Divina Commedia, La.
Emma Lazarus’s Copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy
Inscribed to Emma by her sister, Josephine
(Emma Lazarus, her copy) Dante. La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri. Testo comune colle variazione dei codici publicati da Carlo Witte. Prima edizione Americana arricchita del ritratto di Dante per Gustavo Doré. Boston: de Vries, Ibarra, E.D., Editori. New York: Leypoldt E Holt, 1867.
8vo.; text in Italian; 545pp.; tipped-in frontispiece photograph portrait of Dante; original decorative vellum boards, label on spine lacking.
First American edition; the first printing of Dante in America (Longfellow’s English translation appeared the same year). Rare: OCLC names only two institutional copies and no copy has appeared at auction since 1975.
A gift copy, inscribed, Josephine Lazarus June 15th 1868. Transferred to Emma – March 14th, ’79. This lovely copy of an important volume links one of the greatest works of world literature with one of America’s greatest female poets.
1879, the year of this inscription, marked the year that “turned her from a pleasing litterateur into an ardent patriot” (Dictionary of American Biography, vol XI). With the Russian pogroms and Jews fleeing to America, her affinity for her people was awakened and stirred with religious fervor. The DAB further acclaims Emma Lazarus as “the leading American champion of her race.”
In her poem “1492” which laments the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Emma Lazarus celebrates the discovery of the new world and its haven for the Jews of Europe and Russia:
Spain cast forth with flaming sword,
the children of the prophets of the Lord...
A virgin world where doors of sunset part,
Saying, "Ho, all who weary enter here!
Herein, Lazarus turns on their head Dante’s well known, “Abandon hope, all who enter here.” In a sense her words were also a foreshadowing of “The New Colossus” and the paradise of America:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.
Lazarus received this copy from her sister months before her 30th birthday. She died less than a decade later at age 38 – yet she, and her words, particularly those of “The New Colossus” continue to ring immortal as long as Lady Liberty stretches forth her lamp to those in need of a brighter future. No Jewish woman writer was more clear an heir to the Italian master’s inspiration than Emma Lazarus.
Books from the library of Emma Lazarus are rare institutionally and virtually unheard of in trade. We are not aware of any other presentation copies from Lazarus family members, and located only one other presentation copy, a book of psalms given to Emma by her Hebrew tutor Louis Schnabel.
Provenance: From the family of the poet Richard Watson Gilder, with his personal label on front flyleaf.
(#4654882)
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