Birth of Lazarus: world-wide welcome

Emma Lazarus, her sister said years later, was born to sing like a poet. But, she noted, "she did not sing, like a bird, for joy of being alive." Instead, much of her work is very serious, if not somber; much of it is political. Lazarus was born on July 22, 1849, the fourth of what would soon be seven children, in New York City.

Though Lazarus wrote many poems beginning as a teenager, as well as prose and even drama, before her death at age 38, she is best known for a single sonnet. It was written in 1883 and donated to be sold to raise money for a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. She believed that the Statue would serve as an important greeting and a symbol for incoming immigrants, and likely had that in mind when she wrote "The New Colossus," referencing the ancient Greek Colossus of Rhodes. It was read at the fundraising exhibition, but was mostly forgotten until after Lazarus's death. By 1903, a plaque quoting Lazarus's poem was added to the pedestal. Her words remain a reminder of a certain idealism in emigration to the United States:

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!"

Emma Lazarus and "the Hebraic strain"

When Emma Lazarus died at age 38 in 1887, the copyright of her poems was left in the care of her older sister, Josephine. She accordingly published a two-volume complete poems collection a year later. According to her biographical introduction, Josephine believed her sister was deeply private, but celebrate the family's Jewish heritage: "To be born a Jewess was a distinction to Emma Lazarus, and she in turn conferred distinction upon her race."

Emma's other sister Annie did not agree. 40 years after that statement, Annie was approached by a publisher who wanted to highlight Emma's various poems and translations celebrating her Jewish faith. On February 25, 1926, she declined permission, writing:

There has been a tendency on the part of her public to overemphasize the Hebraic strain of her work, giving it this quality of sectarian propaganda, which I greatly deplore, for I understand this to have been merely a phase in my sister's development, called for by righteous indignation at the tragic happenings of those days. Then, unfortunately, owing to her untimely death, this was destined to be her final word.

Annie had lived with Emma in Europe for her final years and, later, converted to Anglo-Catholicism herself. Her statement about her sister remains controversial — whether it truly reflected Emma's beliefs or Annie's.

In fact, Emma Lazarus's faith has become deeply intertwined with her public image since her death. In various biographical encyclopedias, her Jewish faith is nearly always mentioned; one referred to her melancholy as the result of "the unconscious expression of the inherited sorrow of her race" and a Jewish encyclopedia called her the "most distinguished literary figure produced by American Jewry." After the turn of the century, the New York Tribune called her "the most talented woman the Jewish race has produced in this country." Emma Lazarus and Judaism remain deeply interconnected even today (the image above is from the American Jewish Historical Society). In fact, Lazarus did have a strong "phase" at the end of her life in which she was deeply devoted to her Jewish faith, learned Hebrew, and translated poetry from that language. However, her faith was not exclusive to that period, nor was her religion her only interest.

*The majority of the information in this post was gleaned from a chapter called "The Myth" in Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters (1995) by Bette Roth Young.

Lazarus: it may be good to dream no more

Emma Lazarus was 17 years old when she wrote her poem "Dreams," dated April 30, 1867:

A dream of lilies: all the blooming earth,
   A garden full of fairies and of flowers;
Its only music the glad cry of mirth,
   While the warm sun weaves golden-tissued hours;
Hope a bright angel, beautiful and true
   As Truth herself, and life a lovely toy,
Which ne'er will weary us, ne'er break, a new
   Eternal source of pleasure and of joy.

A dream of roses: vision of Love's tree,
   Of beauty and of madness, and as bright
As naught on earth save only dreams can be,
   Made fair and odorous with flower and light;
A dream that Love is strong to outlast Time,
   That hearts are stronger than forgetfulness,
The slippery sand than changeful waves that climb,
   The wind-blown foam than mighty weaters' stress.

A dream of laurels: after much is gone,
   Much buried, much lamented, much forgot,
With what remains to do and what is done,
   With what yet is, and what, alas! is not,
Man dreams a dream of laurel and of bays,
   A dream of crowns and guerdons and rewards
Wherein sounds sweet the hollow voice of praise,
   And bright appears the wreath that it awards.

A dream of poppies, sad and true as Truth,
   That all these dreams were dreams of vanity;
And full of bitter penitence and ruth,
   In his last dream, man deems 'twere good to die;
And weeping o'er the visions vain of yore,
   In the sad vigils he doth nightly keep,
He dreams it may be good to dream no more,
   And life has nothing like Death's dreamless sleep.

*I came across this poem, with its date, in John Hollander's outstanding collection Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems.

Lazarus: I felt quite relieved

Though the March 30, 1874 issue of the New-York Times advertised it as Alide: A Romance of Goethe's Life, its author Emma Lazarus slightly altered its subtitle when it was published it as Alide: An Episode from Goethe's Life. The book re-told the story of the well-known German poet-philosopher and his personal account of his relationship with a woman named Frederika Brion. Lazarus, however, told the story from the perspective of the woman, painting the "episode" as that of a simple country girl who reveals the man to be a self-deceived narcissist.

Lazarus, who remains better known as a poet, incorporated entire passages from Goethe's autobiography into the narrative, though she replaces Brion with the fictional Alide Duroc. In the end, Goethe realizes that his art is more important to the world than his personal relationships. He and Duroc part ways — one becomes a successful and influential intellectual, while the other stays home with a near-fatal illness. When she recovers, she renounces marriage. In an epilogue, they meet again eight years later, and Lazarus uses Goethe's own words to describe the experience:

I was forced to leave her at a moment when it nearly cost her her life: she passed lightly over that episode, to tell me what traces still remained of the old illness, and behaved with such exquisite delicacy and generosity from the moment I stood before her unexpected on the threshold, that I felt quite relieved. I must do her the justice to say that she made not the slightest attempt to rekindle in my bosom the cinders of love. She led me into the arbor, and there we sat down. It was a lovely moonlight... We recalled many a pastime of those happy days, and I found myself as vividly conscious of all as if I had been away only six months. The old people were frank and hearty... I can now think once more of this corner of the world with comfort, and know that they are at peace with me.

