Under the gaze of German Romantics, the veiled world of the Orient was transformed into a textual space where the I/eye, like Hyazinth in Lehrlinge zu Sais in pursuit of a revelation by Isis, discovers its own reflection behind the veil of the elusive Oriental goddess. The search for Isis is occasioned by a crisis in understanding. Hyazinth's serene life is plunged into turmoil, when one day ein Mann aus fremden Landen (Novalis 1:93) appears in front of his parents' house, befriends him, and gives him a book written in a language no one can read. The first glimpse into the possibility of a radically alien mode of representation, the exoticism of another language, baffles and intrigues us. The initial shock of this heteronomy urges the subject to reexamine his or her own problematic of understanding and leads, after recovery from the close encounter, to the eventual familiarization of the unfamiliar. The investigation and appropriation of the other – be it the natural object, an occulted code, or an exotic culture – constitutes the essential gesture of Romantic hermeneutics. Man studiert fremde Systeme, observes Novalis, um sein eignes System zu finden (3:278). The hermeneutic mission of Romantic poetry is: Die Kunst auf eine angenehme Art zu befremden, einen Gegenstand fremd zu machen und doch bekannt und anziehend ... (3:685). This implies