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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.
1the eternal will must suffer [to be] in itself, and therefore it conceiveth or taketh to itself another will, to fly out from this wheel, and yet cannot do it, for it is its own substance; and seeing it cannot, and yet cannot leave its eternal desire and longing, it holdeth and attracteth to itself; so that the essences are continually generated, and yet (without the desiring) they are nothing; and thus the whole form standeth in the noise [or sound], and is called MAR: and seeing the will cannot be free, it falleth into a great anguish, to speak according to man's understanding, that the Reader may comprehend the sense and depth of it. 32. For the will is the conception, and that which is conceived in the will is its darkness, and the desiring is the essence, and the contrary will is the wheel of the multiplicity of essences, so that they are numberless; but the multitude is according to the mobility. These two forms are the eternal essences, and the eternal band, which maketh itself, and cannot do otherwise.
233. For the vast infinite space desireth narrowness and inclosure [or comprehension] wherein it may manifest itself, for else in the wide stillness there would be no manifestation; therefore there must be an attraction and inclosing, out of which the manifestation appeareth; and therefore also there must be a contrary will; for a transparent and quiet will is as nothing, and generateth nothing: but if a will must generate, then it must be in somewhat wherein it may form and may generate in that thing; for Nothing is nothing but a stillness without any stirring, where there is neither darkness nor light, neither life nor death. 34. Now since we clearly perceive that there is both light and darkness, and moreover an eternal stirring and forming, which is not only in the place of this world as far as our senses reach, but without end and number, where the angelical world shineth clearly (and yet not in the inclosure of the darkness), therefore we should raise our thoughts [or senses] towards the angelical world, which yet is not without this place [of this world], but it is in another property, and in the eternal light; and yet there could be no light except there were a genetrix [or matrix] to bring it forth. 35. Now if it shine out of the genetrix [or matrix], then it must come forth out of the genetrix. For the genetrix is a darkness, and yet that were nothing either if the eteimal word
3(which maketh [attract, frame, or create] the eternal will) were not there. And in the making or creating is the birth of the eternal Being; of which John saith, In the beginning was the Word, which was in the beginning with God, all things were made by it (and without it was nothing made that was made). 36. Consider here, my beloved mind, whence light and darkness come, also joy and heaviness, love and hate; as also the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of hell, good and evil, life, and the shutting up in death. 37. Thou sayest, God hath created it; very well: but? why art thou blind, and dost not acknowledge it, whereas thou art indeed the similitude of God? Why speakest thou more of God than thou knowest, and is revealed or manifested to thee? Wherefore dost thou make laws [canons and ordinances] concerning the will of God, of which thou knowest nothing, seeing thou dost not know Him? Or why dost thou shut up thy life in death, whereas thou mightest well live, and know God, who dwelleth in thee? For thou hearest it also from St. John, that all things are made by the Word,
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.
1the eternal will must suffer [to be] in itself, and therefore it conceiveth or taketh to itself another will, to fly out from this wheel, and yet cannot do it, for it is its own substance; and seeing it cannot, and yet cannot leave its eternal desire and longing, it holdeth and attracteth to itself; so that the essences are continually generated, and yet (without the desiring) they are nothing; and thus the whole form standeth in the noise [or sound], and is called MAR: and seeing the will cannot be free, it falleth into a great anguish, to speak according to man's understanding, that the Reader may comprehend the sense and depth of it. 32. For the will is the conception, and that which is conceived in the will is its darkness, and the desiring is the essence, and the contrary will is the wheel of the multiplicity of essences, so that they are numberless; but the multitude is according to the mobility. These two forms are the eternal essences, and the eternal band, which maketh itself, and cannot do otherwise.
233. For the vast infinite space desireth narrowness and inclosure [or comprehension] wherein it may manifest itself, for else in the wide stillness there would be no manifestation; therefore there must be an attraction and inclosing, out of which the manifestation appeareth; and therefore also there must be a contrary will; for a transparent and quiet will is as nothing, and generateth nothing: but if a will must generate, then it must be in somewhat wherein it may form and may generate in that thing; for Nothing is nothing but a stillness without any stirring, where there is neither darkness nor light, neither life nor death. 34. Now since we clearly perceive that there is both light and darkness, and moreover an eternal stirring and forming, which is not only in the place of this world as far as our senses reach, but without end and number, where the angelical world shineth clearly (and yet not in the inclosure of the darkness), therefore we should raise our thoughts [or senses] towards the angelical world, which yet is not without this place [of this world], but it is in another property, and in the eternal light; and yet there could be no light except there were a genetrix [or matrix] to bring it forth. 35. Now if it shine out of the genetrix [or matrix], then it must come forth out of the genetrix. For the genetrix is a darkness, and yet that were nothing either if the eteimal word
3(which maketh [attract, frame, or create] the eternal will) were not there. And in the making or creating is the birth of the eternal Being; of which John saith, In the beginning was the Word, which was in the beginning with God, all things were made by it (and without it was nothing made that was made). 36. Consider here, my beloved mind, whence light and darkness come, also joy and heaviness, love and hate; as also the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of hell, good and evil, life, and the shutting up in death. 37. Thou sayest, God hath created it; very well: but? why art thou blind, and dost not acknowledge it, whereas thou art indeed the similitude of God? Why speakest thou more of God than thou knowest, and is revealed or manifested to thee? Wherefore dost thou make laws [canons and ordinances] concerning the will of God, of which thou knowest nothing, seeing thou dost not know Him? Or why dost thou shut up thy life in death, whereas thou mightest well live, and know God, who dwelleth in thee? For thou hearest it also from St. John, that all things are made by the Word,
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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