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Selected Poems
The first important American Jewish poet, Emma Lazarus is remembered above all for her classic sonnet “The New Colossus,” whose phrases (“Give me your tired, your poor.”) have become part of the American language. In this new selection of Lazarus’s work, John Hollander demonstrates that in her relatively brief life she achieved real poetic mastery in a variety of modes.
In early poems like “Phantasies” and “Symphonic Studies,” she explored fluently imagined inner landscapes suggested by the music of Schumann. Later, her deepening interest in Jewish history and culture was expressed in such powerful poems as “1492,” “The New Ezekiel,” and “The Guardian of the Red Disk.” Influenced both by American models, among them her poetic mentor Emerson, and by the poets whose work she translated, including Heinrich Heine and the medieval Hebrew poets Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Judah ha-Levi, she forged a poetic style of high technical accomplishment and moral passion.
Long neglected, her work is revealed in this volume as an important contribution to American poetry.
In early poems like “Phantasies” and “Symphonic Studies,” she explored fluently imagined inner landscapes suggested by the music of Schumann. Later, her deepening interest in Jewish history and culture was expressed in such powerful poems as “1492,” “The New Ezekiel,” and “The Guardian of the Red Disk.” Influenced both by American models, among them her poetic mentor Emerson, and by the poets whose work she translated, including Heinrich Heine and the medieval Hebrew poets Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Judah ha-Levi, she forged a poetic style of high technical accomplishment and moral passion.
Long neglected, her work is revealed in this volume as an important contribution to American poetry.
200 pages, Hardcover
First published April 7, 2005
4 people are currently reading
273 people want to read
About the author
Emma Lazarus
147 books76 followersEmma Lazarus was an American Jewish poet born in New York City.
She is best known for "The New Colossus", a sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty placed in 1903. The sonnet was written for and donated to an auction, conducted by the "Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty" to raise funds to build the pedestal.
She died of Hodgkin's lymphoma.
She is best known for "The New Colossus", a sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty placed in 1903. The sonnet was written for and donated to an auction, conducted by the "Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty" to raise funds to build the pedestal.
She died of Hodgkin's lymphoma.
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March 22, 2024
The Poetry Of Emma Lazarus
Emma Lazarus (1848 -- 1887) is known for her sonnet "The New Colossus" written in 1883 as part of a fundraising effort for the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus's poem has become as iconic as the statue itself in celebrating the ideal and promise of America as a beacon of liberty, a refuge to the oppressed, and an inspiration to the world.
Unfortunately, Lazarus's poems remain little-known beyond her famous sonnet. Throughout her short life, Lazarus articulated a vision of the United States and its potential that retains its power to move the reader. Although she never became a practicing Jew, Emma Lazarus became increasingly drawn to Judaism during the later years of her life. She wrote eloquent poetry on Jewish themes, worked to assist the many immigrants coming to the United States from Eastern Europe, and wrote and spoke with courage against the Pogroms in Russia and against anti-Semitism. Lazarus was the first, and still one of the best, Jewish-American poets who addressed both the nature of a secular, pluralistic United States and the role of Judaism within it in her poetry.
The American Poets Project of the Library of America has been producing a series of small volumes with the goal of making significant American poetry accessible to a wide audience. This short volume, "Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems" is part of the series. It was published in 2005 with a thoughtful introduction by John Hollander, himself a distinguished poet who has written on Jewish-American themes. This brief volume will give the reader an excellent overview of Lazarus's poetry.
Lazarus was born to a wealthy assimilated Jewish family in New York City. She received an excellent education and began publishing poetry at the age of 16. Her youthful poetry is largely of a romantic character. Lazarus began to write about Jewish themes in an 1881 collection of poetry, "Songs of a Semite." Hollander's collection includes a variety of poems from Lazarus's early efforts, poems with Jewish themes, an excellent selection of Lazarus's uncollected poetry (not published in a book) and selections from her translations of Heine and of medieval Jewish poets.
The two themes that remain strongest with me in reading this collection are Lazarus's devotion to the United States and her interest in Judaism. The Civil War was an impetus to much of her writing, and early poems such as "The Day of Dead Soldiers", "Hero's" and "The South" are meditations on the meaning of the war and on its aftermath. Other early poems such as "Niagra", "Long Island Sound" and an untitled sonnet on Mount Khatadin (which reminded me of Thoreau's "The Maine Woods") celebrate the United States through its description of places. The poem "How Long" is an Emersonian celebration of the New World which exhorts Americans to develop their own ideals and not be slavish imitators of Europe. And, of course, the greatest of Lazarus's American poems is her famous sonnet.
