![]() The work attracted the attention of poets and critics, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became her friend and mentor. In 1866, her father arranged for the poems and translations she wrote between the ages of fourteen and sixteen to be privately printed, and the following year a commercially published volume titled Poems and Translations followed. Lazarus began publishing poems in the 1860s and 1870s, including translations of German poems. As a teenager, she began translating the poems of Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, Alexandre Dumas, and Friedrich Schiller. Lazarus developed an affinity for verse at an early age. Her family was wealthy, and Lazarus was educated at home, acquiring a knowledge of Greek and Latin classics, as well as the modern literature of Germany, Italy, and France. Her book Songs of a Semite was the first collection of poetry to explore Jewish-American identity while struggling with the problems of modern poetics. Before Lazarus, the only Jewish poets published in the United States were humor and hymnal writers. Her illness began to take hold though and she returned to the United States in a poor state, dying in 1887 at the age of just 38.A descendant of Sephardic Jews who immigrated to the United States from Portugal around the time of the American Revolution, Emma Lazarus was born in New York City on July 22, 1849. Hoping to bolster her health, she decided to travel abroad to Italy and the rest of Europe. ![]() In 1884 she became ill with what is believed to be Hodgkin’s lymphoma and was deeply affected when her father passed away a year later. The New Colossus has perhaps some of the most famous lines in American literary history, quoted by many over the years.Īt the time, Lazarus was beginning to suffer from health problems. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1903 that it was engraved on a bronze plaque and added to the pedestal in memory of Lazarus. The poem did not achieve immediate success and was largely forgotten, playing no role when the statue was unveiled in 1886. She was reticent but eventually used the opportunity to again write about the lot of immigrants who came to the country, as they would generally sail past the statue on their way to Ellis Island. On her return to American shores, she was tasked with writing a poem that could be auctioned to raise money for the planned construction of the Statue of Liberty. With her fame growing, she wrote a number of works that explored more deeply the history of the Jewish people and she undertook trips to both England and France where she came into contact with some of the literary stalwarts of the time, including Robert Browning. It led her to write one of her most well-known works in Songs of a Semite and prompted her to help set up a movement for poor Jewish immigrants in New York. Daniel Deronda explored the growth of overt Antisemitism after the assassination of Tzar Alexander II in the Victorian era, and how so many immigrants were prompted to flood to America and begin a new life. Now in her twenties, she became more aware of her Jewish ancestry when she read a book by George Eliot. It wasn’t long before Poems and Translations was then published to a fair degree of public attention, perhaps because of her age, gaining favor with many poets of the time, including Emerson who became a friend and helped to mentor Lazarus.įurther collections followed, including Admetus and Other Poems in 1871. Barely into her teens, she began writing and translating, supported by her father who arranged to have her first work privately published. Lazarus was a pioneer of her time, one of the first poets to explore what it meant to be a Jew in America. Taking an interest in literature and poetry from early on, she also learned several languages including French and German. From a wealthy Jewish background, she was a precocious child who was largely tutored at home. ![]() Born in 1849 in New York, Emma Lazarus is perhaps best known for providing the poem adorning the plaque at the bottom of the Empire State Building, entitled The New Colossus.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |