The Entanglements of Matter, Mind, and Meaning: Novalis’s “Elastic Mode of Thinking”

Abstract

This article explores the methodological, aesthetic, and ecological implications of Novalis’s dynamic conception of matter, called “original elastic fluid.” By elucidating a set of this fluid’s generative and performative capacities, Novalis explains the non-teleological and contingent emergence of natural objects and organic forms as well as mental figures and poetic genres. This article argues that Novalis’s model of a “dynamic materialism” resonates with recent new materialist discourses that emphasize the agency of inorganic matter. More specifically, Karen Barad’s “material-discursive” approach, derived from quantum phenomena that suggest the inseparability of meaning and matter, is comparable to the ways in which Novalis draws on dynamic laws of fluidity to develop an “elastic mode of thinking” and a Romantic conception of prose with a characteristically loose rhythmic structure. A reading of Die Lehrlinge zu Sais as an example of this prose form sheds new light on the entangled relationship between mind and nature and “ecopoetic” approaches to nature.