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 memory and art. The technique of the frame supposedly provides a way of encompassing (thus recovering) an older, and more stable, time. The other view, best typified by William F. Mainland, simply regards the frame as decorative and non-functional [in Alex Nathan's German Men of Letters . . . , 1961]. Neither explanation is fully satisfying, for the one merely overlooks the intricacy of the work while the other uses the work to explain an existential crisis of the writer. The interpretation offered here reexamines both theme and structure and offers a new reading of the novella by concentrating on Storm's use of similarity and duplicity as means of uniting both meaning and structure.

In an essay on Storm published for the general reader, William F. Mainland has compared the fictional device of the frame as used by Storm to a set of Chinese boxes "of which the innermost is not strikingly different from the others, admirable for its ingenuity rather than as a sign of fresh creative talent." Despite the disparaging conclusions he reaches, Mainland has done a service in introducing the metaphor of the Chinese box, for that combines the notions of "containing-concealing" and "resemblingdissembling" (puzzling similarity), which are the symbolic actions underlying the functional and formal points of view in Aquis submersus. Both categories of action must be kept in mind in analysing the relation of structure and meaning in the novella. Almost every detail and event has a counterpart which sometimes is its double, sometimes only seems its double. The best word to describe such a state of affairs is "duplicity," understood in its literal sense as derived from "duplex," and also as deception.

The conclusions of my reading can be stated at the outset in the form of general interpretative principles. The fictional device of the frame presents only one mode of containing (the time of narrator I includes the time of narrator II). One must look beyond the frame to the ideal function of "containing-concealing," which as a general structural principle pervades the novella at all levels in a variety of manners and for a variety of reasons. In like manner, one must also look beyond the mere fact of "puzzling similarity" in structural and thematic links between frame and central narrative; one will then recognize a second and equally important structural pattern, namely "resemblingdissembling."

In calling attention to the dual nature of the Chinese box technique, I am pointing to the presence of two kinds of symmetry in the novella and to an even more basic structural principle, namely to the general mode of symmetrical patterning. This is an inherent aspect of poetic realism, but seldom is it used to the degree to which Storm employs it in Aquis submersus.

A wealth of similarities and correspondence stands out even on first reading. Structurally the frame and central narrative resemble one another in the bipartite arrangement of each. They are connected through a number of physical objects, e.g., the paintings, two of these again connected by the presence of the boy in each. The frame narrator finds a second manuscript, which operates like a second book fulfilling the prophecy of an earlier one. The motto of the work ("Gleich so wie Rauch und Staub verschwindt,/ also sind auch die Menschenkind") is repeated at the outset of manuscript II, but in a second language. Within the central narrative the story Johannes tells is itself a repetition of earlier family history. But these are obvious similarities and deserve little comment. I have chosen to attack the problem of "like-look alike" by concentrating on three kinds of correspondences: symbolic correspondences (these are obvious but more interesting than the one-to-one correspondences suggested above. The Buhz-episode will illustrate this kind of symmetry); elements which apparently correspond, but in fact do not (the imagery of Johannisnacht); elements for which there is no apparent correspondence in the surface structure although we look for and expect one (the meaning of Johannis).

The Innenerzählung of Aquis submersus begins with Johannes' return to his patron's estate in 1661, on the fourth Sunday of Easter, through a landscape still showing the scars of the recent Swedish-Polish war. The landscape is realistically described, but it is also endowed with symbolic significance and points to human situations in the novella. One of the first things to stand out in the landscape as Johannes approaches the estate is an aged tree [in Köster's Samtliche Werke, 1919-24], which stirs his memories, and which—from a formal point of view—introduces a number of motifs or symbolic situations to be repeated later. It also introduces through successive Rückblende, thus compounding the narrative technique of box within box, three of the four other major figures of the novella: Katharina, the daughter; Kurt von der Risch, his archrival; Bas' Ursel, the aunt. The most important episode associated with the tree is the so-called Ztafe-episode. When Johannes and Katharina were children, Johannes once killed an owl, der Buhz, that was threatening a lovely bird. The passage is obviously allegorical and has been pointed to before: [in E. Allen McCormick's Theodor Storm's Novellen . . . , 1964] Katharina is the bird; Kurt von der Risch is der Buhz. But neither the allegory nor the flow of associations stops here. In the course of this first reminiscence other and later bits of childhood memories are reenacted almost as though they had been youthful prophecies of what was to come. One example of this is the Haarraufen between Kurt and Johannes, a kind of ritualistic preparation for the far more serious competition between them in later life. By only intimating the dreadful outcome of events of the past Storm automatically pushes the mind of the reader forward into an unknown yet already fulfilled future.

