Statue of Liberty or
Liberty Enlightening the World
by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, dedicated
1886
Bibliography, Out-takes,
Discussion Questions,
Suggested Readings
Bartholdi, Frederic Auguste. The Statue of
Liberty Enlightening the World, Described by the Sculptor. Published
for the Benefit of the Pedestal Fund. New York: North American Review,
(1885). This is the source of the Bartholdi quote in the Sidebar in
Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan. It's available on a ratty microfilm
at New York Public Library. Someone ought to find a clean copy and reprint
this - it includes a lot of good material and many charming
illustrations.
New York Times 10/29/1886 on the unveiling.
Some additional excerpts:
- Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez
Canal, said in part: "The idea of erecting the statue of liberty was a generous
one. It does honor to those who executed it. Liberty lighting the
world! A great lighthouse raised in the midst of a fleet on the
threshold of free America. In landing beneath its rays people will
know that they have reached a land where individual initiative is
developed in all its power; where progress is a religion; where
great fortunes become popular by the charity they bestow and by
encouraging instruction and science and casting their influence into
the future. You are right, American citizens, to be proud of your
'go ahead.' You have made great headway in a hundred years, thanks
to that cry, because you have been intrepid. In telling of the
sympathy of France, I know that I am expressing the feeling of all
my countrymen. There is no painful recollection between the two
countries; only one rivalry - that of progress. We accept your
inventions as you accept ours - without jealousy. You like men who
dare and who persevere. I say, like you, 'Go ahead!' We understand
each other when I use that term."
- When Senator Evarts (quoted in Outdoor
Monuments p. 13) paused,
the young man in charge of passing the signal for the unveiling
mistook the pause for
the end of the speech, and gestured for the veil over Liberty's face to be
released. "All the noise that had gone before was child's play to
what broke forth then. The whistles blew, the guns boomed, the bands
played, the drums rolled, and the throngs on the island and on the
river shouted one thundering paean of acclamations that swept down
the Bay on the wings of the northeast gale and smote the hills of
Staten island with a huge shock of sound."
- And finally, from orator Chauncey M. Depew, a
historical view: "In all the ages the achievements of man and his
aspirations have been represented in symbols. Races have disappeared
and no record remains of their rise or fall; but by their monuments
we know their history. The huge monoliths of the Assyrians and the
obelisks of the Egyptians tell their stories of forgotten
civilizations, but the sole purpose of their erection was to
glorify rulers and preserve the boasts of conquerors. They teach sad
lessons of the vanity of ambition, the cruelty of arbitrary power,
and the miseries of mankind.
The Olympian Jupiter enthroned in the
Parthenon [sic] expressed in ivory and gold the awful majesty of the Greek
idea of the King of the Gods; the bronze statue of Minerva on the
Acropolis offered the protection of the patron goddess of Athens to
the mariners who steered their ships by her helmet and spear, and in
the Colossus of Rhodes, famed as one of the wonders of the world,
the Lord of the Sun welcomed the commerce of the East to the city of
his worship.
But they were all dwarfs in size and pigmies in spirit
beside this mighty structure and its inspiring thought. Higher than
the monument in Trafalgar-square which commemorates the victories of
Nelson on the sea; higher than the Column Vendome, which perpetuates
the triumphs of Napoleon on the land; higher than the towers of the
Brooklyn Bridge, which exhibit the latest and grandest results of
science, invention, and industrial progress, this statue of Liberty
rises toward the heavens to illustrate an idea which nerved the
three hundred at Thermopylae and armed the ten thousand at Marathon;
which drove Tarquin from Rome and aimed the arrow of Tell; which
charged with Cromwell and his Ironsides and accompanied Sydney to
the block; which fired the farmer's gun at Lexington and razed the
Bastille in Paris; which inspired the charter in the cabin of the
Mayflower and the Declaration of Independence from the Continental
Congress.
It means that with the abolition of privileges to the few
and the enfranchisement of the individual, the equality of all men
before the law, and universal suffrage, the ballot secure from fraud
and the voter from intimidation, the press free and education
furnished by the State for all, liberty of worship and free speech,
the right to rise and equal opportunity for honor and fortune, the
problems of labor and capital, of social regeneration and moral
growth, of property and poverty, will work themselves out under the
benign influence of enlightened lawmaking and law-abiding liberty,
without the aid of Kings and armies, or of Anarchists and bombs."
Milton, Joyce. The Yellow Kids: Foreign
Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism (New York: Harper &
Row, 1989), pp. 3-7 on the dedication of Liberty. It includes de
Lesseps' "go ahead" speech (excerpted above), which was also
reported by Jose Marti
(Essay 33).
On Emma Lazarus and "The New Colossus," see
http://www.jwa.org/exhibits/wov/lazarus/el9.html
Lederer, Joseph. All Around the Town (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975), pp. 11-12.
Gayle, Margot, and Michele Cohen. The Art
Commission and the Municipal Art Society Guide to Manhattan's Outdoor
Sculpture (New York: Prentice Hall, 1988), pp. 3-4.
SIRIS (Smithsonian Institution, Inventory of
American Sculpture)
IAS 76003645.
Kostler, Neil G., ed. The Statue of Liberty
Revisited: Making a Universal Symbol. Smithsonian Instiution, 1994.
Francis Morrone, "Statues and Civic Memory,"
City Journal (Urbanities) Summer 1999 (9:3).
Grove Dictionary of Art v. 3, pp. 289-91, with
bibliography.
Moreno, Barry. The Statue of Liberty
Encyclopedia. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Extensive
information on all aspects of the sculpture.
Click here to visit Liberty's official website.
