ABSTRACT
The chapter places the German Romantics’ fascination with India within a broader context of the Romantic agenda. In doing so, it discusses the role of India within the Romantic picture of the world, as an alternative to the European modernity. Specifically, it examines the German Romantic view of India as the highest form of the Romantic and the idea of the immersion in Indian culture as a tool of overcoming the atomization of human life. In criticizing the widespread view of the German Romantic view of India and self-representation through Indian imagery as merely an intersection of a number of individual trajectories, the chapter postulates a collective and ideological nature of this phenomenon.
