The statue’s actual origin, like the idea behind it, was not at all that. Like that it was not meant to be a symbol of immigration. That was not the idea. like this honestly, the more I read the Statue of Liberty is so weird. It’s like such a weird like we quite odd.
Yael: It it is quite odd.
Schwab: From Unpacked, this is Jewish History Nerds, the podcast where we nerd out on awesome stories in Jewish history. I’m Jonathan Schwab.
Yael: Okay, you okay?
Yael: And I’m Yael Steiner and we’re going to continue talking about the very famous poet Emma Lazarus, the author of the New Colossus, whose words grace the base of the Statue of Liberty.
Schwab: If you haven’t listened to part one, go back and listen to that. but if you’re want to jump straight in, here’s a brief recap. Emma is a fifth-generation American. Her family has been here since before the revolution. she it is a very old, very wealthy Spartic Jewish family in New York. She has every opportunity available to her. She becomes a literary prodigy and she spends a lot of her young twenties in that literary world, hobnobbing with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Schwab And then what we’ll get to today what happens that leads Emma Lazarus, the ultimate Gilded Age symbol, to be the voice of those huddled masses.
Schwab: Like we talked about in part one, I have this vision for a Hamilton style musical about Emma Lazarus and the Statue of Liberty. we’re kicking off act two.
Schwab: How does a French gift harbored Manhattan Island starboard welcome immigrants with a beacon, not a word? First thing they see when they cross across the sea, you and me know her as Lady Liberty. Emma Nathan Lazarus, she pens the new colossus, and gives the world a lasting symbol to resist hate, resist hate.
Yael: I’m boppin’. That’s really good. You’re really good at this.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you, thank you.
Schwab: but yeah, how does Emmett Lazarus come to be the voice of the Statue of Liberty? Like
Yael: when she is very much not a poor immigrant getting off the boat in the United States in the 1880s.
Schwab: No. Definitely not.
Schwab: It’s eighteen eighty one and immigrants, especially Jewish immigrants, are flooding into New York City. What starts in eighteen eighty one is a huge wave of pogroms in Russia. in eighteen sixty one, Alexander the Sec emancipates the Russian serfs. Almost exactly twenty years later, he is assassinated, Tsar Alexander II. Somehow this comes to be blamed on the Jews. Like it’s so things get pretty bad for Jews in Russia and they begin to flee in massive, massive numbers to Western Europe, And a lot of them to New York. the New York Jewish world that Emma is born into in eighteen forty nine has like I don’t know, fifteen thousand Jews, something like that. Within a couple of decades, by like the early year by World War One, 1914, there are over a million Jews in New York City, right? Like like it grows a thousand fold in the span of six decades. In eighteen eighty one there are th literally thousands of Jews pouring into New York every month, mostly from Russia.
Yael: Wow. Mm.
Schwab: often coming with nothing, speaking maybe Russian, but Yiddish, or other Slavic languages, not English. this is a whole lot of people to find place for culturally are different. There are a lot of stereotypes that they about them as Jews, that they are dirty, that they’re unkempt, that they’re many of them are religious in a way that like Emma and her family were not. They’re coming with nothing. The types of professions that they’re able to get involved in or allowed to get involved in, things like peddling, like don’t don’t help a lot of those stereotypes.
Yael: Right.
Schwab: And even just where they’re going to live, like they don’t have places to live when they arrive. So like very quickly th an island called Ward’s Island, which had an insane asylum and a couple of other, you know, I don’t know, the types of things you would put on an on an island where people cannot easily access the rest of the city. They they build like a large refugee building, but you know, Jews, these Russian mostly Russian Jews are pouring into New York City and living in squalor and pretty awful conditions and facing some, some pretty serious discrimination from all of New York and often even from established New York Jews.
Yael: Well well, that’s what I was gonna ask you. Did the establishment undertake to help them in any way? Because we did talk about like mutual aid societies, but at the same time, at the same time, a lot of in a lot of instances, mutual aid societies can be exclusive to the type of person that is like you or enough like you that you’re willing to help them.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. So huh, so yeah. Mm-hmm. So Emma Lazarus, despite the fact that like she is Spartic, they are Ashkenaz. She has been in America for generations, they are not. They are religious, which she does like she does not f feel very kindly towards. Like she thinks that Jews need to like cast off their backward traditions, despite all of that, she sees strong commonality with them, thinks that it’s very important to help them, and is like very much part of the
Yael: Mm.
