After the completion of his imaginative writings a decided change in Storm's prose style began to take place. Formerly the lyrical element lay like a haze over and about objects and persons, and even now it does not disappear. Yet it no longer blurs and obliterates the outlines and connections, but rather streams out of the objects represented, as a fragrance rises from a flower. The first beginnings of this style are already noticeable in _At the Castle_ (1861), in which the problems of class differences and of enlightenment form to a certain extent the backbone of the narrative, and in _At the University_ (1862), which for a story of Storm's at that period contains a great wealth of incidents. But it was in such works as _In the Village on the Heath_ and _At Cousin Christian's_ that the poet first attained a purely objective narrative style. That he himself realized this is clear from his correspondence. On the twenty-fourth of January, 1873, he writes to Hebbel's biographer Kuh with reference to _In the Village on the Heath_: "I think I have shown by this that I can also write a story without the atmosphere of a distinct mood (Dunstkreis einer bestimmten Stimmung). I do not mean a mood which is spontaneously developed during the reading from the facts given, but a mood furnished _a priori_ by the author." Hand in hand with the development of this "epic" style goes the transition to realism which we find also in Storm's poems. In prose it is best represented by works like _Eekenhof_ and _Der Herr Etatsrat_, or _Hans and Heinz Kirch_ and _Two-Souled_. Here the poet shrinks from no harshness. We find striking portraits the lines of which are drawn with a sharp, unflattering touch. Psychic conditions of the most brutal kind are portrayed and are made the more telling because it is almost only their effects that are given. In the same way the external world stands chiefly before us in its appearances while the conditions that have led to these appearances are neglected. Finally, Storm endeavors to step beyond the bounds of pure narrative. He seizes upon material of a dramatic nature and seeks to retain--nay more, to bring out--its dramatic character, even in the epic form. In one of his letters he calls the "Novelle" the epic sister of the drama, and goes on to say that it treats of the deepest problems of human life and requires for its perfection to be centred about some conflict. Such are works like _The Sons of the Senator_, where individual will is pitted against individual will; _Renate_ or _At the Brewer's_, where individuals struggle against a multitude who are sunk in error and superstition; and, above all, _The Rider of the White Horse_, where the individual wrestles with the mass, the man with the most elementary forces of nature.