She is best known for writing "The New Colossus
The New Colossus

"The New Colossus" is a sonnet by Emma Lazarus , written in 1883 and, in 1903, engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the Statue of Liberty....
", a sonnet
Sonnet

The sonnet is one of the Poetry that can be found in lyric poetry from Europe.The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian language word sonetto, both meaning "little song"....
 written in 1883; its final lines were engraved on a bronze
Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive, but sometimes with other chemical element such as phosphorus, manganese, aluminium, or silicon....
 plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty , or, more formally, Liberty Enlightening the World , was presented to the United States by the people of France in 1886....
 in 1912. 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.






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Quotations


Alas! we wake: one scene alone remains, —The exiles by the streams of Babylon.

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport

The funeral and the marriage, now, alas!We know not which is sadder to recall.

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport

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!

The New Colossus (1883)





Encyclopedia


Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
 born in New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
.

She is best known for writing "The New Colossus
The New Colossus

"The New Colossus" is a sonnet by Emma Lazarus , written in 1883 and, in 1903, engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the Statue of Liberty....
", a sonnet
Sonnet

The sonnet is one of the Poetry that can be found in lyric poetry from Europe.The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian language word sonetto, both meaning "little song"....
 written in 1883; its final lines were engraved on a bronze
Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive, but sometimes with other chemical element such as phosphorus, manganese, aluminium, or silicon....
 plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty , or, more formally, Liberty Enlightening the World , was presented to the United States by the people of France in 1886....
 in 1912. 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.

Background


Lazarus was the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus and Esther Nathan, Portuguese
Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. Located in southwestern Europe, Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east....
 Sephardic Jews
Sephardi Jews

Sephardi Jews are a subgroup of Jews originating in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, usually defined in contrast to Ashkenazi or Mizrahi Jews....
 whose families had been settled in New York
New York

The State of New York is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic States and Northeastern United States regions of the United States and is the nation's List of U.S....
 since the colonial period. She was related through her mother to Benjamin N. Cardozo
Benjamin N. Cardozo

Benjamin Nathan Cardozo was a well-known United States lawyer and jurist, remembered for his significant influence on the development of American common law in the 20th century, in addition to his modesty, philosophy, and vivid prose style....
, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court.

From an early age, she studied American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 and Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
an literature
Literature

Literature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" . In Western culture the most basic written literary types include fiction and non-fiction....
, as well as several languages, including German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
, French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
, and Italian
Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
. Her writings attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher, poet, and leader of the transcendentalism movement in the early 19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid 1800s....
. He corresponded with her up until his death.

Lazarus is buried in Beth-Olom Cemetery in Brooklyn
Brooklyn

Brooklyn is one of the five Borough of New York City, located at the western end of Long Island. An independent city until its consolidation with New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents, and second largest in area....
.

Literary career


She wrote her own original poems and edited many adaptations of German and Italian poems, notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

was a Germans writer and according to George Eliot, "Germany's greatest man of letters? and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, humanism and science....
 and Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was a journalist, essayist, and one of the most significant German literature German Romanticism poets. He is remembered chiefly for selections of his lyric poetry, many of which were set to music in the form of lieder by German composers....
. She also wrote a novel and two plays.

Lazarus began to be more interested in her Jewish ancestry after reading the George Eliot
George Eliot

Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an England novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era....
 novel, Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day....
, and as she heard of the Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
n pogrom
Pogrom

A pogrom is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious, or other, and characterized by the killing and destruction of their homes, businesses, and religious centers....
s in the early 1880s. This led Lazarus to write articles on the subject. She also began translating the works of Jewish poets into English. Expelled in great numbers from the Russian Pale of Settlement
Pale of Settlement

The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Russian Empire, along its western border, in which permanent residence of Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish residence was generally prohibited....
, eastern European Ashkenazi Jews immigrated in destitute multitudes to New York in the winter of 1882. Lazarus taught technical education to help them become self-supporting.

She traveled twice to Europe, first in May 1885 after the death of her father in March and again in September 1887. She returned to New York City seriously ill after her second trip and died two months later on 19 November 1887, most likely from Hodgkin's disease.

She is known as an important forerunner of the Zionist movement. She argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland thirteen years before Herzl
Theodor Herzl

Theodor Herzl was an Austria-Hungary journalist who was the father of modern political Zionism.Herzl was born in Pest, Hungary, the Kingdom of Hungary to a Jewish people family originally from Zemun, the Kingdom of Hungary ....
 began to use the term Zionism
Zionism

Zionism is the international Jewish political movement that originally supported the reestablishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine....
.

Works

  • In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport


Further reading

  • 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 1-43-2514-164.
  • Lazarus, Emma. Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems. USA: Library of America, 2005. ISBN 1-931082-77-4.
  • 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.
  • Young, B. R. Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters. USA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1997. ISBN 0-8276-0618-4.

External links

  • at the
  • Emma Lazarus Biography in