Boehme rests his hand on a stone wall among the plants.

What stands still in a stone

Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), a German religious writer and shoemaker, received an unusual question associated with Hans von Schellendorf and a tomb monument. Moisture was said to have appeared at the eyes of a sculpted figure. Böhme begins his reply by making clear how difficult it is to interpret such a report from a distance. Before addressing the particular occurrence he has to explain what, in his understanding, might happen in a stone at all.

A letter about a tomb monument

[…] the Elementall vegetable life standeth mute and still therein, and it is shut up with the first Impression […]

– Jacob Boehme, The Epistles of Jacob Behmen, 1649, Letter XXIV, 3.[1]

He takes a term for the life that shows itself in a growing plant and associates it, unexpectedly, with standing still. Somebody who watches a plant can return after a while and discover a new leaf. A stone ordinarily offers no such succession of outward signs. Böhme nevertheless reads its stillness as a particular condition. Something is shut within an initial formation and cannot therefore show itself to an observer in the way a plant does.

Stillness as a condition of its own

The question about the tomb acquires a particular tension. A face can be carved in stone so that a viewer reads a human expression in it. If water becomes visible at its eyes, image, material and memory of a person come into contact in the act of perception. Böhme's cautious letter resists settling the difficulty by a quick verdict. The account of standing still keeps attention on the stone itself for a while before the reader goes on to ask what the apparent tears might mean.