Monday, 22 July 2019

'From her beacon-hand glows World-Wide Welcome'

The Emma – Emerson Connect | 1883

There’s power in the bind! More so, when it’s a double bind!

To be specific, well, the angst and agony of the double bind that's best expressed in Derek Walcott’s memorable line, Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? [‘A Far Cry from Africa’] best sums up with an equivalent vigour, the predicament of Emma Lazarus too!

In like manner, as discussed on our past posts, Nathalie Sarraute, like Derek Walcott, Salman Rushdie and a host of writers of their ilk, had to battle with a host of dilemmas and displacements that bespeak to this doublebind!

Emma Lazarus is of the same feather, having inherited a Jewish American heritage, and hence battling it all out, albeit with gusto, the hugey challenge of being part of two conflicting worlds.

At the same time, Emma’s works have such an electrifying ethos to its essence too! The reasons are not far to seek!

Born with a silver spoon, Emma was tutored by her own personal tutors who trained her with aplomb in poetry, music, mythology, with added proficiency-training in French, Italian and German!

Added, her benevolent patriarchal patronage that she received from a doting father, helped Emma come out with her first ever collection of poetry, titled, Poems and Translations: Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Sixteen, with a rider, ‘For Private Circulation Only’, and which she lovingly dedicates to her father. And this publication happened when Emma had just turned seventeen! (in the year 1866)!

Soon after, she had the pleasant privilege of having a personal rendezvous with the great Emerson, a connect that they both cherished till his death. Emerson was held in such high esteem by Emma, as her mentor, as he quite often took that little time off his busy schedules, just to encourage her to put down her thoughts on paper!

The reason why, when Emma published her 1871 anthology titled, Admetus and Other Poems, she dedicated it spontaneously ‘To My Friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson’. On an aside, well, there were some kutty little hiccups, hitches and glitches along the way, but they soon reconciled after these minor emotional turbulences quietly vaporized into thin air and had died down from deep within!

Well, 1883 proved a momentous year for Emma, when, she was asked for a very huge favour! A favour that stood very high chances of catapulting her to such immortalized name and fame for ages thence on!

Legend has it that, fundraising was on in full swing, for doing the pedestal [the base] that would hold the Statue of Liberty, [to obelixify it further, a menhir of epic proportions gifted by France]! 

Well, 'pen is mightier than the sword,' goes the dictum, ain’t it? To true-prove this dictum, eminent writers and prominent authors from the city started in right earnest to get the patronage of people with like-minded vibes, to share with them on this, their great burden! So, it was, when Emma Lazarus was approached by the legendary stalwarts of the city to write a poem that would be sold in auction, in tandem with the works of Twain and Whitman, she obliged them, rightaway!


The rest is, as we all know, history!

Since then, her 1883 poem, titled, ‘The New Colossus,’ has become part and parcel of the nerve and the verve and the cultural memory of the city! 

Having thus found such a majestic place for itself, engraved in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the poem has been such an inspiration for people from all parts of the world, from all walks of life!

So much so that, over the years, these power-lines from Emma have so gently pervaded the entire American psyche, standing for all things inclusive, that America has been an embodiment of, all along!

Here goes Emma’s empowering lines of high impact for y’all –

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

It’s been more than a hundred years now, and these power-words have had such a sweet sway over all and sundry, from all across the world, power-words that have greeted with warmth and love, the millions of refugees who - were in the past, and who are still, fleeing their traumatic present, - and making good their way to the blessed and hopeful shores of America, with desires and dreams of greener and better pastures!

It’s no sweet coincidence then, that, Dolly Parton’s famed number ‘Wildflowers’ and its emphatic, motivating refrain, ‘Wildflowers don’t care where they grow’, quick pops up your mind when you think of Emma Lazarus, on her birthday today!

To be continued…

No comments:

Post a Comment