Lazarus never joined a synagogue, but her poetry on Jewish themes is inspiring and challenging for her vision of what was valuable in her heritage and for her efforts to contribute, in a distinctively Jewish voice to American secularism. She celebrates Jewish thinkers and poets such as Maimonides, Ibn Gabirol, and Spinoza. Lazarus's poem, "On the Jewish New Year" concludes that that the Holiday's reflections show "How strength of supreme suffering still is ours/ For Truth and Law and Love." The poem "In Exile" portrays rural Texas rather than urban New York City, as the place of a new life for some Jewish immigrants. Other poems condemn Anti-Semitism and urge the establishment of a Jewish settlement in what was then Palestine. Her modernistic prose poem "By the Waters of Babylon" is an eloquent exploration of Jewish learning and history. It considers in terms that will be uncomfortable to some readers the acculturation of the East European Jewish immigrants to the United States. This poem is essential for understanding Lazarus's attitude towards her Judaism. The poem "1492" ties the Jewish expulsion from Spain and Columbus's voyage with the beacon of the New World and the theme of "The New Colossus". In the New World, for Lazarus, "There falls each ancient barrier that the art/Of race or creed or rank devised, to rear/Grim bulwarked hatred between heart and heart."
Among other poetry in this volume, the remarkable sonnet "Assurance" appears to speak of Lazarus's own sexuality. Lazarus was a lover of music and a pianist. Several works in this collection are devoted to the music of Robert Schumann, but the finest of her works with a musical theme is the sequence of four sonnets, "Chopin". The poem "Outside the Church" tells something of Lazarus's religious beliefs while the sonnet "The Cranes of Ibycus" reminded me of Yeats's later poem, "Leda and the Swan."
The American Poets Project has done a service in publishing this collection of Emma Lazarus's poetry. Her work and vision deserve to be remembered.
Robin Friedman
Emma Lazarus (1848 -- 1887) is known for her sonnet "The New Colossus" written in 1883 as part of a fundraising effort for the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus's poem has become as iconic as the statue itself in celebrating the ideal and promise of America as a beacon of liberty, a refuge to the oppressed, and an inspiration to the world.
Unfortunately, Lazarus's poems remain little-known beyond her famous sonnet. Throughout her short life, Lazarus articulated a vision of the United States and its potential that retains its power to move the reader. Although she never became a practicing Jew, Emma Lazarus became increasingly drawn to Judaism during the later years of her life. She wrote eloquent poetry on Jewish themes, worked to assist the many immigrants coming to the United States from Eastern Europe, and wrote and spoke with courage against the Pogroms in Russia and against anti-Semitism. Lazarus was the first, and still one of the best, Jewish-American poets who addressed both the nature of a secular, pluralistic United States and the role of Judaism within it in her poetry.
The American Poets Project of the Library of America has been producing a series of small volumes with the goal of making significant American poetry accessible to a wide audience. This short volume, "Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems" is part of the series. It was published in 2005 with a thoughtful introduction by John Hollander, himself a distinguished poet who has written on Jewish-American themes. This brief volume will give the reader an excellent overview of Lazarus's poetry.
Lazarus was born to a wealthy assimilated Jewish family in New York City. She received an excellent education and began publishing poetry at the age of 16. Her youthful poetry is largely of a romantic character. Lazarus began to write about Jewish themes in an 1881 collection of poetry, "Songs of a Semite." Hollander's collection includes a variety of poems from Lazarus's early efforts, poems with Jewish themes, an excellent selection of Lazarus's uncollected poetry (not published in a book) and selections from her translations of Heine and of medieval Jewish poets.
The two themes that remain strongest with me in reading this collection are Lazarus's devotion to the United States and her interest in Judaism. The Civil War was an impetus to much of her writing, and early poems such as "The Day of Dead Soldiers", "Hero's" and "The South" are meditations on the meaning of the war and on its aftermath. Other early poems such as "Niagra", "Long Island Sound" and an untitled sonnet on Mount Khatadin (which reminded me of Thoreau's "The Maine Woods") celebrate the United States through its description of places. The poem "How Long" is an Emersonian celebration of the New World which exhorts Americans to develop their own ideals and not be slavish imitators of Europe. And, of course, the greatest of Lazarus's American poems is her famous sonnet.
