Novalis compares a fern frond with a pattern in a stone.

Which stone belongs with which plant?

Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801), the German poet and mining official who wrote as Novalis, asks an unusual question in his notes on natural history. A botanist identifying a plant would ordinarily compare it with other plants. Novalis would extend the search to a mineral cabinet and to the animal kingdom. He gives no name for such a set of three. The form of his question offers a better clue to what he hopes to discover.

A question with three terms

Should not a stone and an animal correspond to every plant?

– Novalis, Fragments, 1837, p. 251.[1]

Much depends on the word “every.” An occasional resemblance is easy to imagine. A branching mark on a slab of stone may look like a twig. If every plant had a counterpart, however, even the least conspicuous specimen would invite investigation. There would also be a third member to account for. Someone who simply matched the outlines of two objects would have answered only part of the question.

What passes from one form into another?

In a nearby note Novalis calls plants dead stones. That change of wording introduces time. Two things may correspond while both lie in front of the observer. To call a plant a dead stone requires an observer to imagine one form of existence ending while something of it persists in another. Novalis leaves both possibilities open. A pressed leaf and a piece of slate would have separate places in a cabinet. On the poet’s page they can remain together long enough to ask what each might disclose about the other.