Which huddled masses, exactly?
Canadian poet looks at the Statue of Liberty’s poem to see if Trump official has a point
“The New Colossus,” the 1883 poem by Emma Lazarus that adorns the Statue of Liberty, is in the crosshairs of an administration not normally interested in poetry. But the poem itself is worth a closer look.
In an interview with NPR’s Rachel Martin, Ken Cuccinelli — the acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director — defended his administration’s new regulations regarding legal immigrants who might become dependent on public benefits. Martin asked if “Emma Lazarus’s words etched on the Statue of Liberty — give me your tired, your poor — are also part of the American ethos,” and Cuccinelli responded by revising the familiar phrases to the following: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”
Later, on CNN with Erin Burnett, Cuccinelli claimed he wasn’t “rewriting poetry” in his response to Miller. He asserted that the new regulations were in fact just as much a part of the American ethos as the poem, insisting that Lazarus was actually “referring back to people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class.” Cuccinelli also noted — accurately — that the poem was written around the same time as the first “public charge” law prohibited people from immigrating who were unlikely to be able to support themselves due to illness or disability.
Others have discussed at length how Cuccinelli’s words demonstrate a cynical racist mockery of America’s promise. Others have pointed out that “classbased societies” were never unique to Europe, etc. In this context it’s worth re-examining the poem itself, to what Lazarus is and is not claiming, and to see how the poem continues to move us to welcome the stranger.
The first lines of the poem refer to the Colossus, a massive bronze statue that loomed over the port of Rhodes and is counted as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. “Brazen” can also mean daring, brash, even outlandish. But Lazarus’s newColossus is not like the ancient one, “with conquering limbs astride from land to land.” For Lazarus, Lady Liberty is not a symbol of empire or domination.
Lazarus and her first readers would also have been very conscious of another famous (fictional) giant sculpture, the one invented in the poem “Ozymandias,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley’s fictional tyrant Ozymandias has been forgotten, his likeness destroyed, and his boast (“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”) transformed into an ironic statement about the fleeting nature of power.
If the Colossus of Rhodes was designed to intimidate, Lazarus’s New Colossus is meant to welcome. She is still “mighty,” and she still has the supernatural ability to “imprison lightning” in her (electric) lantern, but her welcome is “worldwide,” and her eyes are “mild.” To my ear, “worldwide welcome” is so deliberate and expansive in its repetition of w’s that it puts to rest any Cuccinelli suggestion that the poem is directed only towards Europeans. (There is even evidence to suggest that the model for Lady Liberty’s face was an Egyptian.) The phrase also reminds me of the World Wide Web, which felt so welcoming and democratic when the phrase first came into common usage …
Also interesting is the use of “Mother of Exiles,” a phrase that, as far as I know, Lazarus invented for the poem. The construction recalls biblical phrases used to refer to Jesus’s mother — “Mother of Mercy,” etc. — but also would remind Bible readers of the messianic promise that God would someday “gather in the exiles” from Jerusalem.
This hope is one of the central tenets of Jewish tradition, and was often transposed by acculturated American Jews like Lazarus to refer to the promise of America.
Why couldn’t the gathering of the exiles take place in Manhattan? If so, then Liberty is helping to guide the way.
At the end of the first part of the poem, Lazarus refers to the “twin cities” of New York and Brooklyn, which were still separate entities in the late 19th century, and which “frame” a single New York harbour that is bridged by the air as well as the water, as if the elements themselves are co-operating to unite the two sides of the East River. (The Brooklyn Bridge was completed the same year as the poem, in 1883.)
Throughout the first eight lines, Liberty’s presence is strong, she is “mighty” and her “eyes command,” but she is also welcoming and protective.
Lazarus is making full use of the traditional gender tropes that differentiate male and female power.
In the second part of the poem, the sestet of the sonnet, Lazarus gives Lady Liberty a proclamation to declare “with silent lips.” Why are they silent? First, because she’s a statue, of course, and statues don’t talk. But also, I suspect it’s because Liberty has enough conviction that she doesn’t need to make her case out loud. As a majestic public attraction, recognized everywhere, the Statue of Liberty communicates even without the poem.
Lazarus is aware that her poem merely supplements what Lady Liberty already proclaims without words.
In fact the plaque with the casting of the poem was only added 10 years after the monument was completed, after Lazarus’s death.
It begins with what sounds like a familiar American trope, boasting to the “ancient lands” that she doesn’t have any use for “your storied pomp.” To my ear this rejection is as much about rejecting ancient stories as it is about rejecting pomp. Lazarus was, as Cuccinelli might know, an activist for refugees, particularly Jewish refugees fleeing czarist Russia. But the poem is very careful not to refer specifically to any one community.
It would have been quite easy for Lazarus to replace “huddled masses” with “German lasses” or “wretched refuse” with “kvetching Hebrews.” The word “ancient,” in particular, is more suggestive of Persia or the Ottoman Empire than it is of Ireland or Germany. What’s important is that all of these ancient lands had their share of pomp, and all of them were sending their fair share of immigrants across the Atlantic.
Let’s look closer at the “huddled masses” — why would a mass be huddled? In my experience the word “huddle” is only used when a group of people crowds together for protection — from the cold, the wet, or from violence. The fact that they are still “yearning to breathe free” suggests that they are not without hope, and the elevated “yearn” — instead of “wanting” or “hoping” — gives their desire an iconic quality.
The next line — “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore” — is for me the clincher in our arguments with the Cuccinellis of the world, at least when it comes to our reading of Emma Lazarus.
First off, I love the repeated sounds of “wretched refuse,” which mirrors itself in vowel sounds and rhythm. But underneath the sonic play is a dark image.
Remember, Liberty is speaking to the “ancient lands,” so the “your” in “your teeming shores” refers to the places where people are crowding to get out of. The description of these people is far from flattering. They’re not just “huddled,” they’re “wretched.” They’re not even “yearning,” they are the “refuse,” the garbage, of the places from which they come. And forgive me, but “teeming” is a word more frequently used to refer to insects (“teeming with life”) than people.
But these are exactly the people that Lady Liberty wants. Like Cuccinelli, she doubles and triples down on her assertions — sure, give me your tired and poor; better yet, give me your huddled masses. Heck, you can even give me your wretched refuse, the ones you barely think of as human.
The progression is of further and further destitution, but that does not seem to dampen Liberty’s care for them in the poem. On the contrary. She wants the other nations to “send these” because she knows the majority of them are “tempest-tost” — that is, victims of circumstance, not degraded in their nature. Lady Liberty knows she can build a nation out of them, which is why she’s not just leaving the light on for them to enter when they can. She’s holding the door open and lifting her lamp to guide them.
Of course, the story of American immigration has never been as idealistic as this poem suggests. The same year, 1892, that brought the first “public charge” law also brought the Chinese Exclusion Act. This is to say nothing of the various ways that race, class, gender and identity were used to oppress and exclude in this period. It’s unlikely that in Emma Lazarus herself lived up to the idealism she articulates in “The New Colossus.” But 1892 was also the year that Ellis Island opened, which would, in its time, process 12 million immigrants to America.
By putting this evocative, ambitious, romantic speech into Lady Liberty’s copper mouth, Emma Lazarus provides us with language to articulate our ideals for what a nation of immigrants can be. (It’s an ideal that would take decades for Canada to embrace.) However we continue to fail in our efforts to live up to that ideal, “Give me your tired, your poor” is a rallying cry for the uniqueness of the American experiment, and the American promise that anyone can make their home there. No misuse, manipulation or misquotation of its poetry can change that.