Lazarus never joined a synagogue, but her poetry on Jewish themes is inspiring and challenging for her vision of what was valuable in her heritage and for her efforts to contribute, in a distinctively Jewish voice to American secularism. She celebrates Jewish thinkers and poets such as Maimonides, Ibn Gabirol, and Spinoza. Lazarus's poem, "On the Jewish New Year" concludes that that the Holiday's reflections show "How strength of supreme suffering still is ours/ For Truth and Law and Love." The poem "In Exile" portrays rural Texas rather than urban New York City, as the place of a new life for some Jewish immigrants. Other poems condemn Anti-Semitism and urge the establishment of a Jewish settlement in what was then Palestine. Her modernistic prose poem "By the Waters of Babylon" is an eloquent exploration of Jewish learning and history. It considers in terms that will be uncomfortable to some readers the acculturation of the East European Jewish immigrants to the United States. This poem is essential for understanding Lazarus's attitude towards her Judaism. The poem "1492" ties the Jewish expulsion from Spain and Columbus's voyage with the beacon of the New World and the theme of "The New Colossus". In the New World, for Lazarus, "There falls each ancient barrier that the art/Of race or creed or rank devised, to rear/Grim bulwarked hatred between heart and heart."
Among other poetry in this volume, the remarkable sonnet "Assurance" appears to speak of Lazarus's own sexuality. Lazarus was a lover of music and a pianist. Several works in this collection are devoted to the music of Robert Schumann, but the finest of her works with a musical theme is the sequence of four sonnets, "Chopin". The poem "Outside the Church" tells something of Lazarus's religious beliefs while the sonnet "The Cranes of Ibycus" reminded me of Yeats's later poem, "Leda and the Swan."
The American Poets Project has done a service in publishing this collection of Emma Lazarus's poetry. Her work and vision deserve to be remembered.
Robin Friedman
September 20, 2023
2023 Review
Really enjoyed visiting with Emma again. Her religious subjects attracted my attention more this time (surprise, surprise) and the conversation she kept up with contemporary poets. I am feeling the pull to find her complete poetry, as this slim volume isn't enough for me anymore...
2018 Review
I first met Emma Lazarus as a six-year-old decked out in verdigris, lisping "The New Colossus" (growing up home schooled had its moments). As an adult, I realized how much Lazarus' words given to Lady Liberty shaped my view of America, politics, and immigration. Her poetry is splendid. New favorites are "Sympathy," "Echoes," and the four sonnets on Chopin. I'll keep returning to this slender volume. Her poetry is invigorating, fresh, strong, wise, delightful.
Really enjoyed visiting with Emma again. Her religious subjects attracted my attention more this time (surprise, surprise) and the conversation she kept up with contemporary poets. I am feeling the pull to find her complete poetry, as this slim volume isn't enough for me anymore...
2018 Review
I first met Emma Lazarus as a six-year-old decked out in verdigris, lisping "The New Colossus" (growing up home schooled had its moments). As an adult, I realized how much Lazarus' words given to Lady Liberty shaped my view of America, politics, and immigration. Her poetry is splendid. New favorites are "Sympathy," "Echoes," and the four sonnets on Chopin. I'll keep returning to this slender volume. Her poetry is invigorating, fresh, strong, wise, delightful.
January 29, 2022
This selection includes poems from the few collections published in Lazarus's short lifetime...
From Poems and Translations (1867)...
From Admetus and Other Poems (1871)...
From Poems (1889)...
From Uncollected Poems...
From Poems and Translations (1867)...
Thou art a giant altar, where the Earth
Must needs send up her thanks to Him above
Who did create her. Nature cometh here
To lay its offerings upon thy shrine.
The morning and the evening shower down
Bright jewels, - changeful opals, em'ralds fair.
The burning noon sends floods of molten gold,
The calm night crowns thee with its host of stars,
The moon enfolds thee with her silver veil,
And o'er is arched the rainbow's span, -
The gorgeous marriage-ring of Earth and Heaven.
While ever from the holy altar grand
Ascends the incense of the mist and spray,
That mounts of God with thy wild roar of praise.- Niagara, pg. 1
From Admetus and Other Poems (1871)...
Behold, I walked abroad at early morning,
The fields of June were bathed in dew and lustre,
The hills were clad with light as with a garment.
The inexpressible auroral freshness,
The grave, immutable, aerial heavens,
The transient clouds above the quiet landscape,
The heavy odor of the passionate lilacs,
That hedged the road with sober-colored clusters,
All these o'ermastered me with subtle power,
And made my rural walk a royal progress,
Peopled my solitude with airy spirits,
Who hovered over me with joyous singing.
'Behold!' they sang, 'the glory of the morning.
Through every vein does not the summer tingle,
With vague desire and flush of expectation?
'To think how fair is life! set round with grandeur;
The eloquent sea beneath the voiceless heavens,
The shifting shows of every bounteous season;
'Rich skies, fantastic clouds, and herby meadows,
Gray rivers, prairies spread with regal flowers,
Grasses and grains and herds of browsing cattle:
'Great cities filled with breathing men and women,
Of whom the basest have their aspirations,
High impulses of courage or affection.