On the sculpture:
1. Given Bartholdi's comments on the requirements
of colossal sculpture, could any other sculpture described in
Outdoor Monuments be successfully enlarged to 150 feet?
2. Consider whether immediately recognizable
structures such as the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower conform to
Bartholdi's requirements for colossal sculptures.
On the subject:
3. At what point, historically, did France and the
United States stop being devoted friends? Consider what you know of
their alliances between the Revolutionary War and the Second World War.
4. Re immigration: Are there any categories of
foreigners who should not be allowed to enter the United States for
reasons they were born with: race, physical or mental handicaps? What
about other conditions they can't help: injury, disease?
5. Re immigration: Are there categories of
foreigners who should not be allowed to enter the U.S. for reasons that
involve their own choices, convictions, or beliefs, e.g. convicted
criminals, advocates anarchy or terrorism, members of various religions,
etc.?
6. Also re immigration: Would
you make a distinction between people allowed in as visitors, those who
are allowed to take up permanent residence here, those who are allowed
to seek employment, and those who are allowed to become
naturalized citizens? If so, on what grounds would you make those
distinctions?
7. Read the essays on The Immigrants and
The Garment Worker in Forgotten Delights: The Producers (#14,
15). Do you think the immigration situation has changed significantly
since Patrick Henry spoke on it in 1783? If so, in what way?
We
have, sir, an extensive country, without population—what can be more
obvious policy than that this country ought to be populated? People,
sir, form the strength and constitute the wealth of a nation. I want
to see our vast forest filled up by some process a little more
speedy than the ordinary course of nature. I wish to see these
states rapidly ascending to the rank which their natural advantages
authorize them to hold among the nations of the earth. [MORE]
8. What's the difference between Patrick Henry's
view of immigrants and Emma Lazarus's view in her poem "The New Colossus"?
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!
Patrick Henry's speech on
immigration, from a 1783 debate over whether to exclude Tories from
the rights of citizenship and allow them to return to Virginia. Reported
by Speaker (and Judge) John Tyler to Mr. William Wirt, Henry’s
biographer. See William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry, Life,
Correspondence and Speeches (NY: Burt Franklin, 1969 reprint of 1891
orig.), II, 193-5 [or 250-4? my notes are unclear].
We have, sir (said Henry), an extensive
country, without population—what can be more obvious policy than
that this country ought to be populated? People, sir, form the
strength and constitute the wealth of a nation. I want to see our
vast forest filled up by some process a little more speedy than the
ordinary course of nature. I wish to see these states rapidly
ascending to the rank which their natural advantages authorize them
to hold among the nations of the earth. Cast your eye, sir, over
this extensive country—observe the salubrity of your climate, the
variety and fertility of your soil—and see that soil intersected in
every quarter by bold, navigable streams, flowing to the east and to
the west as if the finger of heaven were marking out the course of
your settlements, inviting you to enterprise, and pointing the way
to wealth. Sir, you are destined, at some time or other, to become a
great agricultural and commercial people; the only question is,
whether you choose to reach this point by slow gradations, and at
some distant period—lingering on through a long and sickly
minority—subjected, meanwhile, to machinations, insults, and
oppressions of enemies, foreign and domestic, without sufficient
strength to resist and chastise them—or whether you choose rather to
rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoyment of those high
destinies, and be able to cope, single-handed, with the proudest
oppressors of the old world. If you prefer the latter course, as I
trust you do, encourage emigration—encourage the husbandmen, the
mechanics, the merchants of the old world, to come and settle in
this land of promise—make it the home of the skilful, the
industrious, the fortunate, the happy, as well as the asylum of the
distressed—fill up the measure of your population as speedily as you
can, by the means which heaven has placed in your hands—and I
venture to prophesy there are those now living who will see this
favored land among the most powerful on earth—able, sir, to take
care of herself, without resorting to that policy which is always so
dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid.
Yes, sir, they will see her great in arts and in arms—her golden
harvests waving over fields of immeasurable extent—her commerce
penetrating the most distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain
boasts of those who now proudly affect to rule the waves. But, sir,
you must have *men*--you cannot get along without them—those heavy
forests of valuable timber, under which your lands are groaning,
must be cleared away—those vast riches which cover the face of your
soil, as well as those which liehid in its bosom, are to be
developed and gathered only by the skill and enterprise of men—your
timber, sir, must be worked up into ships to transport the
productions of the soil from which it has been cleared—then you must
have commercial men and commercial capital to take off your
productions, and find the best markets for them abroad—your great
want, sir, is the want of men; and these you must have, and will
have speedily, if you are wise.
Do you ask how you are to get them? Open your
doors, sir, and they will come in—they population of the old world
is full to overflowing—that population is ground, too, by the
oppressions of the governments under which they live. Sir, they are
already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and looking to
your coasts with a wistful and longing eye—they see here a land
blessed with natural and political advantages which are not equaled
by those of any other country upon earth—a land on which Providence
hath emptied the horn of abundance—a land over which peace hath now
stretched forth her white wings, and where content and plenty lie
down at every door! Sir, they see something more attractive than all
this—they see a land in which liberty hath taken up her abode—that
liberty, whom they had considered as a fabled goddess existing only
in the fancies of poets—they see her here a real divinity—her altars
rising on every hand throughout these happy states—her glories
chanted by three millions of tongues—and the whole region smiling
under her blessed influence. Sir, let but this, our celestial
goddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair hand toward the people of
the old world—tell them to come, and bid them welcome—and you will
see them pouring in from the north, from the south, from the east,
and from the west—your wildernesses will be cleared and settled—your
deserts will smile—your ranks will be filled, and you will soon be
in a condition to defy the powers of any adversary.
|
