Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus"
The Daily Poem
Goldberry Studios
4.6 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2023
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s poem is by Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887), an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish and Georgist causes. She is remembered for writing the sonnet"The New Colossus", which was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, in 1883.[1] Its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque, installed in 1903,[2] on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.[3] Lazarus was involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled antisemitic pogroms in eastern Europe, and she saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue.[4] The last lines of the sonnet were set to music by Irving Berlin as the song "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" for the 1949 musical Miss Liberty, which was based on the sculpting of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World). The latter part of the sonnet was also set by Lee Hoiby in his song "The Lady of the Harbor" written in 1985 as part of his song cycle "Three Women".
Lazarus was also the author of Poems and Translations (New York, 1867); Admetus, and other Poems(1871); Alide: An Episode of Goethe's Life (Philadelphia, 1874); Poems and Ballads of Heine (New York, 1881); Poems, 2 Vols.; Narrative, Lyric and Dramatic; as well as Jewish Poems and Translations.[5]
—Bio via Wikipedia
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, |
| 0:06.3 | and today is Tuesday, July 4, 2003. Independence Day. So today's poem is by Emma Lazarus, |
| 0:18.5 | and it's called The New Colossus. |
| 0:23.6 | Lazarus is one of those truly unfortunate figures in the history of letters. |
| 0:31.6 | One of those figures that are all too common, |
| 0:36.6 | someone who by all accounts is a brilliant and energetic mind |
| 0:40.8 | with an impressive body of work to their name, who's nevertheless had all of that work |
| 0:49.7 | entirely overshadowed by their greatest success. |
| 0:55.0 | Emma Lazarus, born 1849, died 1887, had a short but fruitful career as a poet, but also as a novelist and playwright. She rubbed elbows with other great poets of her day, |
| 1:15.6 | including Robert Browning, |
| 1:18.6 | befriended several the transcendentalists, |
| 1:23.6 | including Ralph Waldo Emerson. |
| 1:26.6 | But today is known entirely for today's poem, The New Colossus, |
| 1:35.3 | which she wrote to help raise funds for the pedestal that would eventually bear the Statue of Liberty. |
| 1:47.5 | Lazarus, though New York-born, was the daughter of Jewish immigrants, and she became an eager |
| 1:58.4 | and outspoken advocate for Jewish refugees in America, and even an early |
| 2:04.2 | proponent of Zionism before that movement had much of a following or even a particular |
| 2:12.8 | name. It's no surprise then that when she accepted the commission to write a fundraising poem for the Statue of Liberty, she took up the theme of hospitality and the suffering stranger. |
| 2:29.8 | I'll read the poem once, offer a few comments about it, and then read it a second time. |
| 2:37.0 | The New Colossus |
| 2:40.0 | Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land. |
| 2:50.0 | Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand, |
... |
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