Schwab: Establishment group that gets involved in philanthropy, in helping. She does not just raise funds. She for the first time, like gets her hands dirty with this. She goes to Ward’s Island to see these people for herself, helps them herself, writes about it a lot, in saying, like, this is something we really need to do. She excoriates New York City Jews who are who she thinks are not helping enough. she
Yael: Mm.
Schwab: Has this line until all of us are free, none of us is free. Like we need to not just make them comfortable here, but we need to find ways of bringing even more Jews here. she also stays like pretty universalist in this as she writes about immigration when she writes about it in like in Jewish periodicals and stuff, she talks about the need to set up something which comes to be called the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society.
Yael: So she’s behind that?
Schwab: She’s she’s part of she’s not the sole purpose but like she’s a big part of it from the beginning. Yeah. Mm-hmm. It was started out as the Hebrew emigrant A T S H E A S, and it’s later changed to immigrant, but but she’s also still pretty like universalist in this. She’s not really a Jewish chauvinist. She, you know, wants to help anyone who is in need. Also, though, there’s like two other through lines, in her writing that are very fascinating and like
Yael: They brought my grandfather here in nineteen forty eight. Mm-hmm.
Schwab: kind of controversial, especially at the time. there are a whole bunch of Christians who are open to this. Like s like the there are meetings and like big important the mayor comes, the Christian ministers come, but she also like very much casts this anti Semitic persecution that the Jews are facing in Russia as emerging from Christianity. Like when it would have been very easy and was a popular move in America at the time to be like, look at how backwards Russians are. Look at what happens when you operate under a monarchy. Look at what, you know, she’s like, this is the this is the problem with Christians and Christianity. And this is part of the long tradition of Christians putting Jews to the sword in the name of their God. Like she like really she has a great poem called The Crowing of the Red Cock. And it’s about just like how repeatedly this has happened throughout history. And like in the in the name of Christ. swords have been swung at Jews’ heads for millennia,
Yael: And does she think that is gonna get the Christians to help her?
Schwab: it was like a political move to aim at raising help or funds. I think it was like a strongly held conviction that she could not help she could not stop herself from saying like, hey, this is a th and there are like some of the writers say like this is part of we don’t think that much about it, but like this is part of the like generational trauma and legacy of being crypto Jews. Like her family were driven out in
Yael: Mm.
Schwab: In the name of Catholicism, in the name of Christianity. They were forcibly converted. Many of her relatives, presumably, you know, again, hundreds of years priors, were killed, were thrown out of their lands, were forced to convert. And like that is like she grew up probably with, I don’t know, like a strong family lesson around that of like Christians persecute Jews because they are Christians, and until they reform their system, we can never be safe from it. Yeah.
Yael: Right. It’s true. Interesting. But it’s not enough to bring her to some sort of theological embrace of ju of Judaism. It’s more of a peoplehood.
Schwab: She yeah, she I don’t know yeah, I don’t know she sort of fits into like an ethical culture, which was like a b a big movement that was like emerging at the time and she thinks Judaism has a lot to say about that. But yeah, I don’t know
Yael: Interesting.
Schwab: theologically hard to figure out like where sh where she stands. While she is, and like it’s not just in the New Colossus, she’s very fascinated by larger than life figures and ideas and like, like representatives of things. she’s very attracted to that. She writes often about them. The other thing The other idea that she sort of has when she’s like, hmm, you know, it’s pretty dangerous for Jews to live in Christian lands or under Christian banners or not be able to provide for their own protection, in addition to opening America’s doors and taking in these refugees and helping train them in skills, she also talks about this idea of Jewish auto emancipation, which is the name for it at the time, because they hadn’t yet invented a another one. Which is that Jews need to have a nation, a state of their own, like Italians have now, like Germans have now, need to be able to self govern. And this should be in the historic homeland of the Jewish people and we should like work on setting up something like that.
Yael: And she pulls this just out of her own philosophical beliefs.
