Emma Lazarus

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]

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.[lower-alpha 2][lower-alpha 3] 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]

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]

• This article incorporates text from a publication now 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 a publication now 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 a publication now 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. 7 (Public domain ed.). Funk & Wagnalls Company.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now 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 a publication now in the public domain: Wheeler, Edward Jewitt (1889). Current Opinion. 2 (Public domain ed.). Current Literature Publishing Company.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now 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.

• 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.