SOURCE: "Propitiations: Adalbert Stifter," in Re-Interpretations: Seven Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Literature, Basic Books, 1964, pp. 262-68.

In the following excerpt, Stern analyzes "The Ancient Seal," which he calls one of Stifter's finest works.

In structure and style, "The Ancient Seal" is representative of Stifter's finest work. Like so many of his stories, it revolves round the idea of pathetic irony. Its characters—like those of Henry James's later novels—are endowed with an all but flawless moral perfection, where morality is perfection of mind and heart. This perfection is impaired by the merest single flaw, and it is through this flaw that hostile fate enters into the lives of the two principal characters. And, again as with James, the stylistic devices are concentrated in their intensity first on an infinitely gradual and circumspect evoking of the perfection; however, the sudden, flashlike stroke of fate that destroys all peace...