Protecting the lovely bird and defending Katharina, wrestling with Kurt as a child and struggling with him as adult are examples of symbolic correspondences. At the realistic level the events are not the same, yet they are clearly meant to suggest each other. What is the same in each is the symbolic action. The Buhz-episode introduces a nexus of motifs, most of which partake of the same general symbolic structure and apply to both Johannes and Katharina, thus suggesting the general similarity of the fate of each. This is best clarified by examining the motif of "saviour" introduced by the Buhz-episode. In a manner of speaking, each is cursed (Johannes, indirectly, by Katharina's brother Wulf, when he first returns to the estate; Katharina, by the ancestral wight that "haunts" the story) and each seems to become at various times the "saviour" of the other, though ultimately each is ineffectual.

Symbolically the Buhz-episode is repeated later in the novella when Katharina opens the door from Herr Gerhardus' room and petitions her "saviour" directly: "Denket Ihr noch, Johannes, wie Ihr einst den Buhz mit eurem Bogen niederschosset?" The symbolic action is repeated in two events in Johannes' own life. When upon his return he first enters the estate and crosses the courtyard, he is accosted—by the threatening beasts belonging to Katharina's brother. Suddenly a voice from above ("eine rauhe, aber mit gar traute Stimme"—viz., Dietrich) calls them off, and Johannes is saved for the moment. Immediately following, Johannes receives the indirect "curse": "wer mir in die Quere kommt, den hetz ich in des Teufels Rachen!" Midway through the novella the curse is fulfilled. After a fight with Kurt, Wulf does indeed set the dogs on Johannes. Once again he crosses the courtyard, the garden where, according to Bas Ursel, nothing happens, and now a sweet voice from above (Katharina) seems to hold out salvation. Johannes ascends the ivy-covered tower, and both plunge into misery.

The careful reader is struck by such doubling of images and events and begins to except counterparts. But not all counterparts are what they seem. The imagery of Johannisnacht best illustrates this modification of the compositional technique.

It is not uncommon in discussing poetic realism to draw attention to the ways in which the movement has taken material from German romanticism. There is perhaps no better example of a realist's use of romantic material than Storm's portrayal of the night of love that takes place on St. John's Eve. The effectiveness of the scene lies to a considerable degree in the contrast between superstition and Märchenmotif and realism, a contrast which underscores the ironic, desperate conclusions the novella reaches.

The Johannisnacht-episodo is filled with things that seem what they are not, beginning first with the Johannisfünkchen that bedazzle Johannes like will-o'-the-wisps. Even more significant is the call of the nightingales that first directs Johannes to the garden outside Katharina's window. In general, Storm is extremely careful in his use of bird imagery and is undoubtedly familiar with the tradition that associates the nightingale with seduction and death. What sounds so sweet to Johannes is the lure of destruction. Though for the moment the garden seems to offer refuge, he is led to disaster as surely as he would have been had he stopped and faced the dogs which Wulf set upon him. He thanks God for benevolent guidance: "Aber Gott gab mir seinen gnädigen Schutz." Though meant seriously by Johannes, this statement, read in the context of the entire novella, can have only an ironic meaning.

