Who Is the "Mother of Exiles"? Jewish Aspects of Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus".(Critical Essay)

This article exposes the influence and expression of Emma Lazarus's Jewish background and literary heritage in her renowned sonnet on The Statue of Liberty, "The New Colossus." Despite no explicit reference to Jews or Judaic sources, the poems profoundly Jewish character is disclosed through a close look at the context in which it emerged, its place in Lazarus's biographical and artistic development, and its actual content. "The New Colossus" would seem to give voice to local aversion to the presumptuous French gesture of bestowing Liberty upon America by rejecting its original symbolism and suggesting one that transforms the Statue into a New World heroine. However, Lazarus wrote the poem when her energies and writing were primarily devoted to championing the cause of Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe in the early 1880's. Moreover, a record of its commission clearly reveals that she was enticed to write the sonnet on the basis of this concern. Thus, in the work itself, Lazarus shrewdly stated her case for the American intake of Jewish immigrants by not referring to them directly and attempting instead to compel her audience to live up to a Hebraic definition of America as redeemer of persecuted peoples. It is claimed that Lazarus ventured this feat by drawing her image of the Statue from a Jewish tradition that viewed the biblical matriarch Rachel as "Mother of Exiles."

 
   THE NEW COLOSSUS 
 
   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!" 

THE WORKS OF FEW JEWISH WRITERS among the nations have reached the canonical stares attained in Americana by the last four and a half lines of Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus." However one might judge their literary quality, it is arguable that a majority of Americans, and perhaps an even larger group of English-speakers around the world, will almost automatically recognize these lines and associate them with America's leading symbol, the Statue of Liberty. While the majority of those who recognize these lines might not be capable of actually reciting them by heart, or even of indicating the title of the sonnet in which they are found, the name of its author, or the date of its composition, they would still, in most cases, assume that these lines speak for Liberty itself.(1)

The question remains, however, as to whether Emma Lazarus's Jewishness had anything at all to do with the actual content and widespread popularity of "The New Colossus." Indeed, the fact that the poem includes on explicit reference to Jews, Judaic sources, or events in Jewish history would seem to suggest that its substance and history go well beyond the influence and scope of something Jewish in Lazarus's life and letters. Nevertheless, in what follows, I shall argue that the poem's allusions are profoundly bound up with the Jewish biography and literary heritage of its author, and I will suggest that this Jewish influence must be taken into account as a factor in the poem's renown.

1

While one might naturally assume that "The New Colossus" would not include Jewish references, it is quite surprising to discover that the poem makes no real mention of the Statue of Liberty as well. Ironically, one could never know from the verses that are most commonly associated with the Statue that there is a giant edifice called Liberty Enlightens the World standing in the New York harbor, that it was fashioned as the Roman goddess Libertas, and that this goddess holds the American Declaration of Independence in one hand while casting the light of freedom from the uplifted torch in her other hand to countries all over the world. This striking omission, I would submit, is the appropriate point of departure for the exploration into the Jewish aspects of "The New Colossus," for Lazarus's negation of Liberty's original symbolism appears to have been the first step she took toward the introduction of an alternative symbolism for the Statue that she drew from Jewish sources.

The story of Lazarus's negative response to Liberty is an intricate one that cannot be grasped on the basis of a reading of "The New Colossus" alone, without any recollection of the events that led up to its writing in 1883. The linchpin is in Lazarus's reference to "the brazen giant of Greek fame"--the Colossus of Rhodes--as the negative contrast to her "New Colossus." Though her associative powers and mastery of classical and renaissance history and literature were undoubtedly strong enough for her to make such a comparison, it had already become common knowledge at the time, since it was repeatedly used as a fund-raising device for the erection of Liberty in America. Seeing as the proposed Statue would be physically bigger than the Rhodian Colossus, whose hitherto unequaled proportions distinguished it as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, fund-raisers made the comparison so as to convince people that their contributions would help put America on the map of world history. In fact, so prevalent was this association by that time, both in speech and in print, that, as one of the leading scholars on the Statue has put it, "Liberty was associated in everybody's mind with the Colossus of Rhodes."(2)