'And on this brave earth still those finer spirits,
Heroic Valor, admirable Friendship,
And Love itself, a very god among you.
'All these for thee, and thou evoked from nothing,
Born from blank darkness to this blaze of beauty,
Where is thy faith, and where are thy thanksgivings?'
The world is his who can behold it rightly,
Who hears the harmonies of unseen angels
Above the senseless outcry of the hour.- Exultation, pg. 16-17
From Poems (1889)...
I. The Exodus. (August 3, 1492.)
1. The Spanish noon is a blaze of azure fire, and the dusty pilgrims crawl like an endless serpent along treeless plains and bleached highroads, through rock-split ravines and castellated, cathedral-shadowed towns.
2. The hoary patriarch, wrinkled as an almond shell, bows painfully upon his staff. The beautiful young mother, ivory-pale, well-nigh swoons beneath her burden; in her large enfolding arms nestles her sleeping babe, round her knees flock her little ones with bruised and bleeding feet. “Mother, shall we soon be there?”
3. The youth with Christ-like countenance speaks comfortably to father and brother, to maiden and wife. In his breast, his own heart is broken.
4. The halt, the blind, are amid the train. Sturdy pack-horses laboriously drag the tented wagons wherein lie the sick athirst with fever.
5. The panting mules are urged forward with spur and goad; stuffed are the heavy saddlebags with the wreckage of ruined homes.
6. Hark to the tinkling silver bells that adorn the tenderly-carried silken scrolls.
7. In the fierce noon-glare a lad bears a kindled lamp; behind its network of bronze the airs of heaven breathe not upon its faint purple star.
8. Noble and abject, learned and simple, illustrious and obscure, plod side by side, all brothers now, all merged in one routed army of misfortune.
9. Woe to the straggler who falls by the wayside! no friend shall close his eyes.
10. They leave behind, the grape, the olive, and the fig; the vines they planted, the corn they sowed, the garden-cities of Andalusia and Aragon, Estremadura and La Mancha, of Granada and Castile; the altar, the hearth, and the grave of their fathers.
11. The townsman spits at their garments, the shepherd quits his flock, the peasant his plow, to pelt with curses and stones; the villager sets on their trail his yelping cur.
12. Oh the weary march, oh the uptorn roots of home, oh the blankness of the receding goal!
13. Listen to their lamentation: They that ate dainty food are desolate in the streets; they that were reared in scarlet embrace dunghills. They flee away and wander about. Men say among the nations, they shall no more sojourn there; our end is near, our days are full, our doom is come.
14. Whither shall they turn? for the West hath cast them out, and the East refuseth to receive.
15. O bird of the air, whisper to the despairing exiles, that to-day, to-day, from the many-masted, gayly-bannered port of Palos, sails the world-unveiling Genoese, to unlock the golden gates of sunset and bequeath a Continent to Freedom!
II. Treasures.
1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black prison.
2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl slumbers in mud and ooze.
3. Buried in the bowels of earth, rugged and obscure, lies the ingot of gold.
4. Long hast thou been buried, O Israel, in the bowels of earth; long hast thou slumbered beneath the overwhelming waves; long hast thou slept in the rayless house of darkness.
5. Rejoice and sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine jewel of the Law.
III. The Sower.
1. Over a boundless plain went a man, carrying seed.
2. His face was blackened by sun and rugged from tempest, scarred and distorted by pain. Naked to the loins, his back was ridged with furrows, his breast was plowed with stripes.
3. From his hand dropped the fecund seed.
4. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil blade, a sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree. Its arms touched the ends of the horizon, the heavens were darkened with its shadow.
5. It bare blossoms of gold and blossoms of blood, fruitage of health and fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foliage, and a serpent was coiled about its stem.
6. Under its branches a divinely beautiful man, crowned with thorns, was nailed to a cross.
7. And the tree put forth treacherous boughs to strangle the Sower; his flesh was bruised and torn, but cunningly he disentangled the murderous knot and passed to the eastward.
8. Again there dropped from his hand the fecund seed.
9. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil a blade, a sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree. Crescent shaped like little emerald moons were the leaves; it bare blossoms of silver and blossoms of blood, fruitage of health and fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foilage and a serpent was coiled about its stem.
10. Under its branches a turbaned mighty-limbed Prophet brandished a drawn sword.
11. And behold, this tree likewise puts forth perfidious arms to strangle the Sower; but cunningly he disentangles the murderous knot and passes on.
12. Lo, his hands are not empty of grain, the strength of his arm is not spent.
13. What germ hast thou saved for the future, O miraculous Husbandman? Tell me, thou Planter of Christhood and Islam; tell me, thou seed-bearing Israel!
