The New Colossus

As an occasional poem, “The New Colossus” has a public life, which means it interacts with a historical moment, which in turn means understanding its historical context is all the more vital. Because the poem uses the Colossus of Rhodes as a foil for its subject, that ancient statue is the first contextual element of history to address. It was a bronze and iron figure of the sun god Helios that stood in the harbor of the island of Rhodes in the Third Century B.C.E. It was erected to commemorate a military victory: the island’s outlasting of a siege by the forces of Demetrius I Poliorcetes. The edifice stood at 105 feet until felled by an earthquake. In the Middle Ages, some erroneous accounts claimed the two legs of the statue straddled the harbor, a feature alluded to in Lazarus’s poem; however, such a construction is physically impossible. Then, in 654 C.E., Arabian raiders dismantled the fragments and sold the bronze for scrap, so not even the ruin of the statue remains. Nevertheless, it was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and its reputation survives to make it, as in Lazarus’s poem, a symbol of power and strength.

A second important contextual element is the Statue of Liberty, the subject of the poem. Its official name is Liberty Enlightening the World. It was presented as a gift from the people of France, placed at what is now known as Liberty Island in New York harbor, and was dedicated in 1886. The figure is of Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty. The right arm is raised and bears a torch, and the left arm cradles a tablet inscribed with the date of the Declaration of Independence: July 4, 1776. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue is made of copper and is 151 feet high, though on its pedestal it stands a total of 305 feet. The pedestal is America’s contribution to the project, paid for by private funds. Part of this fund-raising involved an 1883 auction of art and manuscripts. It was to this effort that Lazarus donated “The New Colossus.”

Rather than promoting the idea of liberty beaming out from the United States and into the world, which is implied by the statue’s official name, the poem calls the statue “Mother of Exiles” (Line 6) and celebrates the idea of welcoming immigrants to her and, by extension, to America. Since the first Europeans landed in North America, immigration has been a distinctive feature of the continent, and since the founding of the United States, immigration has been a hotly debated issue, both encouraged and discouraged by differing factions from decade to decade. Some called the 1880s a period of “new immigration” due to the large influx of people from Southern and Eastern Europe, most of whom were either Catholic or Jewish–two groups already enduring prejudices in the United States. While Lazarus was of Jewish descent, her family was not observant, and her early work does not reflect any sense of ethnic identity. That changed as Jews increasingly fled persecution in Europe. Lazarus worked on behalf of Jewish immigrants on a number of fronts and founded the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews in 1883. When the appeal was made for writers to donate work in the effort toward raising funds for the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, Lazarus initially refused. However, she relented after it was suggested the statue would be inspirational for the arriving immigrants—a prediction that proved to be true. The fact that “The New Colossus” helped to alter the meaning of the statue in the minds of many people cannot be denied.