The cry of the nightingale and the sound of the ever present water are heard just as Johannes enters the "mountain of Venus." The allusion first strikes the reader as hackneyed, but it is more than simple allusion. The reader who views Storm as "harmlos und bieder" can easily overlook the suggestiveness of the scene: Johannes has indeed been drawn into the Venusberg, understood as mons veneris. But in the present rendering of the Venuslegende there is no "getreuer Eckart" to remind him that he risks perdition if he enters. Or perhaps there is—in the ominous warnings that precede the scene, in which case there is added irony in the words "O Hüter, Hüter, war dein Ruf so fern?"

The effectiveness of the allusion to the Venuslegende is intensified by the overlapping suggestion of Märchenmotive in the mythic significance of the scene. Like a Rapunzel, sleeping beauty, or some other bride-figure found in a "perilous, forbidden or tabooed place" [Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism . . . , 1957], Katharina sleeps in lonely isolation in her tower which, on another level, particularly in spatial organization, harks back to the symbolic imagery of the tree and the "saviour" motif.

The effectiveness of the "sleeping beauty" scene of the Liebesnacht is indescribable: Johannes, in whose ears Wulfs curse must still be ringing, does not find himself driven into the devil's maw; loving arms await him. Yet disaster has only been postponed. How appropriate that Storm should have chosen the tower for the location of the scene. He not only combines the sexual symbolism of the tower and of the ivy with the Venuslegende and the suggestion of the Tageslied to communicate what at that time, considering Storm's audience, could not be expressed directly; he also reminds us of the pinnacle, "the top of the wheel of fortune, the point from which the tragic hero falls" [Frye]. The tower (Katharina's room) is "der Höhepunkt" in at least two senses: figuratively, it is the zenith of Johannes' fortune, which plunges immediately; it is also ironically appropriate, for the movement is tragic from this point on and, quite literally, the only way is down! It is a remarkable agreement of literal and symbolic action.

The second important variation of the like-look alike technique during the Liebesnacht involves the curse and the appearance of the "ghost," which are further illustrations of the "box" technique compounded: within the central narrative the story Johannes tells is itself a repetition of earlier family history. Katharina tells of a girl in the family who loved a man beneath her own social estate, who refused to marry the one her mother had chosen for her, and who was consequently "cursed" by the evil ancestress. The girl drowned herself in the pond where the bulrushes now grow. The mother's painting still hangs in the great gallery, and her eyes reflect the same evil glint that shines in Wulf's. When Katharina says that a spirit appears when danger threatens, one assumes she is speaking of the evil ancestress whose portrait Johannes has seen. Yet the spirit is associated with the Binsensumpf where Katharina's counterpart committed suicide. If there is a ghost at all then it must be the spirit of the early-day Katharina, not the Ahnfrau, and its "appearance" is as much a (psychic) warning as a threat. That Johannes and Katharina should misread the warnings (or mistake the "ghost's" identity) is understandable, just as it is understandable that Katharina should see a similarity between her life and her relative's and feel that she, too, had been cursed. Storm's novellas abound with portraits of human failures blind to the flaws in their own personalities, for whom "fate" (or "heredity") is an easy excuse.

The strange discrepancy in the identity of the ghost (for Johannes and Katharina) raises questions about the reality of the ghost (for the narrator). When, after the night of love, Johannes finally descends the tower, he sees two things: Katharina waving to him; the same action duplicated in the movement of a ghostly hand, like the hand of death, accompanying Katharina's farewell gesture. In trying to explain what he has seen Johannes thinks first of the legend of the "curse," but then lays it to his own overwrought emotions. Each explanation is wrong; he is being threatened by something substantially more dangerous than a ghost. The bony hand, "gleich der Hand des Todes," belongs to Bas Ursel, whose room, Storm is careful to tell the reader early in the novella, is at the base of the tower, facing the garden, its window partly covered by the ivy up which Johannes must climb to reach Katharina's room. The atmosphere is provocative, but there is no ghost. Storm is much interested in the superstitions and mythic background of northern Germany and uses such elements with considerable effectiveness, but in general he remains the realist. He makes it easy to discover the distance between himself and his characters by often providing a debunker (as in Der Schimmelreiter) or otherwise offering a rational explanation for the irrational. In the case of Aquis submersus it is more effective for Storm to leave things unexplained.