IV. The Test.
1. Daylong I brooded upon the Passion of Israel.
2. I saw him bound to the wheel, nailed to the cross, cut off by the sword, burned at the stake, tossed into the seas.
3. And always the patient, resolute, martyr face arose in silent rebuke and defiance.
4. A Prophet with four eyes; wide gazed the orbs of the spirit above the sleeping eyelids of the senses.
5. A Poet, who plucked from his bosom the quivering heart and fashioned it into a lyre.
6. A placid-browed Sage, uplifted from earth in celestial meditation.
7. These I saw, with princes and people in their train; the monumental dead and the standard-bearers of the future.
8. And suddenly I heard a burst of mocking laughter, and turning, I beheld the shuffling gait, the ignominious features, the sordid mask of the son of the Ghetto.
V. Currents.
1. Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable tides, oversweep our continent.
2. From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of Europe,
3. From Odessa and Bucharest, from Kief and Ekaterinoslav,
4. Hark to the cry of the exiles of Babylon, the voice of Rachel mourning for her children, of Israel lamenting for Zion.
5. And lo, like a turbid stream, the long-pent flood bursts the dykes of oppression and rushes hitherward.
6. Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of nations welcomes them.
7. The herdsman of Canaan and the seed of Jerusalem’s royal shepherds renew their youth amid the pastoral plains of Texas and the golden valleys of the Sierras.
VI. The Prophet.
1. Moses ben Maimon lifting his perpetual lamp over the path of the perplexed;
2. Hallevi, the honey-tongued poet, wakening amid the silent ruins of Zion the sleeping lyre of David;
3. Moses, the wise son of Mendel, who made the Ghetto illustrious;
4. Abarbanel, the counselor of kings; Aicharisi, the exquisite singer; Ibn Ezra, the perfect old man; Gabirol, the tragic seer;
5. Heine, the enchanted magician, the heart-broken jester;
6.Yea, and the century-crowned patriarch whose bounty engirdles the globe;—
7. These need no wreath and no trumpet; like perennial asphodel blossoms, their fame, their glory resounds like the brazen-throated cornet.
8. But thou—hast thou faith in the fortune of Israel? Wouldst thou lighten the anguish of Jacob?
9. Then shalt thou take the hand of yonder caftaned wretch with flowing curls and gold-pierced ears;
10. Who crawls blinking forth from the loathsome recesses of the Jewry;
11. Nerveless his fingers, puny his frame; haunted by the bat-like phantoms of superstition is his brain.
12. Thou shalt say to the bigot, “My Brother,” and to the creature of darkness, “My Friend.”
13 . And thy heart shall spend itself in fountains of love upon the ignorant, the coarse, and the abject.
14. Then in the obscurity thou shalt hear a rush of wings, thine eyes shall be bitten with pungent smoke.
15. And close against thy quivering lips shall be pressed the live coal wherewith the Seraphim brand the Prophets.
VII. Chrysalis.
1. Long, long has the Orient Jew spun around his helplessness the cunningly enmeshed web of Talmud and Kabbala.
2. Imprisoned in dark corners of misery and oppression, closely he drew about him the dust-gray filaments, soft as silk and stubborn as steel, until he lay death-stiffened in mummied seclusion.
3. And the world has named him an ugly worm, shunning the blessed daylight.
4. But when the emancipating springtide breathes wholesome, quickening airs, when the Sun of Love shines out with cordial fires, lo, the Soul of Israel bursts her cobweb sheath, and flies forth attired in the winged beauty of immortality.- By the Waters of Babylon, pg. 91-97
From Uncollected Poems...
Between the flat, wide marsh and moonless sky
Hangs a gray roof of cloud: the rank earth steams.
Hark! far away the sea breaks heavily
On shelving sands. Is this the world of dreams?
Or can this dun blank, this weird waste, be real?
See, where a yellow, wavering, thin flame gleams
Yonder above the grass-tips! Watch it steal
Ghostlike amongst their roots with lambent beams.
Surely it lives! An errant spirit free
From its clay prison, what delight it owns
In boundless spaces! Lo, I haste to thee,
Quaint, mystic soul of fire! o'er bog and stones.
Mock me no more, for surely thou art she
Whose daily loss my widowed heart bemoans.- The Will-o'-the-Wisp, pg. 120
May 14, 2020
شعر مجسمه ی آزادی
مجسمه ای دیگر
شعری از اما لازاروس
ترجمه ی رُزا جمالی
شعر"مجسمه ای دیگر" یکی از مهم ترین شعرهایی ست که در مورد آمریکا به عنوانی سرزمینی موعود نوشته شده است. این شعر حکایتی ست از مهاجرت، رویای آزادی، عدالت و رسیدن به آرزوها... . این شعر که بر ورقه ای از برنز نبشته شده؛ بر سنگ مجسمه ی آزادی نقر شده است.
