Emerson in Iran is the latest addition to a growing number of books that focus on the influence of Sufi and esoteric Persian literature on the nineteenth-century American literary masters. Whereas most of the available works cover the influence of Persian Sufi literature on American Transcendentalists, Roger Sedarat's book is the first to offer an in-depth study of Emerson's interest in and writings on Persian mystical poetry.

Sedarat's thought-provoking reading of Emerson's interaction with Sufi literature advances the discourse on the question that some of the other works have not, namely “why [Emerson] comes to see himself in the Persian mirror” (11). Similar to other scholars of the American Transcendentalists, such as Leonard Lewisohn, Sedarat sees Plato and Neoplatonism as the shared intellectual heritage where Sufism and American Transcendentalism meet. Emerson's utopian model, which has its roots in the shared philosophical heritage between Christianity and Islam, makes it possible for him to claim such foreign poets as Hafez and Sa`di as his own.

Following his discussion on “From Plato to Persia,” Sedarat argues that Emerson found many shared qualities with Hafez – particularly the rejection of religious dogmatism. This echoes Edward FitzGerald's obsession with Omar Khayyam and the Rubaʻiyyat, in whom FitzGerald also saw qualities similar to his own. This poses the question whether Emerson's interest in Hafez and Sa`di is almost a process of self-psychoanalysis.

In the discussion titled “Transparent Eyeball: Persian Mirror,” Emerson's “sublime vision” and “pure and simple soul” are juxtaposed with Emerson's admiration for self-reliance and his anti-fatalism, which he saw as paramount to Sufism. In his extensive treatment of “Islamic Fatalism and the Paradox of Self-Reliance,” Sedarat brings to light the irony of Emerson's dislike of Islamic fatalism as reflected in Sa`di and Hafez as the antithesis of his American sense of independence. If Emerson only understood fatalism through Calvinism, the esoteric side of Hafez and Sa`di must have stood as the opposition to fatalism. Hafez and Sa`di are full of advice for what a seeker of truth must do; to love or not to love is a choice and not predestined.

For Emerson, appropriation of Persian poetry was more than an imitation or an exercise of aesthetic originality; it was, as Sedarat metaphorically puts it, “a telescope capable of obviating temporal and linguistic differences” (113). Emerson's adoption of the name “Sa`di,” and even wanting to sound like him, appear to be a more existential appropriation, not only a literary one.

“Americanizing Rumi and Hafez” in chapter 5 provides an account of the post-Emersonian continuity of interest in Persian mystical literature. Although a glimpse of the works of Barks and Ladinsky on Rumi is interesting, Emerson takes a backseat here.

Emerson in Iran ends with a discussion on “The Other Side of the Persian Mirror,” where some of the contemporary translators of Persian Sufi literature, such as Dick Davis, are discussed. What we see here is not the end of Emerson's journey but a continuation which appears in the works of Davis; in fact, Sedarat tells us, “Emerson also anticipates Davis by attempting to critically contextualize the panegyric” (177).

The work under review is the first in-depth study of Emerson's interest in Iranian mystical literature which succeeds in offering insight into the complex intricacies of Emerson's lifelong interest in Persian mystical literature.

While the book succeeds in achieving its projected goal of unpacking Emerson's relationship with Iranian mystical poets, some degree of contextualization of the central themes of the American Transcendentalists would have been helpful. Emerson's interest in Iranian Sufi poetry was part of a greater interest by the American Transcendentalists in that universal love and wisdom, or sophia perennis, whose Persian spokesmen were the likes of Hafez, Sa`di, and Rumi. It should be noted that Emerson and other Transcendentalists were also interested in Hinduism and Buddhism, among other Eastern spiritual traditions. It appears that Emerson must have felt he had found the universal wisdom in Hafez and Sa`di as proof for the perennial wisdom that he and some of his followers, such as Whitman, Thoreau, Harris, Lowell, and Melville, were searching for.

Emerson would rejoice to read the following verses from Hafez, and perhaps take them as proof for his view that although sophia perennis might be one, it has many manifestations, be it Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism: