Sufism and American Literary Masters

Mehdi Aminrazavi

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781438453521, 9781438453538
• eBook ISBN: 9781438453545
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: North American History

This book reveals the rich, but generally unknown, influence of Sufism on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature. The translation of Persian poets such as Hafiz and Sa'di into English and the ongoing popularity of Omar Khayyam offered intriguing new spiritual perspectives to some of the major American literary figures. As editor Mehdi Aminrazavi notes, these Sufi influences have often been subsumed into a notion of "Eastern, " chiefly Indian, thought and not acknowledged as having Islamic roots. This work pays considerable attention to two giants of American literature, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, who found much inspiration from the Sufi ideas they encountered. Other canonical figures are also discussed, including Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, along with literary contemporaries who are lesser known today, such as Paschal Beverly Randolph, Thomas Lake Harris, and Lawrence Oliphant.

The Master:
Emerson and Sufism

2

The Chronological Development of Emerson’s Interest in Persian Mysticism1

Mansur Ekhtiyar

When Emerson recognized the beauty of Oriental thought, his interest in Persian poetry and Persian mysticism began to develop. For the sake of clarity, the process and the growth of his contact with the Orient in general, and with Persians in particular, are shown chronologically.

In 1820, at the age of seventeen when he was in college, he pointed out, “All tends to the mysterious East … from the time of the first dispersion of the human family to the Grecian rise.”2 In the year 1820, however, there seems hardly any influence of the East traceable in his writing, even though there are hints of its mysteriousness, the unknown Oriental thought, in the Journals and in the Letters.

When Emerson was in college from 1817 to 1821, he expressed an ambition to compose a long masterly poem entitled “Asia”; but he never brought his wish to fulfillment.3 He always defined Asia as a land of “unity” and Europe as the world of “variety.”4 He even grew to love the Orient so ideally that later he called his wife, Lidian Emerson, “Mine Asia.”

Before 1820 only a few general allusions to the East are found in the Journals. His first contact with Persian thought was with the Zend Avesta in which he retained his interest throughout his life. He consulted different versions of this Zoroastrian Bible in German, French, and English. Perhaps he was anxious to compare some of the Avesta scriptures with the original versions in Pahlavi or Avestai, for on two or three occasions he checked out books in ancient Persian from the Boston Athenaeum5 and studied them for several months.

In October 1820, he recorded in the Journals, “I begin to believe in the Indian doctrine of eye fascination.”6 On July 6, 1822, he wrote a soliloquy on God, and at the end of it he quoted Sir William Jones’s translation of Narayena.7 From 1822 onward Emerson maintained an interest in this English translator and eminent statesman. He was impressed by Joseph Dennie’s assertion in the Gazette of the United States (1800), in which he mentioned Sir William Jones, along with Swift, as an Englishman whose literary achievements American scholars would do well to imitate.

In 1823, after reading Arabian Nights, Emerson wrote to his Aunt Mary, who shared his interest in the Orient, and referred to Indian thought. A few days earlier he had received a warm letter from her concerning a visit from an Oriental gentleman, who showed her a fine representation of the incarnation of Vishnu, and in a later letter, Mary sent him a few lines of poetry from Sir William Jones’s “Hymn to Narayena.”8

Early in 1823, when he was in his twenties, he addressed a significant letter to his Aunt Mary containing a question which had in it the germ of the Orientalism manifest in all of his most mature thought.9

Robert Southey’s “The Curse of Kehama” (1810) had an important influence on Emerson during his Harvard years, not so much for the poem itself as for the rich background notes and quotations which Southey placed at the end of the work. It is not surprising that such a harvest of Oriental lore continued to interest Emerson even after his college days. Evidence of this interest may be found in a short story which Emerson composed for his pupils in 1823, based upon extracts from Mark Wilk’s Historical Sketches of the South of India. Emerson’s adaptation, intended for young women, romanticized the original, removed sexual implications, and purged certain details. He clearly read the Sketches with care; they should certainly be considered a part of his accumulated knowledge of the Orient. Southey’s bibliography, as reconstructed by Kenneth W. Cameron, is beneficial for the traces of Emerson’s experience of the East.10 Arthur Christy reaffirms that the sacred books of the Orient, including those of the Persians, were sources of influence that shaped Emerson’s understanding of the East.11

Late in 1823, Emerson contrasted Sir Isaac Newton, as representative of the Occident, and Juggernaut, as symbolic of the East, in favor of the former, stating that the admiration of a few observers to the intellectual supremacy of one page will hardly be counted, in the eye of the philanthropists, as an atonement for the squalid and desperate ignorance of untold millions who breathe the breath of misery in Asia, in Africa, and all over the globe. Emerson, in fact, did not study much about the Orient in 1823, but he resumed his investigation in the following year.

Early in 1824, he pointed out that he was eager not to live in isolation, or to be “contemptible in a corner.”12 In this light he composed his “Asia,” in which he expressed the view that “Asia is not dead, but sleepeth.”

Asia

Sleep on, ye drowsy tribes whose old repose

The roaring oceans of the East enclose;

Old Asia, nurse of man, and bower of gods,

The dragon Tyranny with crown and ball

Chants to thy dreams his ancient lullaby.13

At the same time Emerson speaks of the contrast of the modern noisy world with Asia’s peaceful solitude. He addresses Americans, saying that Europe is their father and “they should bear him on their Atlantean shoulders, but Asia is thy grand desire and should give him his freedom.”14

In 1829, he read Marie Josef de Gernado’s Histoire Comparée des systèmes de philosophie, and he acquired a taste for the Bhagavat from Victor Cousin’s Cours de philosophie. Emerson read these books because he was interested in having a clear idea concerning the Oriental approach to the “Over-Soul,” “Fate,” and the concept of “Free-will.”

Late in 1830 he read Gernado’s publication again; it was there that he had been introduced to the philosophy of the various schools of thought in India and ancient Persia. Through these works Gernado compiled, Emerson entered the path that led him to the springs of the religion and philosophy in the Orient.15 From the four volumes of Gernado, he extracted enough material to fill fifteen pages of the Journals.16

In 1831, he was impressed with the philosophy of Plotinus and by its effects on Oriental thought. While Plotinus’s work is covered in his reading list for that year, he probably read some of Plotinus’s ideas in Gernado. Emerson’s interest in Plotinus arose when he discovered the close kinship between Neoplatonism and Oriental thought. 1831 was, in fact, the year in which he seriously began the study of Neoplatonic philosophy, and his interest in Zoroastrianism, which had already started during his college days, developed in a parallel manner. On April 17, 1832 Emerson wrote about “Persian Scriptures.” He asserts that “a strong poem is Zoroastrianism.”17

The parallelism of Emerson’s study and his interest in Neoplatonism and Orientalism are significant and quite easily traceable. Late in 1832, Emerson asserted that Plato’s forms or ideas seem almost tantamount to the “Fravashi” of Zoroaster, which are the symbols of good action, good thought, and good words. Then he added th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• The English Romantic Background
• The Master: Emerson and Sufism
• The Disciple: Walt Whitman
• The Initiates: Other American Authors
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover