LAZARUS, EMMA (18491887)

This article appears in Volume V16, Page 313 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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LAZARUS, EMMA (18491887) , American Jewish poetess, was born in New

York

YORK
YORK (
HOUSE
- HOUSE
- HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in Gothic it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)
OF)
YORK, EDMUND OF
LANGLEY
- LANGLEY, SAMUEL PIERPONT (1834-1906)
, DUKE OF (1341-1402)
YORK, EDWARD
YORK, FREDERICK
AUGUSTUS
- AUGUSTUS (a name 1 derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Ee0avr6s)
, DUKE OF (1763-1827)
YORK, RICHARD, DUKE

. When the Civil War broke out she was soon inspired to lyric expression. Her first book (1867) included poems and translations which she wrote between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. As yet her models were classic and romantic. At the age of twenty-one she published Admetus and other Poems (1871). Admetus is inscribed to Emerson, who greatly influenced her, and with whom she maintained a regular correspondence for several years. She led a retired life, and had a modest conception of her own powers. Much of her next work appeared in Lippincott's Magazine, but in 1874 she published a

prose

PROSE

romance (Abide) based on Goethe's autobiography, and received a generous

letter

LETTER (through Fr. lettre from Lat. littera or litera, letter of the alphabet; the origin of the Latin word is obscure; it has probably no connexion with the root of linere, to smear, i.e. with wax, for an inscription with a stilus)

of admiration from Turgeniev. Two years later she visited Concord and made the acquaintance of the Emerson circle, and while there read the proof-sheets of her tragedy The Spagnoletto. In 1881 she published her excellent translations of Heine's poems. Meanwhile events were occurring which appealed to her Jewish sympathies and gave a new turn to her feeling. The Russian massacres of 18801881 were a trumpet-

call

CALL (from Anglo-Saxon ceallian, a common Teutonic word, cf. Dutch kallen, to talk or chatter)

to her. So far her Judaism had been latent. She belonged to the oldest Jewish congregation of New

York

, but she had not for some years taken a personal part in the observances of the

synagogue

SYNAGOGUE (avvaywyii)
SYNAGOGUE, UNITED

. But from this time she took up the cause of her race, and " her verse rang out as it had never rung before, a clarion note, calling a people to heroic action and unity; to the consciousness and fulfilment of a grand destiny." Her poems, " The Crowing of the Red Cock " and " The Banner of the Jew " (1882) stirred the Jewish consciousness and helped to produce the new

Zionism

ZIONISM

(q.v.). She now wrote another drama, the Dance to Death, the scene of which is laid in Nordhausen in the 14th century; it is based on the accusation brought against the Jews of poisoning the wells and thus causing the Black Death. The Dance to Death was included (with some translations of medieval Hebrew poems) in Songs of a Semite (1882), which she dedicated to George Eliot. In 1885 she visited Europe. She devoted much of the short remainder of her life to the cause of Jewish nationalism. In 1887 appeared By the waters of Babylon, which consists of a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of "

prose

PROSE

poems," full of prophetic fire. She died in New York on the 19th of November 1887. A sonnet by Emma Lazarus is engraved on a memorial tablet on the colossal Bartholdi statue of Liberty, New York.
See article in the Century Magazine, New

Series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

, xiv. 875 (portrait p. 803), afterwards prefixed as a Memoir to the collected edition of The poems of Emma Lazarus (2 vols., 1889). (I. A.)

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