SOURCE: "The Memory of Realism: The Aesthetics of Abnegation in Storm's Aquis submersus," in Reflections of Realism: Paradox, Norm, and Ideology in Nineteenth Century German Prose, Wayne State University Press, 1991, pp. 132-51.

In the following essay, Holub describes Aquis submersus as a realist novella concerned with the difficulties and deceptions of memory.

Das Leben trügt—Erinnerung
 Allein bleibt ewig treu;
 Die bringet nur geheilten Schmerz
 Und nur gesühnte Reu.

(Life deceives—memory alone remains eternally true; it brings only healed pain and expiated penitence.)

Theodor Storm, "Nach frohen Stunden" ("After Happy Hours")

The magic of writing is like a cosmetic concealing the dead under the appearance of the living.

Jacques Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy"

With the novella Aquis submersus (1877), we are confronted at first with more traditional, less psychological signs of realism. Indeed, the reader of this work should have no trouble recognizing it as a realist...