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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.
1a melancholy or sadness of life, a house of death, a beginning of sorrow and an end of joy. * "putridness and rankness" (rühricht und brüchicht), " active and swamplike." The idea is that of fermentation. Of the Astringent or Saltish Quality. 41. The saltish quality is a good temperature [or temper] in the bitter, the sweet and the sour, making every thing pleasant; it opposeth the rising of the bitter quality, as also of the sweet and the sour, lest they should be inflamed: it is a sharp quality, a delight in the taste, a source of life and joy. 42. It containeth also fierceness and corruption: Being inflamed in the fire it engendereth a hard, tearing and stony nature, a fierce, wrathful source, a destruction of life, whereby the stone or gravel is engendered in the flesh, causing great pain and torment to the flesh. 43. But if it be inflamed in the water, then it engendereth in the flesh, scabs, sores, pox, leprosy, and is a mourning house of death, a misery and a forgetting of all good things.
2THE SECOND CHAPTER An Introduction, shewing how men may come to apprehend The Divine, and the Natural, Being. And further of the two Qualities. 1. ALL whatsoever that hath been mentioned above is called quality, because it qualifieth, operateth or frameth all in the deep above the earth, also upon the earth and in the earth, in one another, as ONE thing, and yet hath several distinct virtues and operations, and but one mother, from whence descend and spring all things. 2. All the creatures are made and descended from these qualities, and live therein as in their mother; and the earth and stones descend or proceed from thence also; and all that groweth out of the earth liveth and springeth forth out of the virtue of these qualities; no rational man can deny it. 3. Now this twofold source, good and evil, in everything, is caused by the stars; for as the creatures in the earth are, in their qualities, so also are the stars. 4. For from its twofold source, * everything hath its great mobility, running, springing, driving and growing, + For meekness in nature is a still rest, but the fierceness in every power maketh all things moveable, running and generative. * " from its twofold source," St M. further brings out the meaning by the following rendering: " de ta double impulsion particulière," " from its particular twofold impulse." + "its great mobility, running... driving." St M. has: "sa grande activité, son cours... son stimulant," "its great activity, its course... its stimulus."
35. For the driving qualities cause a lust ++ in all creatures unto evil and good, so that all [things] are desirous one of another, to copulate and increase, decrease, grow fair, perish, love and hate. ++ "a lust." In the sense of desire: the German "Lust" implies no evil or excessive desire. 6. In every creature in this world there is a good and evil will and source; in men, beasts, fowls, fishes, worms, and in all that is upon the earth; in gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, steel; wood, herbs, leaves and grass; as also in the earth, in stones, in the water, and in all whatsoever that can be thought of. 7. There is nothing in nature wherein there is not good and evil; everything moveth and liveth in this double impulse, working or operation, be it what it will. 8. But the holy angels, and the fierce wrathful devils, are here to be excepted; for these are severed apart: Each of these liveth, qualifieth and ruleth in his own peculiar quality. 9. The holy angels live and qualify in the light, in the good quality wherein the Holy Ghost reigneth. The devils live and reign in the fierce wrathful quality, in the quality of fierceness and wrath, destruction or perdition. 10. Yet both of these, the good and the evil angels, were made out of the qualities of nature from whence all things existed, only they differ in their qualifying, or in their condition. 11. The holy angels live in the power of meekness, of the light and joyfulness: The
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.
1a melancholy or sadness of life, a house of death, a beginning of sorrow and an end of joy. * "putridness and rankness" (rühricht und brüchicht), " active and swamplike." The idea is that of fermentation. Of the Astringent or Saltish Quality. 41. The saltish quality is a good temperature [or temper] in the bitter, the sweet and the sour, making every thing pleasant; it opposeth the rising of the bitter quality, as also of the sweet and the sour, lest they should be inflamed: it is a sharp quality, a delight in the taste, a source of life and joy. 42. It containeth also fierceness and corruption: Being inflamed in the fire it engendereth a hard, tearing and stony nature, a fierce, wrathful source, a destruction of life, whereby the stone or gravel is engendered in the flesh, causing great pain and torment to the flesh. 43. But if it be inflamed in the water, then it engendereth in the flesh, scabs, sores, pox, leprosy, and is a mourning house of death, a misery and a forgetting of all good things.
2THE SECOND CHAPTER An Introduction, shewing how men may come to apprehend The Divine, and the Natural, Being. And further of the two Qualities. 1. ALL whatsoever that hath been mentioned above is called quality, because it qualifieth, operateth or frameth all in the deep above the earth, also upon the earth and in the earth, in one another, as ONE thing, and yet hath several distinct virtues and operations, and but one mother, from whence descend and spring all things. 2. All the creatures are made and descended from these qualities, and live therein as in their mother; and the earth and stones descend or proceed from thence also; and all that groweth out of the earth liveth and springeth forth out of the virtue of these qualities; no rational man can deny it. 3. Now this twofold source, good and evil, in everything, is caused by the stars; for as the creatures in the earth are, in their qualities, so also are the stars. 4. For from its twofold source, * everything hath its great mobility, running, springing, driving and growing, + For meekness in nature is a still rest, but the fierceness in every power maketh all things moveable, running and generative. * " from its twofold source," St M. further brings out the meaning by the following rendering: " de ta double impulsion particulière," " from its particular twofold impulse." + "its great mobility, running... driving." St M. has: "sa grande activité, son cours... son stimulant," "its great activity, its course... its stimulus."
35. For the driving qualities cause a lust ++ in all creatures unto evil and good, so that all [things] are desirous one of another, to copulate and increase, decrease, grow fair, perish, love and hate. ++ "a lust." In the sense of desire: the German "Lust" implies no evil or excessive desire. 6. In every creature in this world there is a good and evil will and source; in men, beasts, fowls, fishes, worms, and in all that is upon the earth; in gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, steel; wood, herbs, leaves and grass; as also in the earth, in stones, in the water, and in all whatsoever that can be thought of. 7. There is nothing in nature wherein there is not good and evil; everything moveth and liveth in this double impulse, working or operation, be it what it will. 8. But the holy angels, and the fierce wrathful devils, are here to be excepted; for these are severed apart: Each of these liveth, qualifieth and ruleth in his own peculiar quality. 9. The holy angels live and qualify in the light, in the good quality wherein the Holy Ghost reigneth. The devils live and reign in the fierce wrathful quality, in the quality of fierceness and wrath, destruction or perdition. 10. Yet both of these, the good and the evil angels, were made out of the qualities of nature from whence all things existed, only they differ in their qualifying, or in their condition. 11. The holy angels live in the power of meekness, of the light and joyfulness: The
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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