Lazarus's novelty was in her reversal of the popular comparison between the two colossi so that it worked negatively. By distinguishing between the classical giant of Apollo standing at Rhodes and the "New Colossus" standing at the "sunset gates" of the New World, Lazarus was in effect attacking Liberty as it was given to America and suggesting that Americans take over the Statue as their own. Furthermore, as the negative contrast between the "New Colossus" and that of "Greek fame" is extended, the rationale for this expropriation deepens. Going well beyond the difference between the two colossi's origins, and ignoring altogether their competition over size, Lazarus ultimately cast them as two opposing approaches to international human relations. Thus, "Not like" sets up the structure of the whole of the first section and, for that matter, provides a framework for the sonnet as a whole. In what follows, we learn that whereas the inhumane "brazen giant" of antiquity unfeelingly allowed its "conquering limbs" to stride over land after land, the modern colossus with the "mild eyes" stands by the "golden door," raises her "beacon-hand" and utters impassioned words of welcome to the (literally) downtrodden of the "ancient lands."

The genuine basis for Lazarus's portrayal and critique of Liberty as a hollow icon of modern imperialism becomes more than apparent against the historical background provided by Marvin Trachtenberg's brilliant study of the Statue.(3) Two central points emerge here. First, Trachtenberg reveals that Auguste Bartholdi's Liberty Enlightens the World was fashioned not so much out of deep respect for America, but rather as an expression of the sculptor's personal obsession with outdoing his classical predecessors in the erection of colossal statuary. Bartholdi had unsuccessfully tried to erect a similar statue at the Suez Canal in Egypt long before Liberty and would probably have found an alternative site for his grandiose dreams had "the American project" never gotten off the ground. When Liberty was completed in 1885, Bartholdi was already depicting it as "the largest work of its kind that has ever been completed" and boasting that "the famous Colossus of Rhodes ... was but a miniature in comparison."(4)

More significant, Trachtenberg shows how the French people's offering of Liberty to Americans had more to do with internal French politics than with the centennial celebration of the American Revolution. Edouard de Laboulaye, the jurist and republican statesman who initiated the whole idea in 1865, though a great admirer of America and a true scholar of American constitutional history, also belonged to a long tradition of Frenchmen, including Voltaire and Tocqueville, who focused public attention in France on the New World in order to address issues at home. Apparently, Laboulaye and the small group of French republicans who joined his initiative understood that offering the Statue to the Americans could be a vicarious way of coaxing the French people to live up to their stated commitment to liberal ideas.

Indeed, through its broad colonial schemes, prolific missionary activities, and numerous international expositions, France had for decades been involved in the act of projecting itself around the world as the picture of industrial, scientific, and cultural eminence. If, in this vein, it could be arranged for France to give Liberty to the Americans as a gracious gift from a wise old father to a youthful and inexperienced child, it might ironically "ennoble" the French into outdoing the Americans in their liberal forms of government. Under the guise of the grandiose gesture, the message would be simple: while America has been persistent and consistent in its loyalty to the liberal principle of its revolution--even at the price of civil war--France at that time had yet to embody its 1789 revolution in the form of a stable and functioning republic. Gazing upon France from afar, Liberty would, in essence, serve as a watchdog for the new republic.

The dubious nature of this initiative came to the fore once it became clear that the Americans would have to contribute funds to the project--particularly to the erection of the Statue's pedestal. Unsurprisingly, they were less than enthusiastic. Why should Americans comply with a scheme that exploited America in order to glorify France, especially when this glorification was really a veil for the vulnerability of the French republic? Still, despite this predicament, the "Bartholdi Pedestal Fund" persisted in its fund-raising efforts, using tricks like the comparison between Liberty and the Colossus of Rhodes to strengthen its appeal. It was at this point that Emma Lazarus was approached in late 1883 with a request to write a poem on Liberty for the Fund's "art auction."

Beyond her predictable disdain toward writing a poem on order, Lazarus herself was not likely to hail Liberty in verse at that time. Only months before she was approached by the Pedestal Fund, she returned somewhat disappointed from her first visit to France. While in Europe, she made a short trip there on Bastille Day, July 14 of 1883. Though, in Versailles, Lazarus was impressed by the fact that "the crowd who celebrate the birth of the republic wander freely through the halls and avenues, and into the most sacred rooms of the king," she did not experience the glory of the French Revolution on this day. "There are ruins on every side in Paris," she is reported by her sister to have commented. "Ruins of the Commune, or the Siege, or the Revolution; it is terrible--it seems as if the city were seared with fire and blood.(5) With such impressions fresh …