Fetching
One moment.
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.
1On y verra de fréquentes répétitions , des expressions peu distinguées , et la même né-- gligence de style , ce dont on sera peu étonné quand on se souviendra^ comme je Vai annoncé dans V Aurore , que cet écrivain étoit sans lettres, qu^H étoit né pâtre ^ et qu'il étoit mort cordonnier. On y trouvera aussi , et même plus abondamment encore , de nombreuses et violentes déclamations contre les ministres de la communion religieuse , de laquelle la Saxe et une grande partie de Vjillemagne s'étoient séparées lorsque Vauteur a reçu le jour. J'ai supprimé ici, comme dans V Aurore , quelques uns de ces passages.Pargoûtfaurois préféré de Iss supprimer tousy parce que, sans prétendre justifier tous les ministres de cette communion et les disculper de ce qui leur a été tant reproché , je crois cependant devoir révérer la chaire sur laquelle ils sont assis ; parce que les traits qui se lancent contre eux, n'entraînent que trop souvent Vliomme léger à envelopper le sacerdoce et Icji prêtres dans le même jugement , tandis qu'il seroit si imDU TRADUCTEUR. iij portant d'en faire le départ \ et parce que c'est spécialement àleur respectable ministère ^ qu^auroit du appartenir la manifestation de toutes les merveilles et de toutes les lumières dont le cœur et l'esprit de l'homme auroient un si pressant besoin.
2Mais je n'ai pu me dispenser de laisser subsister une grande partie de ces passages : soit parce qu'il s'y trouve des vérités utiles , qui , malgré leur virulence , ne peuvent déplaire qu'à ceux gui ne seroient pas de sincères et fidèles serviteurs de Dieu ; soit parce que Jacob Béhme , ayant parcouru en théosophle une carrière que personne , avant lui 9 n' avait pas même aperçue , il nia paru que je devois le présenter à mes lecteurs tel qu'il s'est montré lui-même^ c'est-à-dire j non - seulement avec les connaissances extraordinaires qui lui sont propres y mais encore avec les opinions et les préjugés qu'il a pu emprunter , comme naturellement , du siècle et de la contrée où il a vécu. Dans l'avertissement que j'ai mis à la tête de l'Aurore naissante , j'ai donné un précis très court de la vie de l'auteur , et particulièrement de la manière dont il a fait son entrée dans la carrière théosophique. IT ÀVliUTISSEMENT J^y ai joint quelques réflexions sur les dé^ savaniages avec îesfjuels cet auteur depoit se montrer aujourd'hui y en comparaison de y époque où il a écrit y puisqu' alors les idées morales , métaphysiques et religieuses , n^Gr* voient point d redouter , comme dans les époques postérieuresjl'épée de la philosophie et qu^il ne leur eûtjallu que son flambeau. J'y ai exposé les motifs qui y malgré ces désavantages é^'idens^ me soutenoient dans mon entreprise très laborieuse y et plus pénible pour moi que pour un autre , vu qu\l m>on neui'ième lustre accompli , je ne sau'ois pas encore un seul mot d'allemand. J^y ai rendu compte aussi de la marche que j^avois suii^ie dans ma traduction.
3J^y ai prévenu le lecteur de quelques mots barbares qu^ il m^ a fallu inventer y ainsi que de quelques notes interprétatives que j'ai cru nécessaires de joindre au texte y et que j* ai toujours mises en italique et entre deux crochets [ ] y j^y ai annoncé aussi que , tout ce qui se trouvera entre deux parenthèses ( ), sera la propriété de V auteur. Je renvoie à cet avertissement en question pour ce que j^aurois d dire sur la traduction des trois Principes j parce que le plan et le DU TRADUCTEUR. V mode en sont les mêmes que pour celle de l'Aurore naissante. Voici cependant ce que j'ai à ajouter touchant la tr<iduction que je présente aujour^ (Vhzd au lecteur^ et dans laquelle ^ comme dans la précédente , je n'ai visé qud V exactitude y et nullement à V élégance. J'ai supprimé assez fréquemment les deux crochets pour les mots qui ne sont pas français et qu'il nul fallu inventer y parce que j'ai cru suffisant d'employer quelquefois ces signes indicatifs de leur bâtardise. Mais je n'ai supprimé nulle part les deux crochets pçur les notes interprétatives , afin qu'elles ne fussent jamais confondues avec le texte de mon auteur. . Vu l'exlrvme longueur du titre d*i cet ouvrage dans V original allemand., j'ai cru pouvoir r abréger dans ma traduction y cV autant que tous les objets que ce titre offire dans le texte y sont bien plus amplement exposés encore dans la préface de l'auteur. Jacob Bchme donne à chaque instant^ dans cet ouvrage et dans ceux qui suivent , le nom lie vierge à V éternelle sagesse divine , et quelquefois aussi il la désigne sous le nom de SOPHIE. J'ai pris sur moi d'employer y VJ AVER T. PU TRADUCTEUR.
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.
1There will be seen in it frequent repetitions, expressions little distinguished, and the same negligence of style, whereat one will be little astonished when one remembers, as I announced in the Aurora, that this writer was without letters, that he was born a herdsman, and that he died a cobbler. There will also be found in it, and even yet more abundantly, numerous and violent declamations against the ministers of the religious communion from which Saxony and a great part of Germany had separated themselves when the author saw the day. I have suppressed here, as in the Aurora, some of those passages. By taste I should have preferred to suppress them all, because, without pretending to justify all the ministers of that communion and to exculpate them from what has been so much reproached them, I believe nevertheless that I ought to revere the chair upon which they are seated; because the strokes which are launched against them draw the light man but too often to envelop the priesthood and the priests in the same judgement, whilst it would be so imporOF THE TRANSLATOR. iij tant to make the division of them; and because it is specially to their respectable ministry that the manifestation ought to have belonged of all the marvels and all the lights whereof the heart and the mind of man would have so pressing a need.
