SOURCE: "Like and Look Alike: Symmetry and Irony in Theodor Storm's Aquis submersus," in Seminar, Vol. VII, No. 1, March, 1971, pp. 1-13.

In the following essay, Duroche argues that Storm "succeeds in saying just the opposite of what his novella seems to say, " examining the strategic juxtapositioning of narrative elements.

A continuing problem for students of Storm has been the attempt to penetrate the highly involved structure of Aquis submersus and to bring the frame into some kind of meaningful relationship to the central narrative. Recent critical comments have tended to cluster around two positions. One pattern of interpretation, seen most clearly in the study of Bernd, [in Theodor Storm's Craft of Fiction 1966] has fixed on a thematic focus, the overconcern with transiency, and has argued that the novella is another attempt on the part of Storm to overcome the flow of time by asserting the salvaging effects of...