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Emma Lazarus Project

The Emma Lazarus Project explores the story of Emma Lazarus, a fifth-generation American Jew caught in an important turning point in American and Jewish History. The initiative—including an exhibit, curriculum and poetry contest—uses primary sources straight from the archive to encourage students to piece together Emma’s fascinating story, and to join the ongoing conversation about American identity.

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New Colossus Translated

Learn more about this project in essays written by Alicia Ostriker and Mihaela Moscaliuc.

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НОВЫЙ КОЛОСС

Translated into Russian
by Irina Mashinski, with thanks to Boris Dralyuk

Не дерзкий грек, не воин-покоритель
всех, что охватит взор, земель и вод –
с похищенною молнией встает
она – гонимых покровитель,

отвергнутых, всех тех, что гонит ветер
нужды и распри, рабства гнойный гнет –
к закатной гавани у западных ворот,
и лик ее открыт, а пламень светел.

«Отдайте мне усталых, обделенных,
ненужных, нищих духом – всех приму
бездомных, безъязыких, унесенных

и выброшенных к свету моему.
У двух земель, мостом соединенных,
я состраданья факел подниму».

Irina Mashinski was born in Moscow. She graduated from Moscow University with a Ph.D. in Paleoclimatology. She is co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk, of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (2015) and co-founder (with the late Oleg Woolf) of the StoSvet /Cardinal Points project. She is the author of ten books of poetry in Russian.

We emigrated in the fall of 1991, right after the coup and two months before the dissolution of the USSR We rode to the airport in a taxi at night, through the brightly illuminated Moscow that was awakening after seventy Soviet years. The first frost made the city seem even brighter. Then, we were airborne. The planet that had been mine from birth, unreachable until now, lay below. The dawn was approaching – twice slower than usual. My 5-year-old daughter Sasha was sleeping in my lap, her head on the scratchy sleeve of my winter coat. In the evening, we landed at JFK.