مجسمه ای دیگر
شبیه مجسمه ای غول پیکر و برنجی نیست،
نه!
و شهرتی یونانی هم ندارد!
با ساقِ پاهایش در نوردیده است
و از سرزمینی به سرزمینی دیگر می شتابد
جائیکه به نمک دریا شسته می شود
و بر دروازه های غروب ایستادگی خواهد کرد
زنی یک تنه و مشعل به دست
که از نورهایی که زندانی اند جان گرفته
و شهرت از آنچه در حصر بوده یافته
نامِ او مادرِ تمام تبعیدهاست
با دست هایش که نشانه می روند
در خوش آمدگویی جهانی دیگرست بر شما
و اینگونه است که می درخشد
چشمان ملایم اش بر جهان فرمان می رانند
این اسکله ای ست که در میان هوا پل بسته
و دو خواهرشهر را وصل کرده.
"با خود دار آن سرزمینِ عهدِ عتیق را،
داستان های شما تکان دهنده ست
و بر جهان فریاد می کشند
بر لب هایی مهر و موم
نقش بسته،
به من بده!
تمام خستگی ات را!
آنچه بر پشت تو سنگینی کرده
و آرزوی آزادی را به حسرت کشیده
انگار که پاروها دست تو را به این ساحل بسته
بی خانمان ها را به این سمت کشانده
طوفانی ست که به سمتِ من می آید
و چراغی که آن را نگه داشته ام
بالا برده ام اش این را
و در کنارِ این در که مطلاست."
#شعر #شعر_ترجمه #ترجمه_شعر #شعر_جهان #شعر_قرن_نوزدهم #شعر_آمریکا #شعر_مهاجرت #مهاجرت #سرزمین_موعود #رویای_آمریکایی #آمریکا #تبعید #مجسمه #سنگ_نبشته #شعر_زن #شعر_زنان_جهان #شعر_زنان_آمریکا
برچسبها: شعر ترجمه, ترجمه شعر, شعر معاصر, رُزا جمالی, اما لازاروس
http://rosajamali.blogfa.com/post/57
مجسمه ای دیگر
شعری از اما لازاروس
ترجمه ی رُزا جمالی
شعر"مجسمه ای دیگر" یکی از مهم ترین شعرهایی ست که در مورد آمریکا به عنوانی سرزمینی موعود نوشته شده است. این شعر حکایتی ست از مهاجرت، رویای آزادی، عدالت و رسیدن به آرزوها... . این شعر که بر ورقه ای از برنز نبشته شده؛ بر سنگ مجسمه ی آزادی نقر شده است.
مجسمه ای دیگر
شبیه مجسمه ای غول پیکر و برنجی نیست،
نه!
و شهرتی یونانی هم ندارد!
با ساقِ پاهایش در نوردیده است
و از سرزمینی به سرزمینی دیگر می شتابد
جائیکه به نمک دریا شسته می شود
و بر دروازه های غروب ایستادگی خواهد کرد
زنی یک تنه و مشعل به دست
که از نورهایی که زندانی اند جان گرفته
و شهرت از آنچه در حصر بوده یافته
نامِ او مادرِ تمام تبعیدهاست
با دست هایش که نشانه می روند
در خوش آمدگویی جهانی دیگرست بر شما
و اینگونه است که می درخشد
چشمان ملایم اش بر جهان فرمان می رانند
این اسکله ای ست که در میان هوا پل بسته
و دو خواهرشهر را وصل کرده.
"با خود دار آن سرزمینِ عهدِ عتیق را،
داستان های شما تکان دهنده ست
و بر جهان فریاد می کشند
بر لب هایی مهر و موم
نقش بسته،
به من بده!
تمام خستگی ات را!
آنچه بر پشت تو سنگینی کرده
و آرزوی آزادی را به حسرت کشیده
انگار که پاروها دست تو را به این ساحل بسته
بی خانمان ها را به این سمت کشانده
طوفانی ست که به سمتِ من می آید
و چراغی که آن را نگه داشته ام
بالا برده ام اش این را
و در کنارِ این در که مطلاست."
#شعر #شعر_ترجمه #ترجمه_شعر #شعر_جهان #شعر_قرن_نوزدهم #شعر_آمریکا #شعر_مهاجرت #مهاجرت #سرزمین_موعود #رویای_آمریکایی #آمریکا #تبعید #مجسمه #سنگ_نبشته #شعر_زن #شعر_زنان_جهان #شعر_زنان_آمریکا
برچسبها: شعر ترجمه, ترجمه شعر, شعر معاصر, رُزا جمالی, اما لازاروس
http://rosajamali.blogfa.com/post/57
April 29, 2017
For national poetry month, I decided to dip into this writing form for the first time in several years. I chose Emma Lazarus, made famous (well, her disembodied words, anyway) by the last few lines of her poem "The New Colossus" being enshrined on the Statue of Liberty.
I was most curious about this 19th century American woman's connection to Judaism, and I gravitated to those poems the most. Her earliest cultural poem, "In the Jewish Synagogue At Newport," was stifled and removed, but in her later life she embraced Judaism more fully. In response to the anti-Jewish pogroms raging across the Russian Empire in the 1880s, she contributed to causes, wrote newspaper articles, and of course it shaped her poetry. "In Exile" starts with an excerpt from a letter written by a Russian refugee in Texas, and ends with the stanza:
"Hark! through the quiet evening air, their song
Floats forth with wild sweet rhythm and glad refrain.
They sing the conquest of the spirit strong,
The soul that wrests the victory from pain;
The noble joys of manhood that belong
To comrades and to brothers. In their strain
Rustle of palms and Eastern streams one hears,
And broad prairie melts in mist of tears."
It seems that Lazarus was not discounting the pain of oppression, but the "victory from pain" belongs to leaving Eastern Europe for the promise of America. Even in her non-Jewish poems she wrote of America's promise.
In a long, prose poem, "By the Waters of Babylon," she compared the 1492 expulsion of the Spanish Jews to Christopher Columbus's journey to the Americas and the promise of a new, accepting country wiping away the blemishes of the old. From her first stanza, "The Exodus (August 3, 1492)":
"14. Whither shall they turn? for the West hath cast them out, and the East refuseth to receive.
15. O bird of the air, whisper to the despairing exiles, that to-day, to-day, from the many-masted gayly bannered port of Palos, sails the world-unveiling Genoese, to unlock the golden gates of sunset and bequeath a Continent to Freedom!"
Lazarus was not a religious Jew, and like many tribes people who attempt to envision a home for the Hebrews (think Theodor Herzl and secular Zionism around the same time period), she seemed to view the "Orthodox" as the talisman of a world that rejected them. In her last stanza, "Chrysalis," she predicted:
"1. Long, long has the Orient-Jew spun around his helplessness, the cunningly enmeshed web of Talmud and Kabbala.
2. Imprisoned in dark corners of misery and oppression, closely he drew about him the dust-gray filaments, soft as silk and stubborn as steel, until he lay death-stiffened in mummied seclusion.
3. And the world has named him an ugly worm, shunning the blessed daylight.
4. But when the emancipating springtide breathes wholesome, quickening airs, when the Sun of Love shines out with cordial fires, lo, the Soul of Israel bursts her cobweb sheath, and flies forth attired in the winged beauty of immortality."
Seems like she implied that the only way for Judaism to survive is for a loving home to accept them, so that they burst free of their "cobweb sheath" of religious learning, and embrace "immortality." Interesting juxtaposition to how others might see Jewish assimilation as a danger!
Lazarus, of course, was also the product of a time when Judaism couldn't be so easily thrown off, merely because of the millennia of antisemitism in the Old World. The Holocaust, not even a gleam of a possibility in her lifetime, ultimately inspired the idea of the Israeli "sabra," the "tough Jew" who doesn't take antisemitic shit from anyone. But Lazarus saw a beauty in suffering, or perhaps more accurately in a humble, oft-maligned, but devoted life. In her poem, "Gifts," she dedicated stanzas to our old oppressors, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, who ask the powers that be for magnanimous fortune, only for their empires to ultimately fade. Then she ended with:
"O Godhead, give me Truth!" the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted; he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with one to save.
The Pharaohs new him, and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld.
Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land.
No fire consumes him, neither floods devour;
Immortal through the lamp within his hand."
There's so much more poetry in here--sonnets, and pieces inspired by everything from Chopin's and Schumann's music (should have maybe listened to some while reading) to her relationships with other poets. It's an older style that is not always to my tastes; I appreciate the cadence and imagery, but would probably connect to something more modern.
I also didn't really like John Hollander's intro too much; his bitterness was distracting when he talked about the Modernist dismissal of Romantic poetry, and then he got defensive about women having a tougher time with publication and recognition than men.
