"Sebastian van Storck": Pater's Exploration Into Nihilism

Abstract

PATER'S CONTEMPT for mere antiquarianism is well known, though his partiality for historical settings is proved by his having set only three of his ten imaginary portraits (short, long, and incomplete) in the nineteenth century. That he had a philosophical bent and an interest in modern issues goes without saying. Suppose that Pater had wanted to explore the problem of nihilistic withdrawal from the democratic, bourgeois society of nineteenth-century England in his usual manner, that is, using a historical setting, concentrating on the mind of one character, and developing still another facet of a theme treated often in his fiction-the relation of philosophy to temperament and experience. He might very well have written Sebastian van Storck. Holland of the mid-seventeenth century provided him with a philosopher whose authority could be thought to confirm some of the character's ideas,' a republican state and a bourgeois society, and a conventional but powerful image for annihilation-the encroaching sea. In other words, by selecting Holland in the mid-seventeenth century as his setting he was able rather easily to create a general air of historical reality; he did not, however, strive for historical accuracy or fullness of detail. He drew very slightly upon the ideas of the philosopher, Spinoza, and not at all upon Spinoza's spirit. Even allowing for some unconscious misinterpretation of Spinoza's ideas, Pater must have known that Se-