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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.
1life so hides it that a man knows not his work which he has generated in the faith, yet in breaking the earthly body it will be manifest. Seeing we know this we should let no fear or terror keep us back, for we shall well reap and enjoy eternally. What we have here sown in anguish and weariness, that will comfort us eternally. Amen. CHAPTER XIV WE cannot say that the outward world is God, or the speaking Word ; or that the outward man is God, That is only the expressed Word, which has stiffened itself in union with the elements. I say, the inward world is the heaven where God dwells ; and the outward world is expressed out of the inward, through the moving of the eternal speaking Word, and enclosed between a beginning and an end. The inward world abides in the eternal speaking Word. The eternal Word speaks it into Being through Wisdom, out of its own powers, colours, and virtue, as a great mystery from eternity. This Being is a breathing from the Word in the 122 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME Wisdom ; it has the power of generation in itself, and introduces itself into forms, after the manner of the generation of the eternal Word, or, as I might say, out of the Wisdom in the Word.
2Therefore there is nothing nigh unto or far off from God ; one world is in the other and all are one as soul and body are in each other, and time and eternity. The eternal speaking Word rules through and over all ; it works from eternity to eternity ; and though it can neither be apprehended nor conceived, yet its work is conceived, for this is the formed Word, of which the working Word is the life. The eternal speaking Word is the divine understanding or sound. That which is brought forth from the love-desire into forms, that, I say, is the natural and creaturely understanding and sound which was in the Word; as it is said, In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The harmony of hearing, seeing, feeling, CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 123 tasting, and smelling, is the true intellective life. When one power enters into another, then they embrace each other in the sound ; and when they are become one they mutually awaken and know each other. In this knowledge consists the true understanding, which, according to the nature of the eternal wisdom, is immeasurable and abyssal, being of the One which is All. Therefore one only will, if it has divine light in it, may draw from this fountain and behold infinity. From which contemplation this pen has wrote.
3In the light of God (which is called the kingdom of heaven) the sound is wholly soft, pleasant, lovely and pure ; yea, as a stillness in comparison with our outward gross speaking and sounding. It is as if the mind did play and melodize in a kingdom of joy within itself, and did then hear in a most entire inward manner a sweet, pleasing melody and tune ; and 124 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME yet outwardly did neither hear nor understand it. For in the divine light all is subtle, in manner as the thoughts play and make mutual melody in one another. And yet there is a real, intelligible, distinct sound and speech used by the angels, according to their own property, in the kingdom of glory. The powers of the formed and manifested Word, in their love - desire, do introduce themselves, according to the property of all the powers, into an external being, where, as in a mansion, they may act their love-play, and so have somewhat wherewith and wherein mutually to play and melodize one with another, in their wrestling sport of love. God, who is a Spirit, has by and through his manifestation introduced himself into distinct spirits, which are the voices of his eternal pregnant harmony in the manifested Word of his great kingdom of joy : CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 125 they are God's instrument, in which his Spirit melodizes in his kingdom of joy ; they are angels, the flames of fire and light, in a living, understanding dominion.
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.
1life so hides it that a man knows not his work which he has generated in the faith, yet in breaking the earthly body it will be manifest. Seeing we know this we should let no fear or terror keep us back, for we shall well reap and enjoy eternally. What we have here sown in anguish and weariness, that will comfort us eternally. Amen. CHAPTER XIV WE cannot say that the outward world is God, or the speaking Word ; or that the outward man is God, That is only the expressed Word, which has stiffened itself in union with the elements. I say, the inward world is the heaven where God dwells ; and the outward world is expressed out of the inward, through the moving of the eternal speaking Word, and enclosed between a beginning and an end. The inward world abides in the eternal speaking Word. The eternal Word speaks it into Being through Wisdom, out of its own powers, colours, and virtue, as a great mystery from eternity. This Being is a breathing from the Word in the 122 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME Wisdom ; it has the power of generation in itself, and introduces itself into forms, after the manner of the generation of the eternal Word, or, as I might say, out of the Wisdom in the Word.
2Therefore there is nothing nigh unto or far off from God ; one world is in the other and all are one as soul and body are in each other, and time and eternity. The eternal speaking Word rules through and over all ; it works from eternity to eternity ; and though it can neither be apprehended nor conceived, yet its work is conceived, for this is the formed Word, of which the working Word is the life. The eternal speaking Word is the divine understanding or sound. That which is brought forth from the love-desire into forms, that, I say, is the natural and creaturely understanding and sound which was in the Word; as it is said, In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The harmony of hearing, seeing, feeling, CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 123 tasting, and smelling, is the true intellective life. When one power enters into another, then they embrace each other in the sound ; and when they are become one they mutually awaken and know each other. In this knowledge consists the true understanding, which, according to the nature of the eternal wisdom, is immeasurable and abyssal, being of the One which is All. Therefore one only will, if it has divine light in it, may draw from this fountain and behold infinity. From which contemplation this pen has wrote.
3In the light of God (which is called the kingdom of heaven) the sound is wholly soft, pleasant, lovely and pure ; yea, as a stillness in comparison with our outward gross speaking and sounding. It is as if the mind did play and melodize in a kingdom of joy within itself, and did then hear in a most entire inward manner a sweet, pleasing melody and tune ; and 124 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME yet outwardly did neither hear nor understand it. For in the divine light all is subtle, in manner as the thoughts play and make mutual melody in one another. And yet there is a real, intelligible, distinct sound and speech used by the angels, according to their own property, in the kingdom of glory. The powers of the formed and manifested Word, in their love - desire, do introduce themselves, according to the property of all the powers, into an external being, where, as in a mansion, they may act their love-play, and so have somewhat wherewith and wherein mutually to play and melodize one with another, in their wrestling sport of love. God, who is a Spirit, has by and through his manifestation introduced himself into distinct spirits, which are the voices of his eternal pregnant harmony in the manifested Word of his great kingdom of joy : CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 125 they are God's instrument, in which his Spirit melodizes in his kingdom of joy ; they are angels, the flames of fire and light, in a living, understanding dominion.
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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