Goethe is presented, then, as a vain and heartless self-serving intellectual, unconcerned of the well-being of others except in how it affects him personally. Alide, incidentally, was neither popular nor critically successful after its publication.

*For much of the information in this post, I am indebted to Esther Schor's Emma Lazarus (2006).

Lazarus and Nightingale: No monument of stone

On March 7, 1867, Emma Lazarus wrote her poem dedicated Florence Nightingale, the English woman who pioneered modern nursing. Certainly, in the years during and following the American Civil War, the craft of nursing was in much esteem. Lazarus, who was still two decades away from writing her most famous poem "The New Colossus," was only 17 when she wrote "Florence Nightingale":

       Upon the whitewashed walls
       A woman's shadow falls,
A woman walketh o'er the darksome floors.
       A soft, angelic smile
       Lighteth her face the while,
In passing through the dismal corridors.

       And now and then there slips
       A word from out her lips,
More sweet and grateful to those listening ears
       Than the most plaintive tale
       Of the sad nightingale,
Whose name and tenderness this woman bears.

       Her presence in the room
       Of agony and gloom,
No fretful murmurs, no coarse words profane;
       For while she standeth there,
       All words are hushed save prayer;
She seems God's angel weeping o'er man's pain.

       And some of them arise,
       With eager, tearful eyes,
From off their couch to see her passing by.
       Some, e'en too weak for this,
       Can only stoop and kiss
Her shadow, and fall back content to die.

       No monument of stone
       Needs this heroic one,—
Her name is graven on each noble heart;
       And in all after years
       Her praise will be the tears
Which at that name from quivering lids will start.

       And those who live not now,
       To see the sainted brow,
And the angelic smile before it flits for aye,
       They in the future age
       Will kiss the storied page
Whereon the shadow of her life will lie.

Lazarus's family was wealthy at the time (her father had retired two years earlier) but, like many intellectuals in the post-Civil War era, she felt a responsibility to engender values in society at large. Her poem on Nightingale expresses a desire that people should be willing to help others, even if the effort is thankless. About this time, Lazarus was also publishing translations of German, Spanish, and French poets, most of whom were Jewish. About a year later, she would send her translations to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who gave her some mild encouragement. She wrote original works as well but did not collect them in book form until 1871 when Admetus and Other Poems (including "Florence Nightingale") was published.

Death of Lazarus: can these dead bones live?

Emma Lazarus was only 38 years old when she died in New York City on November 19, 1887. The cause of death is presumed to be Hodgkin's lymphoma. Though she died at a young age, her career began early: she published her first book at the age of 17.

Lazarus's Jewish family had been in the United States for generations, but she felt a kinship with incoming immigrants, especially those fleeing from Russia. It was that sentiment that inspired her most famous poem, "The New Colossus," which helped raise funds for the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. It was not the poem read at the statue's dedication though, decades after her death, its lines were inscribed on the pedestal in 1903.

Shortly after her death, Lazarus's sister Josephine helped compile an anthology of her poems. In the biographical introduction, Josephine notes her sister's desire for privacy and hesitated "to lift the veil and throw the light upon a life so hidden and a personality so withdrawn as that of Emma Lazarus." But, Lazarus was "a born singer," she writes, and "poetry was her natural language, and to write was less effort than to speak." Josephine notes, however, that this "singing" was not "like a bird," singing for "the joy of being alive." Instead, Lazarus felt suffering in the world and in her own life. According to Josephine, her sister was defined by her religion, her culture, and her sex, and those details directed her poems. Referring to work left unfinished, Josephine concludes her biographical sketch with questions: "And now, at the end, we ask, Has the grave really closed over all these gifts? Has that eager, passionate striving ceased, that hunger and thirst which we call life, and 'is the rest silence?'" Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Ezekiel":

What! can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried
   By twenty scorching centuries of wrong?
Is this the House of Israel whose pride
   Is as a tale that's told, an ancient song?
Are these ignoble relics all that live
   Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath
Of very heaven bid these bones revive,
   Open the graves, and clothe the ribs of death?
Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said again:
   Say to the wind, Come forth and breathe afresh,
Even that they may live, upon these slain,
   And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh.
The spirit is not dead, proclaim the word.
   Where lay dead bones a host of armed men stand!
I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord,
   And I shall place you living in your land.

Lazarus: floods of molten gold

Born in New York, Emma Lazarus and her family spent their summers fashionably, often in Newport, Rhode Island. One summer, however, the family traveled north to visit Niagara Falls. There, on August 24, 1865, the 16-year old wrote her blank-verse sonnet "Niagara":

Thou art a giant altar, where the Earth
Must needs send up her thanks to Him above
Who did create her. Nature cometh here
To lay its offerings upon thy shrine.
The morning and the evening shower down
Bright jewels, — changeful opals, em'ralds fair.
The burning noon sends floods of molten gold,
The calm night crowns thee with its host of stars,
The moon enfolds thee with her silver veil,
And o'er thee e'er is arched the rainbow's span, —
The gorgeous marriage-ring of Earth and Heaven.
While ever from the holy altar grand
Ascends the incense of the mist and spray,
The mounts to God with thy wild roar of praise.

Lazarus became fascinated with the sonnet form. Her first book, Poems and Translations in 1866, included several of them. The book was dedicated "To My Father." Years later, her most famous poem, "The New Colossus," would also follow the sonnet form.

*I first encountered this poem in Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems (2005), a publication of the American Poets Project edited by John Hollander.