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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.
1into perdition, but yet in Solem Hungariae, into the Sol of Hungaria: Venus exulteth the more, but your covetous hope and expectation is disappointed and taken away; Although indeed you ought justly to rest satisfied in the tenth number: for the riches of this world are but dung [and dross]; and if you attain to the tenth number with your former preparation, you need not take so great care about the number thousand: It standeth upon the crown of the virgin, in which are set twelve stars: six [of them] divine, and six human: The crown hath the number thousand, and the virgin the [number] hundred. 9. Christ saith, Seek first the kingdom of God, and all other things will be added to you. All lieth in the willing, for the willing maketh the desiring, and the desiring receiveth where nothing is, though indeed there is something there; yet it is hidden to us men, unless a man hath attained the Stone upon the cross, and then he findeth, where reason saith there is nothing; for that which hath not been from eternity is not at all, and thereof we know nothing, we know only of that which is, and hath ever been, though indeed not manifested to us men, but yet is of God in his wisdom, from eternity to eternity. 10. Therefore, although we speak of two kingdoms, viz. of the kingdom of God, and of the kingdom of this world, in that manner as if we
2saw them with bodily eyes, let it not seem a wonder; if God reveals himself in man, then he is in two kingdoms, and seeth with twofold eyes, and yet this way is not so hard and difficult, as reason's seeking in outward things: It lieth all in the willing; the outward willing must enter into the inward, it must deny itself, as if it were dead to the outward, and had no life in the outward, and yet liveth: As God liveth, and is in the outward, and the outward is dead to him, so that it cannot apprehend him; so also thou, O man, thou art with thy soul in the inward; but thy soul's will hath turned itself about with Adam into the outward; therefore, if thou wilt behold God and the eternity, turn thyself about with thy will into the inward, and then thou art as God himself; for thou wert thus created in the beginning; and thus thou livest according to the inward will unto God, and in God, and according to the outward [will thou livest] in this world, and hast both kingdoms thy own, and art indeed rightly an image and similitude of God; thou searchest out all things, and findest that which lay hidden in secret; for thou findest that in the eternity, and beholdest it standing backward in the out-birth, in the figure.
311. The ground of the creation of this world is much easier to be known in the inward man, in the Will of God, than visible things to the outward [man]: The outward knoweth less, that which he seeth with his eyes, and taketh hold of with his hands, heareth with his ears, smelleth with his nose, and tasteth with his mouth, than the inward doth the ground and the existency of the outward: The inward seeth indeed the creature in the ground of it; but is as it were dead to the outward, and yet liveth therein; and in that he liveth to the outward he liveth to God, in regard of his works of wonder, in that he manifesteth, and bringeth into being, that which standeth hidden in the figure. 12. And yet we say still, that the eternal standeth in the willing, and the will maketh desiring, and in the desiring standeth the figure of the willing. Thus it was before the time of this world: But when God moved himself in his willing, he so created the desiring, that it stood in a being. And other than this very thing we know nothing.
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.
1into perdition, but yet in Solem Hungariae, into the Sol of Hungaria: Venus exulteth the more, but your covetous hope and expectation is disappointed and taken away; Although indeed you ought justly to rest satisfied in the tenth number: for the riches of this world are but dung [and dross]; and if you attain to the tenth number with your former preparation, you need not take so great care about the number thousand: It standeth upon the crown of the virgin, in which are set twelve stars: six [of them] divine, and six human: The crown hath the number thousand, and the virgin the [number] hundred. 9. Christ saith, Seek first the kingdom of God, and all other things will be added to you. All lieth in the willing, for the willing maketh the desiring, and the desiring receiveth where nothing is, though indeed there is something there; yet it is hidden to us men, unless a man hath attained the Stone upon the cross, and then he findeth, where reason saith there is nothing; for that which hath not been from eternity is not at all, and thereof we know nothing, we know only of that which is, and hath ever been, though indeed not manifested to us men, but yet is of God in his wisdom, from eternity to eternity. 10. Therefore, although we speak of two kingdoms, viz. of the kingdom of God, and of the kingdom of this world, in that manner as if we
2saw them with bodily eyes, let it not seem a wonder; if God reveals himself in man, then he is in two kingdoms, and seeth with twofold eyes, and yet this way is not so hard and difficult, as reason's seeking in outward things: It lieth all in the willing; the outward willing must enter into the inward, it must deny itself, as if it were dead to the outward, and had no life in the outward, and yet liveth: As God liveth, and is in the outward, and the outward is dead to him, so that it cannot apprehend him; so also thou, O man, thou art with thy soul in the inward; but thy soul's will hath turned itself about with Adam into the outward; therefore, if thou wilt behold God and the eternity, turn thyself about with thy will into the inward, and then thou art as God himself; for thou wert thus created in the beginning; and thus thou livest according to the inward will unto God, and in God, and according to the outward [will thou livest] in this world, and hast both kingdoms thy own, and art indeed rightly an image and similitude of God; thou searchest out all things, and findest that which lay hidden in secret; for thou findest that in the eternity, and beholdest it standing backward in the out-birth, in the figure.
311. The ground of the creation of this world is much easier to be known in the inward man, in the Will of God, than visible things to the outward [man]: The outward knoweth less, that which he seeth with his eyes, and taketh hold of with his hands, heareth with his ears, smelleth with his nose, and tasteth with his mouth, than the inward doth the ground and the existency of the outward: The inward seeth indeed the creature in the ground of it; but is as it were dead to the outward, and yet liveth therein; and in that he liveth to the outward he liveth to God, in regard of his works of wonder, in that he manifesteth, and bringeth into being, that which standeth hidden in the figure. 12. And yet we say still, that the eternal standeth in the willing, and the will maketh desiring, and in the desiring standeth the figure of the willing. Thus it was before the time of this world: But when God moved himself in his willing, he so created the desiring, that it stood in a being. And other than this very thing we know nothing.
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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