This study examines the influence of the Persian Sufi poet Hafez on Ralph Waldo Emerson and explores Hafez’s role in shaping American Transcendentalism. When Emerson encountered Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan in 1838, he developed a sustained interest in Hafez and subsequently studied Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall’s German translation, Der Diwan von Mohammed Schemsed-din Hafis....