Schwab: There are, yeah, there are other people who are talking about it, like if you’re if you know like very early Zionist thinkers, there’s like Jews and non-Jews. Pinsker is the one I think who comes up with the title auto emancipation, but Emma Lazarus really runs with it and writes about it a lot. Esther Shore, the biographer, like points this out like very, very strongly that Theodore like at the time that Emma Lazarus is writing about auto emancipation and a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Theodore Herzl is still sitting in cafes in Vienna as an aspiring playwright. And like no one has made plans yet for the first Zionist Congress. And like Emma Lazarus, I don’t know, if she had lived longer or if she had you started later or something, like probably would have been pretty involved in that movement. Although probably she would have made like told everybody all of her issues with it.
Yael: Right. Found it found an issue.
Schwab: But like she’s talking and writing about this way bef not way bef but like a decade before Herzl is really seizing on this idea.
Yael: Mm. And how is she received?
Schwab: people think this is a lunatic idea, not just a Emma Lazarus, like it’s too early, right? Like we’re like it’s as we know, it’s a it’s a long time before Zionism will come to be adopted even by Jews and will like gain support. Like this is a very fringe idea. much better received is this idea of opening America to Jewish immigration and Jews helping each other.
Yael: Mm.
Schwab: this Russian Jewish persecution is not like a niche issue. This is this is being reported in January of eighteen eighty two, shortly after these pogroms start this is front page news. In the Times of London, in the New York Times, like w people are writing about the Russian persecution of the Jews. There is a letter to the Times of London, I believe, and this letter includes the lines
Yael: Mm-hmm.
Schwab: Of the 10,000 Jewish refugees who will arrive here penniless within the next few months, f few, if any, will become a tax on the public through the ordinary methods applied to destitute immigrants, and the writer claims that like the Jewish community will make sure that these that these people are taken care of. And but I’ll just like the tax on a on the public reminds me so much of the
Yael: Right.
Schwab: Recife Jews story and like, okay, they’re allowed in 1654, they’re allowed to land in New York, like, provided that they do not become wards of the state, you know, and the writer of this letter is like very clear, like that will not happen. They will be provided for by the community, which I imagine someone like Ezra Emma Lazarus, who has like connections to the community going back to that 1654 thing, like that’s that’s like the story of her family, like would be very sensitive to that.
Yael: there are Jews with resources at this time. Like there are wealthy German bankers and yeah. And Lazar and Lazaruses.
Schwab: Yeah, like and sh knows that. Yeah. And and sugar refiners and yeah. And Lazarus’s and Nathans and Satius’es, yes.. Yeah. The writer goes on to say that the fate of the Russian Jews is of vital importance to the whole people. Every American must feel a thrill of providence and gratitude in the thought that his country is the refuge of the oppressed. the home of hope to the whole human race, and however wretched be the material offered to him from the refuse of other nations, he accepts it with generous hospitality. Based on the very specific word choices, it is very likely that Emma like this letter is I forget if it’s unsigned or it’s clearly from a pseudonym.
Yael: Mm.
Schwab: Emma Lazarus is the one who wrote this letter, and has been like thinking about, you know, this idea of like the wretched refuse is like a very specific phrase. and again, like she’s visiting Ward’s Island, she goes to the Lower East Side, she remarks to one of her companions at one point, like, if my society friends could see me now, like the people who are attending literary salons or someone like Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Yael: She wrote it. Okay, interesting.
Schwab: you know, who’s like at his home in Concord, Massachusetts and writing about nature, whatever like going and seeing what things look like in these destitute, crime ridden areas and trying directly to help these people is like really not the world she was born into and she so easily could have stayed in.
Yael: Right. And and like even with respect to Emerson, like it’s taking these ideas of what society should look like and looking at them, taking them out of academia and putting them into practice where they’re generally very different.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Right. yes, and like bringing into that, like she’s hitting on I think, this thing that she’s been looking for through much of her young life, which is like, what is the theme of America? Like w you know, she writes earlier, like I resist the idea that there is a theme for American literature. Wherever there is humanity, there is reason for a poem. But now I think she feels like, okay, like the actually America is doing something different. We should all feel really proud of this and like it can be not just a symbol for something, but actually really be able to welcome people and give them opportunity. So let’s take a brief aside, because in 1883 then she gets asked to write a poem. That is not supposed to be like the poem that goes on the Statue of Liberty. There is an urgent need to collect funds to build this frankly boondoggle of a project, you know? And one of the ideas is like, what if we have, you know, a knight of the arts? Yeah, okay. No, we gotta talk about how weird the entire backstory of the Statue of Liberty is, right? But like in raising money for it, and it’s to pay for the pedestal, whatever, but like in trying to get this.
