Persian literature in Western culture

In order to avoid what E.G. Browne calls "an altogether inadequate judgment of the intellectual activity of that ingenious and talented people" (E.G.Browne, p4), many centers of academia throughout the world today from Berlin to Japan have permanent programs for Persian studies for the literary heritage of Persia.

The study of Avestic and ancient Persian literature in the west began in the 18th century with scholars investigating Zoroastrian texts brought in from Bombay, India.

The 1953 edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations contains 188 excerpts from the Rubaiyat alone, of which 59 are complete quatrains, virtually two thirds of the total work of Omar Khayyám.

Phrases like the following that are now part of the English language have their origins in the Rubaiyyat: In the words of Dick Davis, Edward FitzGerald found the "twin soul" he had spent most of his life seeking in Khayyam.

His west-ostlicher, and collection of poetry in general, gradually came to function as "an influential model for religious and literary syntheses between the ‘occident’ and the ‘orient’ in the 19th century", according to Jeffrey Einboden of Magdalene College in Cambridge, England, who is currently a professor at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL.

Emerson, who read Sa'di only in translation, compared his writing to the Bible in terms of its wisdom and the beauty of its narrative.

Goethe's admiration for Hafiz and his "Oriental" wisdom, as expressed in the West-östlischer Divan, has been the main source of attracting Nietzsche's interest in this Persian poet.