Emerson in Iran: The American Appropriation of Persian Poetry

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Notes

1 Yohannan, “The Influence of Persian Poetry”; “Emerson’s Translations of Persian Poetry”; and Persian Poetry in England and America, 115–34; Kane, “Emerson and Hafiz”; Ekhtiyar, “The Chronological Development”; Obeidat, “Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Muslim Orient”; Loloi, “Emerson and Aspects of Saʿdi’s Reception”; Jahanpour, “Emerson on Hafiz and Saʿdi.” These studies complement more general surveys such as Gail’s Persia and the Victorians and Javadi’s Persian Literary Influence on English Literature.

2 Kane, “Emerson and Hafiz,” 123. The correspondence of philosophical expression between Emerson and the poets of medieval Persia has also been explored in works such as Carpenter’s Emerson and Asia and Christy’s The Orient in American Transcendentalism. Sedarat refers to all three works.

3 It is intriguing that Sedarat begins his book with Borges’ sonnet, “Emerson,” and uses it as a foundation to illustrate various claims about Emerson and influence and translation; but he forgets to mention that his underlying claim also echoes Borges’s well-known essay “Kafka and his Precursors” (“Kafka y sus precursors”). Borges’ essay was published in 1951 in the newspaper, La Nación, and included a year later in Otras Inquisiciónes (“Other Inquisitions”).

4 Sedarat uses the term “Iran” in his book. In this study, I have preferred “Persia” and “Persian,” as these were the terms in common use in the nineteenth century. These appellations, for instance, are used more than twenty times in Emerson’s essay, “Persian poetry”; “Iran” is not mentioned even once.

5 Hamid Dabashi’s Persophilia is an example of a study that assumes a theoretical approach in studying Persia’s cultural relevance within the discursive realms of the western imagination.

6 Obeidat’s “Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Muslim Orient,” which Sedarat cites a number of times in his book, is a study of Emerson’s ambivalent attitudes towards the Orient.

7 Emerson, “Persian Poetry,” 124.

8 Arberry, “Orient Pearls at Random Strung”; Boyce, “A Novel Interpretation of Hafiz.” Also see Browne, A Literary History, ii, 84.

9 He quotes Murat Nemat-Nejat’s review of Ladinsky’s The Gift: Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master (1999): “There is not a single poem (gazel) of Hafiz of which any one of the poems […] is a translation or adaptation or extrapolation or deconstruction” (p. 144).

10 Yohannan, “Emerson’s Translations of Persian Poetry,” 408.

11 Jones’ translation originally appeared in A Grammar of the Persian Language (1771) with a different title: “A Persian Song.” The name “Hafiz” was appended to the title a year later when the poem was reprinted in Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translation from the Asiatic Languages.

12 Jahanpour, “Emerson on Hafiz and Saʿdi,” 118.

13 Ibid.

14 Sedarat’s own translations of the lines form Hafez’s qazals 68 and 5 in chapter 2 are also presented reticently and in the margin of the discussions

15 Katouzian, Saʿdi: The Poet of Life; Davis, Faces of Love.

16 Thoreau, Walden, 91.