Fetching
One moment.
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.
1thinks] the needy must spend his sweat wholly in his service; there is no pity nor release to be had from him: his dog hath a better life than the poor needy soul under his roof, and this he accounteth his right and prerogative; whereas it is not at all grounded in nature, but only in the abyss, where one form or property plagueth, vexeth, and tormenteth the other, where the life is its own enemy; [and there it is grounded] . 11. This the inferior learneth from the superior, and so getteth his living also with subtlety and deceit, covetousness and knavery; for, if he doth not use these things, he can hardly fill his belly in righteousness; and therefore reason persuadeth him that necessity forceth him, that he must enhance his labour and commodities, and must wrest from his neighbour his sweat again, without love and righteousness, that he may but fill his belly: He learneth from his superior to gormandize and pamper his body, and live a bestial life. What the superior spendeth in a courtly stately fashion, that the inferior spendeth in a beastly, swinish fashion, and manner of life: Thus one wickedness effecteth another, and the devil remaineth prince on earth over body and soul. 12. How wilt thou be able to subsist, when God in his zeal or jealousy shall judge the secrets of mankind, when the cause of every thing will appear, why that or the other thing came to be evil? And there every soul will cry out of those
2that lead it astray, and curse them: Every thing will have its cause appear before it, and the soul will feel it in its conscience: Where then will you, superior, remain, when your inferior shall cry out and say, Woe be to you, in that you have forced him to such wicked courses, and that you have bereaved him of his sweat, and consumed his goods and labours in idleness and wantonness ? How will you give an account of your office, into which you are put, wherein you should stop unrighteousness, and hold the wicked in awe by reproof and punishment? And you have not regarded his wicked courses, that you might prevent and hinder them, but have only looked after your covetousness, how you might bereave him of his sweat: You have not sought his soul's good, but his sweat and labour: He might else do what he would: And besides, you have given an evil example to him, so that he hath looked upon your courses, and made them his pattern. Cursing, blaspheming, threatening, daring surliness [provocations], have been your fashion, and that he hath learnt of you, and hath so constantly reproached the name of God, which you have not regarded; you have only looked after, his money, and not after his soul.
313. And now, when the severe judgment of God shall appear, and that every work shall be manifested in the fiery essences, where then all shall be tried in the fire, what think you? Shall not all such works remain in the eternal fire? And there will the poor soul cry out upon your ungodly cursed deeds, words and works: And one will curse and wish all evil to the other, for being the cause of such evil to him, and the source and property of falsehood and wickedness will rise up in the soul, and gnaw it, that, for so short and empty vanity, voluptuousness and false lust, it hath fooled away such great eternal glory. 14. All manner of reproaches, all slanders, all scoflings, all covetousness, pride, and deceit shall rise up in the soul, and one source [or property] shall continually kindle and gnaw the other, which hath given cause to the stirring up of the other, and the soul will think, if these abominations were not in thee, thou mightest attain grace; and when it shall behold and consider itself, it will find how one abomination hath generated another, and will see that itself is a mere stinking abomination in the presence of God; and there it will cast itself down in the source of anguish, into the centre of nature, and curse God, that he hath made it a soul; and the deeper it desireth to plunge itself, the deeper it falleth, and yet must continue in
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.
1thinks] the needy must spend his sweat wholly in his service; there is no pity nor release to be had from him: his dog hath a better life than the poor needy soul under his roof, and this he accounteth his right and prerogative; whereas it is not at all grounded in nature, but only in the abyss, where one form or property plagueth, vexeth, and tormenteth the other, where the life is its own enemy; [and there it is grounded] . 11. This the inferior learneth from the superior, and so getteth his living also with subtlety and deceit, covetousness and knavery; for, if he doth not use these things, he can hardly fill his belly in righteousness; and therefore reason persuadeth him that necessity forceth him, that he must enhance his labour and commodities, and must wrest from his neighbour his sweat again, without love and righteousness, that he may but fill his belly: He learneth from his superior to gormandize and pamper his body, and live a bestial life. What the superior spendeth in a courtly stately fashion, that the inferior spendeth in a beastly, swinish fashion, and manner of life: Thus one wickedness effecteth another, and the devil remaineth prince on earth over body and soul. 12. How wilt thou be able to subsist, when God in his zeal or jealousy shall judge the secrets of mankind, when the cause of every thing will appear, why that or the other thing came to be evil? And there every soul will cry out of those
2that lead it astray, and curse them: Every thing will have its cause appear before it, and the soul will feel it in its conscience: Where then will you, superior, remain, when your inferior shall cry out and say, Woe be to you, in that you have forced him to such wicked courses, and that you have bereaved him of his sweat, and consumed his goods and labours in idleness and wantonness ? How will you give an account of your office, into which you are put, wherein you should stop unrighteousness, and hold the wicked in awe by reproof and punishment? And you have not regarded his wicked courses, that you might prevent and hinder them, but have only looked after your covetousness, how you might bereave him of his sweat: You have not sought his soul's good, but his sweat and labour: He might else do what he would: And besides, you have given an evil example to him, so that he hath looked upon your courses, and made them his pattern. Cursing, blaspheming, threatening, daring surliness [provocations], have been your fashion, and that he hath learnt of you, and hath so constantly reproached the name of God, which you have not regarded; you have only looked after, his money, and not after his soul.
313. And now, when the severe judgment of God shall appear, and that every work shall be manifested in the fiery essences, where then all shall be tried in the fire, what think you? Shall not all such works remain in the eternal fire? And there will the poor soul cry out upon your ungodly cursed deeds, words and works: And one will curse and wish all evil to the other, for being the cause of such evil to him, and the source and property of falsehood and wickedness will rise up in the soul, and gnaw it, that, for so short and empty vanity, voluptuousness and false lust, it hath fooled away such great eternal glory. 14. All manner of reproaches, all slanders, all scoflings, all covetousness, pride, and deceit shall rise up in the soul, and one source [or property] shall continually kindle and gnaw the other, which hath given cause to the stirring up of the other, and the soul will think, if these abominations were not in thee, thou mightest attain grace; and when it shall behold and consider itself, it will find how one abomination hath generated another, and will see that itself is a mere stinking abomination in the presence of God; and there it will cast itself down in the source of anguish, into the centre of nature, and curse God, that he hath made it a soul; and the deeper it desireth to plunge itself, the deeper it falleth, and yet must continue in
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.
No commentary for this page.