By this point in the argument the various pieces of Storm's puzzle begin to fall into place, and I now turn to the last refinement of the concealing-resembling technique, viz., to those elements for which no correspondence is at all apparent, but which must be supplied through implication by the reader. One case of this is seen in Storm's choice of dates for the major events, especially his choice of St. John's Eve.

Theodor Storm was, if not an atheist, at least an agnostic, though a somewhat sentimental and apologetic one. What led him to write such a churchy story as Aquis submenus, which on its surface, and in its motto, has a perfectly Christian moral? Is the biographical fact relevant to an interpretation? This question comes to mind as one puzzles over the dates of the major events of the novella; almost every one falls on or near a church holiday. What is puzzling is that there is no obvious reason for placing events in relation to the church calendar aside from the "realistic" tenor imparted by giving actual names, dates, and places. Thus one is led to ask if, in keeping with the pattern already established in the novella, there is not some implicit reason for so dating events. One answer is suggested by the dual nature of the holidays. In spite of the fact that church holidays are used to indicate the passage of time, particularly unholy events transpire on these dates. The significance of the days lies not only in the fact that they are church holidays, but that as remnants of an older, pre-Christian culture, they are also pagan festivals, enshrouded in superstition and portending disaster.

The clearest illustration of the dual aspect of the holidays is seen in the choice of midsummer night as the focal point for all other action. There is, of course, no reason to remind anyone of the mood-creating character of the mere mention of Johannisnacht; no night holds such terrors as St. John's Eve. There are, however, some practices and superstitions commonly associated with the day which it would be well to review because of the way in which Storm employs them. For example, one standard study of German superstition [Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 1931-32] tells us: "Allgemein heisst es, dass Johannis eine, zwei (einen 'tiefen' Schwimmer und einen 'hohen' Klimmer) oder drei Personen zum Opfer fordere. Eine muss in der Luft, eine in Feuer und eine im Wasser umkommen." There are especially many superstitions involving death by drowning on this day. The fires of St. John's Eve are connected not only with the summer solstice, but are also part of an exorcism ceremony for witches. Often the effigy of a witch is displayed, then thrown in the water, burned, or buried. This is part of the general rite of Todaustragen, killing death. Also from the same source: "Und allgemein heisst es gleichzeitig, dass jedes Gewässer alljährlich, zuweilein zur Mittagstunde, sein Opfer fordert, zuweilen ein unschuldiges Kind." That Storm was not only interested in, but actively collected, the folklore of his area is well known. Just how much of the superstitious element in Aquis submersus is intentional and how much is unconscious and residual is, of course, impossible to tell. Whether consciously or unconsciously, many of the elements just cited reappear in Aquis submersus and connect various parts of the novella by association.

One might easily argue that the traditional three victims are found: the child (water), the witch (fire), and Katharina, whom one is to associate with the witch, in the omen of the three death shrouds seen flying through the air above the house of the pastor who has bought his pastorate by marrying Katharina. The ominous character of the water has already been suggested by McCormick. The exorcising aspect of Johannis is repeated in the Hexenverbrennung of the last day. The fire imagery of Johannis is obvious throughout. It recurs not only in the burning of the witch, but even earlier in the disconcerting glow of the Johannisfünkchen, and in the later sequel to that scene, in the torches of the revelers on the night before little Johannes drowns. The Hochzeitschmaus is akin to the drunken revel of the midsummer festival (each with overtones of die wilde Jagd, suggesting an overlap with the Venuslegende). Just at the moment when "die tanzenden Leuchten" of the wedding party suddenly come out of the darkness Johannes remembers why there was something strange about the eyes of the little boy at the parsonage: they remind him of Katharina. That the "demonic" forces of Johannis still hold sway is seen in Johannes' inability (or refusal) to think through the significance of this discovery. If these are truly Katharina's eyes, then he has every reason to avoid the parsonage.

