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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.
133. In that same power groweth up and is generated fruit according to every quality and species or kind, viz. heavenly trees and plants, which without ceasing bear fruit, blossom fairly, and grow in divine power, so joyfully that I can neither speak it nor write it down; 34. But stammer it like a child that is learning to speak, and can by no means rightly call it forth to be known as the spirit giveth it. 35. The second form or property of heaven in the divine pomp or state is Mercurius or the sound, as in the Salitter of the earth there is the sound, whence there groweth gold, silver, copper, iron and the like; of which men make all manner of musical instruments for sounding or for mirth, as bells, organpipes and other things that make a sound: There is likewise a sound in all the creatures upon earth, else all would be in stillness and silence. 36. By that sound all powers are moved in heaven, so that all things grow joyfully, and generate very beautifully: And as the divine power is manifold and various, so also the sound or Mercurius is manifold and various. 37. For when the powers spring up in God they touch and stir one another, and move one in another, and so there is a constant harmony, mixing or concert, from whence go forth all manner of colours. 38. In those colours grow all manner of fruits, which rise or spring up in the Salitter, and the Mercurius or sound mingleth itself therewith, and riseth up in all the powers of the Father, and then sounding and tunes rise up in the heavenly joyfulness.
239. If you should in this world bring many thousand sorts of musical instruments together, and all should be tuned in the best manner, most artificially, and the most skilful masters of music should play on them in concert together, all would be no more than the holdings and barkings of dogs, in comparison with the divine music, which riseth up through the divine sound and tunes from eternity to eternity. 40. Further, if thou wilt consider the heavenly divine pomp, state and glory, and conceive how it is, and what manner of sprouting, branching, delight and joy there is in it, 41. View this world diligently, and consider what manner of fruit, sprouts, and branches grow out of the Salitter of the earth, from trees, plants, herbs, roots, flowers, oils, wine, corn and whatever else there is that thy heart can find out; all is a type of the heavenly pomp. 42. For the earthly and corrupt nature hath continually laboured from the beginning of its creation to this day to bring forth heavenly forms or shapes in the earth, as also in man and beasts; as men very well see that every year new arts are invented and brought to light, which hath been constantly so from the beginning to this time. 43. But yet nature hath not been able to bring forth heavenly power, virtue and qualities, therefore its fruit is half dead, corrupt and impure. 44. You must not think that in the divine pomp there come forth beasts, worms and other creatures in flesh, as in this world they do: No; but I mean only the wonderful proportion, power, virtue and comeliness of feature in them.
345. Nature laboureth with the utmost diligence in its power to produce heavenly figures, shapes or forms; as we see, in men, beasts, fowls and worms, as also in the increase or growth of the earth, that all things are done, shew and appear most perfectly and ingeniously. 46. For Nature would fain be delivered from this vanity, that it might procreate heavenly forms in the holy power. 47. For in the divine pomp go forth likewise all manner of sprouting and vegetation of trees, plants and all manner of fruit; and every one beareth its own fruit, yet not in an earthly quality and kind, but in a divine quality, form and kind. 48. Those fruits are not of so dead, hard, bitter, sour and astringent a relish for food; nor do they rot and grow stinking, as those in this world do, but all consist in holy divine power. 49. Their constitution or composition is from divine power, from the Salitter and Mercurius of the divine pomp, and they are the food of the holy angels. 50. If man's abominable fall had not spoiled it he would have been feasted in such a manner in this world, and would have eaten in a twofold manner such fruits as indeed were presented to him in Paradise. 51. But the infectious lust, evil attraction or impulse of the devil, who had infected and spoiled the Salitter of which Adam was made, that brought man into an evil longing or lust to eat of both the qualities, the evil and the good, whereof I will write clearly here following, and demonstrate it.
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.
133. In that same power groweth up and is generated fruit according to every quality and species or kind, viz. heavenly trees and plants, which without ceasing bear fruit, blossom fairly, and grow in divine power, so joyfully that I can neither speak it nor write it down; 34. But stammer it like a child that is learning to speak, and can by no means rightly call it forth to be known as the spirit giveth it. 35. The second form or property of heaven in the divine pomp or state is Mercurius or the sound, as in the Salitter of the earth there is the sound, whence there groweth gold, silver, copper, iron and the like; of which men make all manner of musical instruments for sounding or for mirth, as bells, organpipes and other things that make a sound: There is likewise a sound in all the creatures upon earth, else all would be in stillness and silence. 36. By that sound all powers are moved in heaven, so that all things grow joyfully, and generate very beautifully: And as the divine power is manifold and various, so also the sound or Mercurius is manifold and various. 37. For when the powers spring up in God they touch and stir one another, and move one in another, and so there is a constant harmony, mixing or concert, from whence go forth all manner of colours. 38. In those colours grow all manner of fruits, which rise or spring up in the Salitter, and the Mercurius or sound mingleth itself therewith, and riseth up in all the powers of the Father, and then sounding and tunes rise up in the heavenly joyfulness.
239. If you should in this world bring many thousand sorts of musical instruments together, and all should be tuned in the best manner, most artificially, and the most skilful masters of music should play on them in concert together, all would be no more than the holdings and barkings of dogs, in comparison with the divine music, which riseth up through the divine sound and tunes from eternity to eternity. 40. Further, if thou wilt consider the heavenly divine pomp, state and glory, and conceive how it is, and what manner of sprouting, branching, delight and joy there is in it, 41. View this world diligently, and consider what manner of fruit, sprouts, and branches grow out of the Salitter of the earth, from trees, plants, herbs, roots, flowers, oils, wine, corn and whatever else there is that thy heart can find out; all is a type of the heavenly pomp. 42. For the earthly and corrupt nature hath continually laboured from the beginning of its creation to this day to bring forth heavenly forms or shapes in the earth, as also in man and beasts; as men very well see that every year new arts are invented and brought to light, which hath been constantly so from the beginning to this time. 43. But yet nature hath not been able to bring forth heavenly power, virtue and qualities, therefore its fruit is half dead, corrupt and impure. 44. You must not think that in the divine pomp there come forth beasts, worms and other creatures in flesh, as in this world they do: No; but I mean only the wonderful proportion, power, virtue and comeliness of feature in them.
345. Nature laboureth with the utmost diligence in its power to produce heavenly figures, shapes or forms; as we see, in men, beasts, fowls and worms, as also in the increase or growth of the earth, that all things are done, shew and appear most perfectly and ingeniously. 46. For Nature would fain be delivered from this vanity, that it might procreate heavenly forms in the holy power. 47. For in the divine pomp go forth likewise all manner of sprouting and vegetation of trees, plants and all manner of fruit; and every one beareth its own fruit, yet not in an earthly quality and kind, but in a divine quality, form and kind. 48. Those fruits are not of so dead, hard, bitter, sour and astringent a relish for food; nor do they rot and grow stinking, as those in this world do, but all consist in holy divine power. 49. Their constitution or composition is from divine power, from the Salitter and Mercurius of the divine pomp, and they are the food of the holy angels. 50. If man's abominable fall had not spoiled it he would have been feasted in such a manner in this world, and would have eaten in a twofold manner such fruits as indeed were presented to him in Paradise. 51. But the infectious lust, evil attraction or impulse of the devil, who had infected and spoiled the Salitter of which Adam was made, that brought man into an evil longing or lust to eat of both the qualities, the evil and the good, whereof I will write clearly here following, and demonstrate it.
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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