Friday, December 23, 2016

Hafezean Piety




Hafezean piety is "transcendental" in the Emersonian sense, which is to say, it is transgressive. Put another way, Emersonian Transcendentalism is Hafezean because the Sage of Concord saw in Hafez the model of religiosity that he wished to emulate. Not some sort of "other-worldly" mysticism and certainly not a Kantian "religion within the bounds of reason alone." Emerson longed to be frankly "religious" in a way that suited the human condition as he understood it as a 19th century Euro-American: pragmatic and naturalistic and yet open to those moments of "transcendental" ecstasy that the landscape induced in the sensitive spirit.

A sort of Hudson River School "mysticism," earthy, lucid, and yet visionary.

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