The motifs of death and new life (killing death) which lie at the heart of the midsummer festival are reflected in the other explicit dates given for the action, in the return of Johannes at the Easter season, and again, roughly half way around the calendar, in the judgment of the witch (and of Katharina and Johannes). The same is also true of the contrasting intent and effect of the painting which Johannes considers his masterpiece, the Raising of Lazarus.

One may now return to the question of why Storm chose these precise dates for the major events with at least some hope of providing an answer. The interrelation of image and event is complete in Aquis submersus. There is an inner connection between the very choice of the Unglückstag and everything contained in the novella. Johannis provides a core of motifs that unifies the work. It is a church festival for which there is almost no Christian religious significance, certainly none in the novella. As such it suggests an ironic attitude toward religion that runs throughout the novella. Finally, it suggests an ironic connection between the events of the story and the meaning of the central narrator's name.

Certainly many a reader has wondered that Storm should have made the protagonist's name so much like the name of the day on which the chief events of the novella occur. There is no apparent reason why he should have done so, though the repetition of the name is striking (seen also in the son, Johannes, and in Johannisfünkchen, for which there are many other names). Here, too, one seems confronted by things that are, yet are not, the same. The clue to the puzzle is found by having recourse to a second language.

Throughout the novella there is a single prayer that recurs: "God have mercy." In almost every instance that God is mentioned it is in the role of merciful God. Barmherzigkeit and Gnade are his chief attributes. I have mentioned the irony of the situation the first time the attribution occurs, when the call of the nightingale directs Johannes to the garden ("Aber Gott gab mir seinen gnädigen Schutz"). The second reference to God's mercy is in the prayer: "O du mein Gott und mein Erlöser, der du die Barmherzigkeit bist, wo war sie in dieser Stunde, wo hatte meine Seele sie zu suchen?" Here the duplicity is provocative. Does "sie" refer to Katharina, or to God's "Barmherzigkeit," or to both? Precisely at the moment Johannes thinks of "Gottes Barmherzigkeit," he hears someone calling his name outside his window. It is, of course, the grim pastor who will lead Johannes back to "sie" and into the circumstances that bring about the final disaster of the tale.

The reference occurs three more times, once in connection with the "witch," whose poor body has been abused to please public opinion. Of this Johannes says: "Ich aber, und mit mir mein viellieber Bruder, hatte so meine eigenen Gedanken von dem Hexenwesen und freuete mich, dass unser Herrgott—denn der war es doch wohl gewesen—das arme junge Mensch so gnädiglich in seinen Schoss genommen hatte." It occurs a second time when, just before going down into the village, Johannes sees off to his left "das Meer im ersten Strahl der lieben Gottessonne leuchten." A sudden feeling of anxiety rushes over him, and he quickly utters the prayer:

O Herr, mein Gott und Christ
Sei gnädig mit uns allen,
 Die wir in Sünd gefallen,
 Der du die Liebe bist!

The last time it comes from the lips of the dark pastor who orders Johannes: "Gehet itzo! Aber gehet in Frieden: und möge Gott uns allen gnädig sein!" What gives added poignancy to each utterance is the recognition that the prayer "möge Gott . . . gnädig sein" is a veiled form of Johannes' own name, a German approximation of the Hebrew meaning "Gott ist meine Gnade."