Yael: You mean the French didn’t pay for the French didn’t pay for all of it?
Schwab: thing finally done, they’re like, okay, we’ll have like an auction. You can come, you see different like art pieces of art and works. And and you know, we want a poem that will have a central, you know, place in this like auction night to raise money for this statue. And in 1881 she’s asked to write a poem sort of framing what the Statue of Liberty is. She demures twice. She says, I don’t I don’t write on command. Like that’s not, you know, a and then finally she agrees and just like
Yael: Course.
Schwab: Yeah, like finally she agrees and in a very short amount of time just like writes this stunning poem. Yeah. Yeah. You know? and be like it’s not again, it’s not like happens to then be applied to the Statue of Liberty, which I think people sometimes think like the gimme you’re tired, you’re poor was like, a nice poem framing immigration, like no,
Yael: whips this up, you know. Interest I mean, why I mean she obviously was extremely
Schwab: the new Colossus is saying, like, the new Coloss the new giant statue that we’re all talking about, here’s where it’s going to stand and here’s what it’s going to say. The statue’s actual origin, like the idea behind it, was not at all that. Like that it was not meant to be a symbol of immigration. That was not the idea. like this honestly, the more I read the Statue of Liberty is so weird. It’s like such a weird like we
Yael: It it is quite odd.
Schwab: We we I think if we’ve like grown especially as a New Yorker, but if you’ve grown up as an American, like you’re very accustomed to it as a symbol. But it’s really strange that we have a giant woman in New York Harbor that’s like a gift from the French. So it was intended to be in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of America for eighteen seventy-six. They were way over budget and way over time that they were still working on it in 1883.
Yael: Like why? Why is it there? Why is it there? Mm.
Schwab: And the original title was supposed to be Liberty Enlightening the World. It’s really kind of like a French response to like France going back to its monarchy but like the notion even of the statue being welcoming, and you see this when you look at it like it’s not welcoming at all. It is it is not like that’s Emma Lazarus’ his interpretation. Like I lift my lamp and you’re welcome on this shore. But it’s it’s more of like a projection of strength, you know, and like let me share outwards my ideas and ideals coming from America. But it’s not like please come here, you are welcome. That is that like doesn’t seem to if you look she’s not open armed, right? Like she d she has s sort of yeah, like yeah, exactly like she sort of does
Yael: Right. It’s not op it’s not open arms. Her hands are full, actually.
Schwab: and there’s also all sorts of like really fascinating, what’s it called? When people miss Mandela effects where people would be like, and like The chains broken at her feet. I remember them being there before they took them away, like what? Like we just like
Yael: You mean like the fact that I think she won a contest to get her poem that th to get that she was like some poor girl on the Lower East Side who won a contest to get her poem on the Statue of Liberty? No, yeah. I had no idea.
Schwab: Hm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Well, like that’s not yeah. Mm-hmm. No, she was asked to write Yeah. or even like people immigrants will say, like, and my ship sailed past the Statue of Liberty on the way to Ellis Island and I and I read the words there and like, what size font do you think the poem is pr it’s not even printed on the outside. Like it’s affixed on the inside on a plaque, like but yeah, like the Statue of Liberty has come to mean sort of what Emma Lazarus wanted it to mean and not at all what the like original intention for it was.
Yael: Listen, good for her.
Schwab: Yeah. None of that happened in her own lifetime though. So she wrote this poem in eighteen eighty three. It’s read at this fundraiser. It’s not really talked about anymore for a while. when the statue is dedicated in I think the late eighteen eight it’s like eighteen eighty eight or something like that. and it’s attended by the president, she is already dead. She dies in eighteen eighty seven.
Yael: Okay. Think eighteen eighty eight, yeah.
Schwab: When it’s when it’s d very young. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, okay, so briefest like she sh she’s thirty, thirty-eight, thirty-eight, maybe thirty-nine, but yeah, like very, very young. she so we’ll come back to the Statue of Liberty, but sort of the end of her life, she writes like she’s running out of time in the early eighteen eighties. She’s writing about Jewish nationalism and auto emancipation. She’s writing about welcoming Jews in, she’s writing about Christian anti-semitism.
