When a writer borrows some elements from a different language and culture, he not only uses those for his purpose but also appropriates and recontextualizes them to derive a new meaning. Appropriation and recontextualization of Eastern languages, cultures and religions by Western writers in the first half of the 20th century have been scarcely studied. Herman Hesse is one of those who borrowed several terms from the Sanskrit language, Indian history, and mythology in his texts. Going beyond the Orientalism of the 19th century, his textual encounter took inspiration from Buddhist and Indian religious philosophy and incorporated it in his thinking, critical towards Western / European Civilization. The ambiguity of Hesse’s position between European late colonialism and postcolonial debate avant la lettre visible in Aus Indien (1913) and above all in the short narrative Robert Agion (see Zilcosky 2014), inspired by his only trip to Southeast Asia, makes him an interesting case to be analyzed from a postcolonial theory approach. Engaging Ashcroft et al.’s model of appropriation (2002) and the concept of recontextualization, this study intends to analyze how Hesse has appropriated, recontextualized and even fictionalized Indian references in Siddhartha (1922), defined by the subtitle “Eine indische Dichtung” as ‘original’ Indian. It is important to note that several Sanskrit terms appear untranslated and glossed, suggesting that the narrative context preserves cultural immediacy and original meaning. Non-translation together with appropriation / recontextualization can be considered the nucleus of discursive strategies which are applied to articulate the creative persona of Siddhartha and his ‘original’ context. Strategies aim at inducing the intended European reader to individual mentality change. In this sense, this study considers the translations from German to English.

Japanese culture has long fascinated European intellectuals, sparking a literary tradition of travel narratives that have tried to convey to a Western audience the most notable aspects of this Eastern civilization. Often presented as an exotic and spiritual land for its rigid societal structure, religious practices, and refined aesthetic sensibilities, Japan finds a more nuanced and critical representation in contemporary travel literature. Modern Italian authors of the past century have been attracted by the coexistence of ancient traditions and cutting-edge technology and have gained a literary and artistic insight into the layered Japanese world.

This paper focuses on how Italian travel writing from the second half of the 20th century has depicted Japan and its culture. It investigates works by seminal writers and intellectuals such as Italo Calvino, Goffredo Parise and Antonio Tabucchi, and shows how these authors - who did not have any professional knowledge of the country -, grapple with their own cultural biases while interpreting Japanese culture. The interplay between Italian and Japanese identities, seen through the lens of literary travel writing, fosters a valuable understanding of cultural exchange and offers insights into the subtle relationship between East and West.

My proposed paper addresses the work of the Hungarian woman writer Rózsa G. Hajnóczy (1892-1944), the author of Bengáli tűz (Fire of Bengal, tr. Eva Wimer and David Grant; Bangladesh: University Press, 1993), whose travelogue describes her experiences in India in the early 1930s, when she accompanied her husband the Hungarian Orientalist Gyula Germanus on his visiting professorship in India on Rabrindranath Tagore’s invitation. Rather than a journal intime of personal emotional reflections, the book uses a medley of travelogue and personal memoir while attempting to disseminate knowledge about India, which was a subcontinent largely unknown to the Hungarian reader. Fire of Bengal uses the unique perspective of a European (but non- British) female social observer, witnessing the domestic detail of cooking, housekeeping whilst also offering acute observations on social mores and personal emotional economies. Situating the text within the economy of Anglophone women’s writing about India, the paper will offer comparisons and will point out differences, and will call for a more nuanced understanding of the European representations of India in the interwar period. The paper will also foreground the work of current East Central European scholarship in uncovering representations in lesser-known languages and cultures.