The symmetry of Aquis submersus is so complete and the technique of containing-resembling so carefully executed, it is hard to imagine that the symmetry of names, the meaning of "Johannes," the recurrence of the prayer "God have mercy," and the inverted symmetry of Christian holiday and pagan rite are not intentional, or at least the unconscious stamp of a sweeping artistic vision. There is here, as in the box within the story, a concealed clue to one meaning of the novella. That may make Aquis submersus seem like a mystery story, but it is a mystery story, starting with the detective work of narrator I, who sets out to discover the meaning of C.P.A.S. and the identity of the boy and uncovers something altogether different and unexpected. The prayer "God have mercy" is a futile prayer, a petition incapable of fulfillment. It is this that gives the novella such pathos. Undoubtedly, Johannes and Katharina, perhaps even the frame narrator, are believers—in God as well as in ghosts. But Storm is not. He has placed his seventeenth-century tale into the metaphysical frame of his own time—an absurd situation. There is no hope for his people! Considering this, how bitterly ironic the words of Johannes seem: "Und als dann meine Blicke voll Seligkeit auf ihrem Antlitz weideten, da sprach sie, fast erstickt von meinen Küssen: 'Es ist ein langes, banges Leben! O Jesu Christ, vergib mir diese Stunde!'—Es kam eine Antwort; aber es war die harte Stimme jenes Mannes, aus dessen Munde ich itzt zum ersten Male ihren Namen hörte. Der Ruf kam von drüben aus dem Predigergarten, und noch einmal und härter rief es: 'Katharina!'"

There is no answer for suffering man other than that which his fellow man can give. There is no mercy. Aquis submersus is the novellistic demonstration of this fundamental attitude toward life. Seen in these terms the novella becomes a lengthy and embittered play on a word, an extended and ironic response produced by Storm's own disbelief. R. M. Browning, in his fine study of superstition in Storm, refers repeatedly to the notion of "living life as a quotation." If this is true for Storm's characters, then the pithiest and most pathetic attempt is seen in Johannes, whose name provides the Lebenszitat, but with a message just the opposite of what it seems to be.

The symmetry and irony of Aquis submersus are far more pervasive than one could ever hope to indicate in full; I have chosen only the most obvious examples. I want to add just one last example, taken from the paintings, to suggest the scope of Storm's symmetrical patterning. McCormick has argued that there is symbolic significance in the fact that "Johannes is allowed to work at his profession throughout the story and thereby keep painting—as object and action—in the foreground of events." Though he is thinking chiefly of the three paintings mentioned in the frame, there is a very special significance in the union of image and event in the Lazarus painting. In some ways it is the most important of all the paintings in the novella. It is introduced right at the outset of the second manuscript and is the last thing mentioned by the frame narrator at the close of the manuscript. The commission to paint it is the ostensible reason why Johannes comes to the city from where he will eventually be led to Katharina. Work on it and on the painting of the village preacher progress side by side, although the difficulty Johannes has in finishing the Lazarus painting, in contrast with the other paintings (particularly that of his dead son), is striking. For some reason he just cannot seem to get Lazarus raised! The Lazarus painting and the painting of the village preacher are finished at about the same time—and, finally, the Lazarus painting disappears altogether. Just as the petition "God have mercy" is a futile prayer, the attempt embodied in the Lazarus painting is a futile attempt.

If the intent of painting is to memorialize and thereby to save something from the ravages of time, then how ironic that precisely that painting whose subject reflects so immediately such an attempt, which is thus associated with the mythic purpose of the Johannisnacht (killing death), and which in fact practices the general theme of the novella, should disappear. Contrary to McCormick's opinion, paintings, rather than saving something from death, seem to destroy, and in the one most obvious attempt to reverse the process, the painting itself is destroyed. Thus the novella does not express the attempt to overcome transiency, but represents Storm's gradually maturing recognition that the attempt is doomed to failure.

The painting of Lazarus is one more example of something that is not what it seems to be. The irony of its disappearance is matched only by the irony of the meaning of the names Johannes and Johannisnacht, given the outcome of the action. Mainland's metaphor of the puzzle is more fitting than he knew. The interesting point in the relation of the "boxes" is that they are meant to look alike, yet ultimately—and this is the "superlative achievement of skill" Mainland expects and cannot find—they are not alike. Implicitly, simply through the juxtaposition of names and events, not through anything said explicitly, Storm manages to say in Aquis submersus just the opposite of what he seems to be saying. But while that may sound like the proper definition of irony (Aquis submersus the formal is raised to thematic significance and is the symbolic source of all meaning.