Yael: Very young. Tw twenty eight? Thirty eight? Wow.
Schwab: She’s writing this series called Epistle to the Hebrews. That’s sort of like her take on the sweeping view of Jewish history and where Jews need to go from here in America. Like she’s and she’s also not just writing about accepting immigrants, she’s very involved in different societies in trying to help people herself. Like she’s she really runs herself pretty ragged. Also possible that she was getting sick at the time. But she takes a vacation. To Europe in I think it’s eighteen eighty-six, and like trying to recover and just keeps getting worse and worse. finally decides, you know, okay, we’re like her sister her sisters sort of like rotate in being with her and taking care of her. They decide finally to try to come back to New York. there’s some hope at some points that she maybe is recovering, but like now we know, and now that we know that she had Hodgkin’s disease, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, like she wasn’t gonna be getting better. she gets worse and worse. She loses the ability to see, to hear in one of her ears, but like up until the end, she’s still in her loose lucid moments very interested in art. People come and read to her, through some of her friends. The first lady is like very interested in her, reads some of her works, sends her flowers and wishes her well. But she passes away in eighteen eighty seven. while she was getting sick, she does assemble a manuscript of a of her poems and make and like in that like makes choices about what it is that should be included or not. The new Colossus has a prominent place in that manuscript, but it’s not the number one. Like it’s like here’s the thing that I either am most proud of or think I should be known by. What she includes and doesn’t include is very interesting. She does seem i like at that time to take a slight turn away from more of her Jewish topics. But she also separates her son like she sort of sees her sonnets as her own as its own thing. And then there’s like other poems and translations. Her sisters
Yael: Mm. Mm.
Schwab: Who published this posthumously, I don’t know, like we’ve talked about before, like has come up in other stories, like just make a whole bunch of editorial changes that are very different than what Emma Lazarus chose. There are there are like poems that they take out. They still like the new Colossus, again, it wasn’t the po the Emma Lazarus poem. It still has like a prominent place. I think it opens the section on sonnets. But they actually then sort of thematically separate her work between like
Yael: Right.
Schwab: non-Jewish poems and Jewish poems and like put back some of the things that she hasn’t included. there is and again I will we’ll put a link to all of these that you can read. There is a second poem that’s kind of like a twin to the new Colossus called 1492, about the year 1492, which is like thou two faced year mother of change and fate. did st weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword is how it starts. It’s worth reading the entire thing, but like it’s about i in 1490, an idea that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, like in I the idea that in 1492 Spain both kicked out its Jews and the new world, which would become the haven for them, was discovered.
Yael: How? Two faced year is a really poignant way.
Schwab: Thou two faced year Yeah, she’s she’s a really great poet.
Yael: So how does the new Colossus end up on the Statue of Liberty?
Schwab: So in nine in nineteen three, it’s been you know, it’s I think it’s it’s twenty years since the poem has been written. It’s sixteen years since she died. The statue literally’s been in New York Harbor probably long enough that it’s turned green at this point. Which also I and I could not get like a clear answer to this. Like did they not know what was gonna happen? Like
Yael: That’s a really good question. Like, was it exp part of the plan? Like, did they try to clean it at first?
Schwab: Can’t imagine that it was yeah. Just yeah. Of the many bizarre things about the Statue of Liberty, that’s definitely one of them of just like what did you think was gonna happen here? Have you never seen copper before? It’s copper, right? Like they must have like it took ten years to build. You must have seen some of this happening, right? But anyway.
Yael: Copper? Yeah. It th I’m curious now I wanna go out and read a book about the history of the Statue of Liberty, ’cause you’re right, it doesn’t make sense.
Schwab: Yeah. So in nineteen three her friend Georgina Schuyler feels which let’s talk about Georgina Schuyler for a minute. Georgina Schuyler is yes, Georgina Schuyler, her father is Philip Schuyler, who is named for his grandfather, I think Philip Schuyler.
Yael: Re relative of Eliza? Eliza Schuyler’s father his father in law.
