Ralph Waldo Emerson and Sohrab Sepehri

Ralph Waldo Emerson, an essayist, philosopher, and poet, is one of America's most influential thinkers and indisputably the central figure of the American Renaissance of the mid-19th century. Sohrab Sepehri is a distinguished Iranian artist. Familiar with Buddhism, far eastern mysticism, and western literary schools, he combines the eastern concepts with western techniques, thereby writing a kind of poetry unsurpassed in the history of Persian literature. While the number of works written on the influence of Persia on Emerson and the similarity between the American figure and Persian thought is noteworthy, unfortunately just one is written to compare Emerson with Sepehri. Therefore the collection of comparative works written on Emerson and Sepehri lacks some comprehensive comparative works in English on the Persian poet and his American counterpart. The work should help shed some light on this new and exciting field, and should be especially useful to professionals in comparative literature, or anyone else who may be interested in Persian literature.