But on the up side, the volume did include some of Lazarus's translations of Medieval Hebrew poets. My favorite was the sneaky "Donna Clara" by Heinreich Heine, where an antisemitic woman expresses devotion to her lover, only to discover at the end that he's the son of a Rabbi. Expressed in witty rhymes, of course. :P
I was most curious about this 19th century American woman's connection to Judaism, and I gravitated to those poems the most. Her earliest cultural poem, "In the Jewish Synagogue At Newport," was stifled and removed, but in her later life she embraced Judaism more fully. In response to the anti-Jewish pogroms raging across the Russian Empire in the 1880s, she contributed to causes, wrote newspaper articles, and of course it shaped her poetry. "In Exile" starts with an excerpt from a letter written by a Russian refugee in Texas, and ends with the stanza:
"Hark! through the quiet evening air, their song
Floats forth with wild sweet rhythm and glad refrain.
They sing the conquest of the spirit strong,
The soul that wrests the victory from pain;
The noble joys of manhood that belong
To comrades and to brothers. In their strain
Rustle of palms and Eastern streams one hears,
And broad prairie melts in mist of tears."
It seems that Lazarus was not discounting the pain of oppression, but the "victory from pain" belongs to leaving Eastern Europe for the promise of America. Even in her non-Jewish poems she wrote of America's promise.
In a long, prose poem, "By the Waters of Babylon," she compared the 1492 expulsion of the Spanish Jews to Christopher Columbus's journey to the Americas and the promise of a new, accepting country wiping away the blemishes of the old. From her first stanza, "The Exodus (August 3, 1492)":
"14. Whither shall they turn? for the West hath cast them out, and the East refuseth to receive.
15. O bird of the air, whisper to the despairing exiles, that to-day, to-day, from the many-masted gayly bannered port of Palos, sails the world-unveiling Genoese, to unlock the golden gates of sunset and bequeath a Continent to Freedom!"
Lazarus was not a religious Jew, and like many tribes people who attempt to envision a home for the Hebrews (think Theodor Herzl and secular Zionism around the same time period), she seemed to view the "Orthodox" as the talisman of a world that rejected them. In her last stanza, "Chrysalis," she predicted:
"1. Long, long has the Orient-Jew spun around his helplessness, the cunningly enmeshed web of Talmud and Kabbala.
2. Imprisoned in dark corners of misery and oppression, closely he drew about him the dust-gray filaments, soft as silk and stubborn as steel, until he lay death-stiffened in mummied seclusion.
3. And the world has named him an ugly worm, shunning the blessed daylight.
4. But when the emancipating springtide breathes wholesome, quickening airs, when the Sun of Love shines out with cordial fires, lo, the Soul of Israel bursts her cobweb sheath, and flies forth attired in the winged beauty of immortality."
Seems like she implied that the only way for Judaism to survive is for a loving home to accept them, so that they burst free of their "cobweb sheath" of religious learning, and embrace "immortality." Interesting juxtaposition to how others might see Jewish assimilation as a danger!
Lazarus, of course, was also the product of a time when Judaism couldn't be so easily thrown off, merely because of the millennia of antisemitism in the Old World. The Holocaust, not even a gleam of a possibility in her lifetime, ultimately inspired the idea of the Israeli "sabra," the "tough Jew" who doesn't take antisemitic shit from anyone. But Lazarus saw a beauty in suffering, or perhaps more accurately in a humble, oft-maligned, but devoted life. In her poem, "Gifts," she dedicated stanzas to our old oppressors, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, who ask the powers that be for magnanimous fortune, only for their empires to ultimately fade. Then she ended with:
"O Godhead, give me Truth!" the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted; he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with one to save.
The Pharaohs new him, and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld.
Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land.
No fire consumes him, neither floods devour;
Immortal through the lamp within his hand."
There's so much more poetry in here--sonnets, and pieces inspired by everything from Chopin's and Schumann's music (should have maybe listened to some while reading) to her relationships with other poets. It's an older style that is not always to my tastes; I appreciate the cadence and imagery, but would probably connect to something more modern.
I also didn't really like John Hollander's intro too much; his bitterness was distracting when he talked about the Modernist dismissal of Romantic poetry, and then he got defensive about women having a tougher time with publication and recognition than men.
But on the up side, the volume did include some of Lazarus's translations of Medieval Hebrew poets. My favorite was the sneaky "Donna Clara" by Heinreich Heine, where an antisemitic woman expresses devotion to her lover, only to discover at the end that he's the son of a Rabbi. Expressed in witty rhymes, of course. :P
February 11, 2014
I spotted this in the library and was curious to know what else she had written other than The New Colossus (an excerpt of which appears on the base if the Statue of Liberty). I flipped around at random, but found I really enjoyed quite a few of her other poems. Glad I picked this volume up.
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