Emma Lazarus
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- This article is about the poet named Lazarus. For other uses of the name Lazarus, see Lazarus (disambiguation).
| Emma Lazarus |
|---|
| Born |
| 22 July 1849 New York, New York |
Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American poet born in New York City.
She is best known for writing "The New Colossus", a sonnet written in 1883, that is now engraved on a bronze plaque on a wall in the base of the Statue of Liberty. The sonnet won a contest, sponsored by the New York World as part of their campaign to raise funds for the base of the statue's construction.
Lazarus was the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus and Esther Cardozo, Portuguese Sephardic Jews. Her uncle was the famous Supreme Court Justice, Benjamin Cardozo. From an early age, she studied American and European literature, as well as several languages, including German, French and Italian. Her writings attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who corresponded with her up until his death.
She wrote her own original poems, and many adaptations of German and Italian poems, notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine. Lazarus' latent Judaism was awakened after reading the George Eliot novel Daniel Deronda, and this was further strengthened by the Russian pogroms in the early 1880s. This led Lazarus to write articles on the subject and to begin translating the works of Jewish poets into English.
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 cancer (Hodgkin's Disease).
She is known as an important forerunner of the Zionist movement. For example, she argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland thirteen years before Herzl began to use the term Zionism.
References
Heinrich Eduard Jacob (1949): The World of Emma Lazarus, New York: Schocken Books.