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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.
1149. There the bitter quality raveth and rageth, and seeketh for rest and food, and finds it not, and moveth or boileth in the body as a lingering poison. 150. Now when the heat kindleth the sweet quality, and would mitigate its heat in the sweet water (whence it riseth up and shineth in the whole body), there it finds nothing but a hard, dry, sweet source or quality, there is no sap or moisture, the sap being quite exsiccated or dried up by the astringency. 151. Then the heat kindleth the sweet source or quality, with an intent to be refreshed, but there is no sap left, the sweet source or quality is now burning and glowing only, even as a hard, dried or burnt stone, and can no more kindle its light. And so the whole body remaineth now a dark valley, in which there is nothing but a fierce hard coldness in the astringent quality, and in the sweet quality a hard glowing fire only, wherein the fierce wrathful heat riseth up in all eternity, and in the bitter quality there is a raving, a raging, a stinging and a burning. 152. Thus you have here the true description of an expulsed angel or of a devil, as also the cause thereof, and that not written in a similitude only, but in the spirit, through that power out of which all things are come to be. 153. O man! behold thyself herein, look before thee and behind thee, nothing is in vain. 154. This great history or action, of how it came to pass and how it went, you will find it at large concerning the fall of the devil.
2V. Of the Fifth Circumstance or Species. 155. The Fifth quality, or the fifth spirit of God among the seven spirits of God, in the divine power of the Father, is the gracious, amiable, blessed, friendly and joyful love. 156. Now observe what is the fountain of the gracious, amiable, blessed and friendly love of God; observe it exactly, for it is the very pith, marrow or kernel. 157. When the heat in the sweet quality riseth up, and kindleth the sweet source, fountain or spring, then that fire burneth in the sweet quality; now seeing the sweet quality is a thin or transparent lovely pleasant sweet fountain or springwater, it allayeth the heat and quencheth the fire, and so there remaineth in the sweet fountainspring of the sweet water only the joyful light. 158. The heat is only a gentle soft warming, even as it is in a man who is of a sanguine complexion, wherein also the heat is only a friendly, cheerly wanning, if the party liveth temperately, and keepeth a due measure. 159. That friendly courteous lovelightfire goeth along in the sweet quality, and riseth up into the bitter and astringent qualities, and so kindleth the bitter and astringent qualities, feeding them with its sweet lovesap, refreshing, quickening and enlightening them, and making them living or lively, cheerful and friendly. 160. And when the sweet, light, lovepower cometh to them, so that they taste thereof and get its life, O, there is a friendly meeting, saluting and triumphing, a friendly welcoming and great love, a most friendly and gracious, amiable and
3blessed kissing, and wellrelishing taste. 161. There the Bridegroom kisseth his bride: O gracious amiable blessedness and great love! how sweet art thou? How friendly and courteous art thou? How pleasant and lovely is thy relish and taste? How ravishingly sweet dost thou smell? O noble light and bright glory, who can apprehend thy exceeding beauty? How comely adorned is thy love? How curious and dainty are thy colours? And all this eternally! Who can express it? 162. Or why and what do I write, I, whose tongue doth but stammer like a child that is learning to speak? With what shall I compare it? or to what shall I liken it? Shall I compare it with the love of this world? No, that is but a mere dark valley to it. 163. O immense greatness! I cannot compare thee to anything, but only to the resurrection from the dead; there will the lovefire rise up again in us, and embrace man courteously and friendly, and kindle again our astringent, bitter and cold, dark and dead quality, and embrace us most friendly. 164. O noble guest! O, why didst thou depart from us! O fierceness, wrath and astringency or severity, thou art the cause of it! O fierce wrathful devil! O, what hast thou done, who hast sunk down thyself and thy beautiful bright angels into darkness? Woe, woe for ever! 165. O, was not the gracious, amiable, blessed and fair love in thee also? O thou high and loftyminded devil! Why wouldst thou not be contented? Wert thou not a Cherubim? and was there anything so beautiful and bright in heaven as thou? For what didst thou seek? Wouldst thou be the whole or total God? Didst
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.
