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Part of the book: Techniques of Solipsism

Terence John Rogers

MHRA Texts and Dissertations 1

Modern Humanities Research Association

ModernGermanFictionPoetryopen

Abstract.  To suggest that Storm’s early work (or for that matter the bulk of his work) is ‘about’ loneliness is to say nothing very new; the best of Storm criticism makes the point, and so does the worst. But opinions are less united when we come to ask the more interesting questions which the ‘suggestion that’ brings with it; in what, if anything, lies the uniqueness of Storm’s enactments of the lonely condition? Does his creative concern with that condition legitimise it, make it worth while, as a subject for art? Does it show through to us convincingly as another possible or actual way of being alive? What is it like to be lonely, and why do people become lonely, in Storm’s world? An adequate answer to this last pair of questions will take us, I think, most of the way towards answering the others; so I shall try in what follows to give an account, based on a number of his early stories, of ‘what it is like and why it happens’ in the world of Storm’s fiction at this time. The state seems to me to be delineated in a curiously pure way in the first story; and the others enlarge upon it, adding new aspects and above all hinting at reasons, which run deep into the nature of human living. Note: The endnotes to Part I are in the end matter of the book, not in this PDF.

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