2But I have not been able to dispense myself from letting a great part of those passages subsist: whether because there are found in them useful truths which, despite their virulence, can displease none but those who would not be sincere and faithful servants of God; or because Jacob Böhme, having run through in theosophy a career which no one, before him 9, had so much as perceived, it appeared to me that I ought to present him to my readers such as he showed himself, that is to say, not only with the extraordinary knowledges which are proper to him, but further with the opinions and the prejudices he may have borrowed, as it were naturally, from the century and the country wherein he lived. In the advertisement I set at the head of the Aurora nascent, I gave a very short summary of the life of the author, and particularly of the manner in which he made his entry into the theosophic career. IT ADVERTISEMENT I joined to it some reflections upon the disadvantages wherewith this author must show himself to-day, in comparison with the epoch wherein he wrote, since then the moral, metaphysical and religious ideas had not to dread, as in the posterior epochs, the sword of philosophy, and since they would have needed nothing but its torch. I set forth there the motives which, despite those evident disadvantages, sustained me in my very laborious enterprise, and more painful for me than for another, seeing that, at my ninth lustre accomplished, I did not yet know a single word of German. I gave account there also of the course I had followed in my translation.
3I forewarned the reader there of some barbarous words which I have had to invent, as well as of some interpretative notes which I believed necessary to join to the text, and which I have always set in italic and between two brackets [ ]; I announced there also that all which shall be found between two parentheses ( ) shall be the property of the author. I refer to that advertisement in question for what I should have to say upon the translation of the three Principles, because the plan and the OF THE TRANSLATOR. V mode of it are the same as for that of the Aurora nascent. Here nevertheless is what I have to add touching the translation I present to-day to the reader, and wherein, as in the preceding one, I have aimed only at exactness, and in no wise at elegance. I have suppressed frequently enough the two brackets for the words which are not French and which I have had to invent, because I believed it sufficient to employ sometimes those indicative signs of their bastardy. But I have nowhere suppressed the two brackets for the interpretative notes, in order that they might never be confounded with the text of my author. Given the extreme length of the title of this work in the German original, I believed I might abridge it in my translation, the more so as all the objects this title offers in the text are far more amply set forth still in the preface of the author. Jacob Böhme gives at every instant, in this work and in those which follow, the name of virgin to the eternal divine wisdom, and sometimes also he designates her under the name of SOPHIA. I have taken upon myself to employ, VJ ADVERT. OF THE TRANSLATOR.
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
Saint-Martin's French rendering of Boehme's 'Von den drei Principien göttlichen Wesens'. The same work stands in this estate in English as boehme:2. The title page also advertises 'L'Aurore naissante, du même Auteur' from the same booksellers — Saint-Martin's translation of the Aurora, whose English counterpart the estate holds as boehme:1. Reading the two versions against each other shows what a Martinist made of a German shoemaker's theosophy.
→ boehme:2
This work carries, in the author's own voice, both a set of hostile comparisons drawn against named peoples and an explicit refusal of any such boundary, and the Press publishes both rather than either alone. At Ch.25 §85 he calls the Jews blind; at Ch.17 §106 he warns of a coming visitation of the Jews and the Turks; and at Ch.26 §32-33, asked whence the Turks are grown, he answers "From thy perverted sense" — laying the rise of Mahomet at the door of christian pride and disputation. Against these stands Ch.25 §72, which opens the grace with no boundary at all: all men are invited to it, of whatever race, "whether Turks, Jews, Pagans, Christians", and no one is excluded. The same chapter that indicts turns the indictment inward at §105-106 — each believes not to dwell in Babel, and the author includes himself — and §33 concludes that God should be as near the one as the other. The contradiction is the author's, it is not resolved by him, and removing either half would misrepresent the work. Operator ruling, 2026-08-29.
This work carries, in the author's own voice, both a set of hostile comparisons drawn against named peoples and an explicit refusal of any such boundary, and the Press publishes both rather than either alone. At Ch.25 §85 he calls the Jews blind; at Ch.17 §106 he warns of a coming visitation of the Jews and the Turks; and at Ch.26 §32-33, asked whence the Turks are grown, he answers "From thy perverted sense" — laying the rise of Mahomet at the door of christian pride and disputation. Against these stands Ch.25 §72, which opens the grace with no boundary at all: all men are invited to it, of whatever race, "whether Turks, Jews, Pagans, Christians", and no one is excluded. The same chapter that indicts turns the indictment inward at §105-106 — each believes not to dwell in Babel, and the author includes himself — and §33 concludes that God should be as near the one as the other. The contradiction is the author's, it is not resolved by him, and removing either half would misrepresent the work. Operator ruling, 2026-08-29.
This work carries, in the author's own voice, both a set of hostile comparisons drawn against named peoples and an explicit refusal of any such boundary, and the Press publishes both rather than either alone. At Ch.25 §85 he calls the Jews blind; at Ch.17 §106 he warns of a coming visitation of the Jews and the Turks; and at Ch.26 §32-33, asked whence the Turks are grown, he answers "From thy perverted sense" — laying the rise of Mahomet at the door of christian pride and disputation. Against these stands Ch.25 §72, which opens the grace with no boundary at all: all men are invited to it, of whatever race, "whether Turks, Jews, Pagans, Christians", and no one is excluded. The same chapter that indicts turns the indictment inward at §105-106 — each believes not to dwell in Babel, and the author includes himself — and §33 concludes that God should be as near the one as the other. The contradiction is the author's, it is not resolved by him, and removing either half would misrepresent the work. Operator ruling, 2026-08-29.