Indian text written by women in its German and Serbian versions (on the basis of Alma Karlin’s and Jelena Dimitrijević’s travelogues)

Abstract

The article is about travelogues of the Serbian writer Jelena Dimitrijević and the author of the Slovene origin Alma Maximiliane Karlin. As citizens of Yugoslavia, the both authors visited the colonial India in 1927. The analysis is essentially comparative in nature with a specific focus on gender and national problems. The travelogues “The Spell of the South Sea” (1930) of A. Karlin and “Letters from India” are similar in terms of the themes – interest in everyday life and traditions. But Dimitrijević associates India with personalities like Gandhi and Tagore, who were fighters for independence of the country, and draws a parallel between the liberation of her motherland Serbia,  while Karlin gives more attention to local religious customs, her work bears interest of a scientist, yet her colonial sight of the another country is evident, especially compared to Dimitrijević’s one.