Schwab: Right, Alexander Hamilton’s father in law. A Georgina Schuyler’s mother is Eliza Hamilton, who’s named for her grandmother, Eliza Hamilton. Right? Like her parents were s I guess that’s second cousins once removed. but Georgina Schuyler is yeah, a Skyler Anna Hamilton on more than one side. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Yael: Hamilton. Wow. Wow. Interesting. So her name really is Skylar. Like it’s not
Schwab: her name is Skylar. Yeah, no, no, no. She is Georgina Skylar and her mom’s name is Hamilton. Like she is she is she is a scion of those families. And she was very close friends with Emma Lazarus, which like speaks to the company that Emma Lazarus kept. And she feels like Emma has been already by this point like somewhat forgotten and wants to start a movement that like the poem be put on a plaque and be included.
Yael: That’s crazy. Make sense.
Schwab: On the statue of liberty.
Yael: You mean the same way that Eliza Sky Eliza Schuyler raised funds for the Washington Monument?
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly like, right? Like another big monument of like yeah. I don’t think George Washington was really forgotten, but yeah. so Georgina Schuyler wants to very bizarre thing, but she wants to raise money to put this poem on a plaque. The Lazarus family is not so into it for whatever reason.
Yael: Right. Got ya.
Schwab: And then she says, okay, I’m gonna do it on my own. And then they’re furious and very against it and refuse to give permission for the poem to be used because it will reflect poorly on them that their very wealthy family did not do this themselves and money needed to be raised to like memorialize the their family member who wrote this poem. Richard Gilder. Emma Lazarus’s literary friend intervenes, they manage to work it out, the Lazarus family gives some money towards this thing, they give permission. And the poem is put on the plaque sixteen years after her death and attached to the Statue of Liberty, and then sort of just organically grows in fame through the last hundred and twenty three years. Like more and more comes to be associated and very famous, especially as in in you know, after nineteen three, like as immigration becomes an even more major issue, not just for Jews, but like immigration becomes this really, really important issue. And here’s this, I think, like very vital text that becomes, I don’t know, like a like a statement about American immigration to the point where it’s sometimes invoked I think it was I think it was a couple of years ago, in like twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen or something. But like it was invoked in a discussion and it was responded to by s I forget who, but I think a member of the first Trump administration who was not particularly keen on a lot of immigration and it was like sort of sneering it and saying like this that’s not American law. That’s just a poem, you know? But I think like the idea is like it has been elevated almost to that level, right? Like this is language. Give me your Tired, you’re hungry, you’re the like the huddled masses, like those phrases are almost like so strongly part of an American ethos that like we think of them almost as at the level of like a law.
Yael: They’ve become entrenched in the American canon, no matter what the Norton anthology people think.
Schwab: They become intri is a great way to put it, yeah. Yes. Right, no matter what the Norton anthology people say. There is a song version of it. the Irving Berlin song version of this popular at a different time.
Yael: I was talking about Irving Berlin a lot this weekend because he wrote God Bless America. So he knows about the American canon. He knows the importance.
Schwab: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. It’s a poem that’s like literally bolted on to the Statue of Liberty, right? Like is really one of those s essential texts, although again just the last part.
Yael: It’s like the constitution.
Schwab: Like not the beginning part.
Schwab: Okay,
Yael: unfortunately, I think most people in America don’t know anything about American literature and what the important pieces of American literature are. But to the extent that anyone knows anything about American literature, this is certainly something that they know.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Mm. Right. Although I don’t know if they again I don’t know if people would think about it as like literature or more as like, you know, one of these canonical texts, which I have to imagine Emma Lazarus probably would not be thrilled by that. I think she would much rather be in the Norton anthology than on the Statue of Liberty. Like she did not see this as her greatest work, as her most important contribution. I think she had a lot of other things that she would prefer people read. so read some of them, we’ll include them. So like read some of her other poems because they are excellent. But we don’t get to choose sort of our own fate or reception.
Yael: Who tells your story?
Schwab: Right. And who and like she yeah, she does not tell her own story. And like she I don’t know, like is now tied to a symbol that it that is not her that she was reluctant to have anything to do with in the first place and then reframed. Well, =she passes in eighteen eighty she passes in eighteen eighty seven and yeah, she’s revived and maybe not necessarily
Schwab: And yet has lived on as yeah. Yeah. As a vo and like s yes, and so interestingly, like as a voice for this statue, you know, in her own way of saying it, who cries with silent lips. Right? Like the statue itself can’t like when she wrote it and she’s talking about the statute, the statue’s not actually speaking, but she’s imagining being the voice for the statue. And now she is the voice for this statue that cannot speak, and neither can she.
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