If you want to refute W.H. Auden's assertion that "poetry makes nothing happen," all you really need is one poem: Emma Lazarus' sonnet "The New Colossus," written in 1883 to help raise money for the base of the statue we now call the Statue of Liberty. The statue, a gift to us from France, was supposed to celebrate the friendship between France and the United States, and was originally inspired by American emancipation. By the time it was completed and erected, it was called "Liberty Enlightening the World." It had nothing to do with immigration. But the poem came at a moment when immigrants -- many of them East European Jews escaping waves of pogroms -- were pouring into the country, and it radically changed the meaning of the statue, of the Port of New York, and of the USA. We were "a nation of immigrants."
Then as now, America was divided. Immigration was fiercely resisted by many Americans, just as it is today. But Lazarus' symbol of "the Mother of Exiles" welcoming a tide of people "yearning to breathe free" took hold. The Mother of Exiles has greeted arrivals here for well over a century, and the poem speaking in her voice is widely understood as representing the core American value of hope. See, for example, its presence in The Oxford Book of American Poetry edited by David Lehman (2006), and other anthologies. Wishing to expand its global reach in this time of turning to a more generous America, with its renewed hope for us as a nation of immigrants, we have collected translations from poets and writers speaking over 40 languages. Here they are online, hosted by the American Jewish Historical Society, with comments by the translators, voice recordings by over a dozen of them, and brief essays by Alicia Ostriker and Mihaela Moscaliuc.
Alicia Ostriker
Mihaela Moscaliuc
Tess O'Dwyer
PS: If you are interested in translating "The New Colossus" to a language that is not yet present on the site, please write to Rebeca Miller [email protected]
and Mihaela Moscaliuc [email protected].
PPS: For those of you who are teachers (or parents, or children), check out the children's 2021 Statue of Liberty Poetry Contest:
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