“Beyond the Means of the Author:” Hafiz in Emerson’s “Fate”

This article is an attempt to show the generative interpretative nature of translation. It examines a few lines of Persian poetry translated and quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his controversial essay, “Fate,” and through a genetic reading of their Persian and German avant-texts shows how the concepts the translations convey were created in the process of translation and through certain “interpretants” that the German translator, Joseph Von Hammer Purgstall, and then Emerson applied to the originals. Benefiting from Jacques Derrida’s view of translation, Walter Benjamin’s notion of “after-life,” and Lawrence Venuti’s hermeneutic model of translation, this paper demonstrates how even a foreignizing translation, which is concerned about equivalence, is subject to the translator’s interpretation. Here, the translations come into being through the collaboration of the translators and the original author. The original texts also live a different life in the determining venue they are presented. This study also raises questions about the issue of influence through translation. If translation is interpretative and generative then to what extent the translator is influenced by the original author. This issue is of significance, as many scholars have discussed the ways in which Emerson’s poetry and prose writings were affected by his Persian readings.