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Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.
The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.
Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.
That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.
The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.
1God, for these are the food of its life ; and it sings the paradisical songs of praise concerning the pleasant fruit of paradise which grows in the divine virtue and is the food of the heavenly and eternal body. Can this be no joy and rejoicing ? Should not that be a pleasant thing, to eat heavenly bread with the many thousand sorts of angels, and to rejoice in their communion and fellowship ? What can possibly be named which can be more pleasant ? Where there is no fear, no anger, no death ; where every voice and speech is of the divine salvation, power, strength and might ; and this voice going forth into eternity. There is the place where Paul heard words unutterable that no man can express. CHAPTER VII THANKS be to God who has regenerated me, by water and the HolyGhost, to be a living creature, so that I can in his Light see my great inbred vices, which are in my flesh. Thus now I live in the spirit of this world in my flesh, and my flesh serves the spirit of this world; but my mind serves God. My flesh is generated in this world and is ruled by the quintessence of the stars and elements, which dwells in it and is master of the body and the outward life ; but my mind is regenerated in God and loves God. And although I cannot now comprehend and hold fast the divine wisdom, because my mind falls into sins, yet the spirit of this world 58 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 59 shall not always thus hold captive my mind.
2For the Virgin, the divine Wisdom, has given me her promise not to leave me in any misery ; she will come to help me in the Son of Wisdom. I must hold fast to him, and he will bring me to her in paradise. I will make the venture, and go through the thistles and thorns as well as I can, till I find my native country where Wisdom dwells. I rely upon her faithful promise, when she appeared to me, that she would turn all my mourning into great joy. When I lay upon the mountain at midnight, so that all the trees fell upon me and all the storms and winds beat upon me, and Antichrist gaped at me with his open jaws to devour me, then she came and comforted me and took me for her own. Therefore I am but the more cheerful, and care not for him ; he rules over me no further than over the transitory house of flesh, whose patron he is ; he may take 60 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME that quite away, but so I shall come into my native country. Yet he is not absolute lord over that house, he is but God's ape ; for as an ape plays all manner of tricks and pranks to make itself sport, and would fain seem to be the finest and the nimblest of beasts, so also does he. His power hangs on the great tree of this world, and a storm of wind can blow it away.
3Thou wilt ask, What is the new regeneration ? or how is that done in man? Hear and see, close not thy mind, let it not be filled by the spirit of this world with its might and pomp. Lay hold upon thy mind and break through the spirit of this world entirely ; yield thy mind unto the kind love of God ; make thy purpose earnest and strong to overcome the pleasure of this world and not to regard it. Consider that thou art not at home in this world, but art a strange guest, made captive in a prison ; cry and call to him who has the CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 61
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1God, for these are the food of its life ; and it sings the paradisical songs of praise concerning the pleasant fruit of paradise which grows in the divine virtue and is the food of the heavenly and eternal body. Can this be no joy and rejoicing ? Should not that be a pleasant thing, to eat heavenly bread with the many thousand sorts of angels, and to rejoice in their communion and fellowship ? What can possibly be named which can be more pleasant ? Where there is no fear, no anger, no death ; where every voice and speech is of the divine salvation, power, strength and might ; and this voice going forth into eternity. There is the place where Paul heard words unutterable that no man can express. CHAPTER VII THANKS be to God who has regenerated me, by water and the HolyGhost, to be a living creature, so that I can in his Light see my great inbred vices, which are in my flesh. Thus now I live in the spirit of this world in my flesh, and my flesh serves the spirit of this world; but my mind serves God. My flesh is generated in this world and is ruled by the quintessence of the stars and elements, which dwells in it and is master of the body and the outward life ; but my mind is regenerated in God and loves God. And although I cannot now comprehend and hold fast the divine wisdom, because my mind falls into sins, yet the spirit of this world 58 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 59 shall not always thus hold captive my mind.
2For the Virgin, the divine Wisdom, has given me her promise not to leave me in any misery ; she will come to help me in the Son of Wisdom. I must hold fast to him, and he will bring me to her in paradise. I will make the venture, and go through the thistles and thorns as well as I can, till I find my native country where Wisdom dwells. I rely upon her faithful promise, when she appeared to me, that she would turn all my mourning into great joy. When I lay upon the mountain at midnight, so that all the trees fell upon me and all the storms and winds beat upon me, and Antichrist gaped at me with his open jaws to devour me, then she came and comforted me and took me for her own. Therefore I am but the more cheerful, and care not for him ; he rules over me no further than over the transitory house of flesh, whose patron he is ; he may take 60 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME that quite away, but so I shall come into my native country. Yet he is not absolute lord over that house, he is but God's ape ; for as an ape plays all manner of tricks and pranks to make itself sport, and would fain seem to be the finest and the nimblest of beasts, so also does he. His power hangs on the great tree of this world, and a storm of wind can blow it away.
3Thou wilt ask, What is the new regeneration ? or how is that done in man? Hear and see, close not thy mind, let it not be filled by the spirit of this world with its might and pomp. Lay hold upon thy mind and break through the spirit of this world entirely ; yield thy mind unto the kind love of God ; make thy purpose earnest and strong to overcome the pleasure of this world and not to regard it. Consider that thou art not at home in this world, but art a strange guest, made captive in a prison ; cry and call to him who has the CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 61
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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