1149. There the bitter quality raveth and rageth, and seeketh for rest and food, and finds it not, and moveth or boileth in the body as a lingering poison. 150. Now when the heat kindleth the sweet quality, and would mitigate its heat in the sweet water (whence it riseth up and shineth in the whole body), there it finds nothing but a hard, dry, sweet source or quality, there is no sap or moisture, the sap being quite exsiccated or dried up by the astringency. 151. Then the heat kindleth the sweet source or quality, with an intent to be refreshed, but there is no sap left, the sweet source or quality is now burning and glowing only, even as a hard, dried or burnt stone, and can no more kindle its light. And so the whole body remaineth now a dark valley, in which there is nothing but a fierce hard coldness in the astringent quality, and in the sweet quality a hard glowing fire only, wherein the fierce wrathful heat riseth up in all eternity, and in the bitter quality there is a raving, a raging, a stinging and a burning. 152. Thus you have here the true description of an expulsed angel or of a devil, as also the cause thereof, and that not written in a similitude only, but in the spirit, through that power out of which all things are come to be. 153. O man! behold thyself herein, look before thee and behind thee, nothing is in vain. 154. This great history or action, of how it came to pass and how it went, you will find it at large concerning the fall of the devil.
2V. Of the Fifth Circumstance or Species. 155. The Fifth quality, or the fifth spirit of God among the seven spirits of God, in the divine power of the Father, is the gracious, amiable, blessed, friendly and joyful love. 156. Now observe what is the fountain of the gracious, amiable, blessed and friendly love of God; observe it exactly, for it is the very pith, marrow or kernel. 157. When the heat in the sweet quality riseth up, and kindleth the sweet source, fountain or spring, then that fire burneth in the sweet quality; now seeing the sweet quality is a thin or transparent lovely pleasant sweet fountain or springwater, it allayeth the heat and quencheth the fire, and so there remaineth in the sweet fountainspring of the sweet water only the joyful light. 158. The heat is only a gentle soft warming, even as it is in a man who is of a sanguine complexion, wherein also the heat is only a friendly, cheerly wanning, if the party liveth temperately, and keepeth a due measure. 159. That friendly courteous lovelightfire goeth along in the sweet quality, and riseth up into the bitter and astringent qualities, and so kindleth the bitter and astringent qualities, feeding them with its sweet lovesap, refreshing, quickening and enlightening them, and making them living or lively, cheerful and friendly. 160. And when the sweet, light, lovepower cometh to them, so that they taste thereof and get its life, O, there is a friendly meeting, saluting and triumphing, a friendly welcoming and great love, a most friendly and gracious, amiable and
3blessed kissing, and wellrelishing taste. 161. There the Bridegroom kisseth his bride: O gracious amiable blessedness and great love! how sweet art thou? How friendly and courteous art thou? How pleasant and lovely is thy relish and taste? How ravishingly sweet dost thou smell? O noble light and bright glory, who can apprehend thy exceeding beauty? How comely adorned is thy love? How curious and dainty are thy colours? And all this eternally! Who can express it? 162. Or why and what do I write, I, whose tongue doth but stammer like a child that is learning to speak? With what shall I compare it? or to what shall I liken it? Shall I compare it with the love of this world? No, that is but a mere dark valley to it. 163. O immense greatness! I cannot compare thee to anything, but only to the resurrection from the dead; there will the lovefire rise up again in us, and embrace man courteously and friendly, and kindle again our astringent, bitter and cold, dark and dead quality, and embrace us most friendly. 164. O noble guest! O, why didst thou depart from us! O fierceness, wrath and astringency or severity, thou art the cause of it! O fierce wrathful devil! O, what hast thou done, who hast sunk down thyself and thy beautiful bright angels into darkness? Woe, woe for ever! 165. O, was not the gracious, amiable, blessed and fair love in thee also? O thou high and loftyminded devil! Why wouldst thou not be contented? Wert thou not a Cherubim? and was there anything so beautiful and bright in heaven as thou? For what didst thou seek? Wouldst thou be the whole or total God? Didst
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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