Michael Dirda of the Washington Post reviews Theodor Storm’s The Rider on the White Horse.
Throughout his fiction Storm repeatedly evokes the beauty of nature, “the sharp odor of the golden tansy blossoms,” the “grieving voices” of sea birds, the “secret music of the summer night.” But he also celebrates the simple pleasures of long ago: “We had jokes and riddles and rhymes at the table; and when they served dessert, we sang all the lovely songs that are now forgotten.” Somehow, he makes this nostalgia avoid the taint of mawkishness. Sometimes, this is through a sudden harsh truth: “For the first time she was facing life directly, in all its barren poverty: it was a path that seemed endless, dry; until, suddenly, it did end: you died.”
