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.
1THE TWELFTH QUESTION How is the Soul enlightened, and what is the Illumination of it? 1. WE must consider, that if the sun were taken away out of this world, that all things would be in darkness, and then outward reason would say, We are in dark death and in the 1 wrathfulness of the cold; and it were so indeed. 2. Now observe, my beloved mind, and consider with thyself, when thy body perisheth, and so thy spirit loseth the 2 sun; how canst thou then enjoy the light? and wherewith wilt thou see? In simplicity we put thee in mind of this, that thou mayest consider it. 3. That thing which consisteth in the eternal hberty, if it always enter again into the eternal liberty, it hath no darkness, for it dwelleth in nothing that 3 affordeth darkness: it is free as the eye of God, which beholdeth itself through a 4 substance. 4. * When that imagineth after anything, in lust, then the will entereth into that thing, which the desiring lust itself maketh; and this receiveth the will into itself, and overshadoweth it, so that it dwelleth in darkness, and can have no light, unless it goeth forth again out of that thing into the liberty. 1 Or bitterness. 2 Viz. the light of the sun. 3 giveth, maketh, or causeth. 4 Or being, or essence.
2* "When that imagineth," etc. "When that imagineth [makes use of the imaging power] in a desire (Lust) for anything, then the will entereth into that thing, which the eager desire itself maketh." The meaning of the German "Lust" is not identical with that of the English "lust." St Martin has rendered it in this case, "attrait." 5. Thus we give you earnestly to understand, that we have no hght in all * our 1 affairs and works,if we let our will enter into that which we have wrought, by setting our heart and 2 will upon the work of our own hands, in covetousness; then the soul is wholly blind, and we have no hght in us, but only the outward hght of the sun, which giveth hght to the outward body; and when that perisheth, then the soul is imprisoned by that 3 thing. 6. You must here understand the spirit and will of the soul; for the prison of the soul is a dark 4 vale, 5 having no hght; and although it do elevate itself, and inflame itself, yet it becometh only a wrathful flash of fire, and is hke the devil, and cannot 6 attain the divine hght in itself. 7. The cause is, it hath brought abominations into its will and spirit, which darken the spirit, and hold it captive with the turba: for God's light goeth not backwards, but forwards, into the eternity. 8. And therefore God's eye is 7 twofold, standing back to back, as before in the Figure; one part goeth forwards into the still eternity, into the eternal nothing, viz. into the hberty. 1 matters, or business.
32 Or sacrifice to our own net. Hab. i. 16. Note the cause of our spiritual blindness. 3 it was set upon. 4 cave, or hole. 5 void of light. 6 Or reach. 7 Or in two halves, or parts. * "our affairs and works" (wiser Wesen und Macheri), "our being and doing." 9. And the other part goeth backwards into the desire, and maketh darkness and the centre of nature therein, and driveth it to the greatest anguish and sharpness. 10. And then the will again sinketh out of the anguish through the darkness, into the still liberty, and bringeth the wrathfulness of the mobility and earnest sharpness out of the anguish with it. 11. In which sharpness, the liberty (when the will bringeth the sharpness into it) becometh a highly triumphing majestic light, which is called God's light, which shineth for ever, and cannot be 1 smothered by anything, for it giveth light in the eternal liberty, and desireth no more. 12. And if (as thou earthly man perhaps doth suppose) God would receive thy spirit into his majestic light, while thou lettest in thy abomination (viz. covetousness, which hath brought forth pride, which is the fiery life of covetousness) into thy will, so that thy will sticketh wholly in earthliness; thou wouldst darken God's Majesty, and thy spirit and will would nevertheless stick in covetousness, and burn out with the fiery source of the soul, as a reflection in a glass, viz. in pride, and thou shouldst not be able to reach the Majesty of God.
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 TWELFTH QUESTION How is the Soul enlightened, and what is the Illumination of it? 1. WE must consider, that if the sun were taken away out of this world, that all things would be in darkness, and then outward reason would say, We are in dark death and in the 1 wrathfulness of the cold; and it were so indeed. 2. Now observe, my beloved mind, and consider with thyself, when thy body perisheth, and so thy spirit loseth the 2 sun; how canst thou then enjoy the light? and wherewith wilt thou see? In simplicity we put thee in mind of this, that thou mayest consider it. 3. That thing which consisteth in the eternal hberty, if it always enter again into the eternal liberty, it hath no darkness, for it dwelleth in nothing that 3 affordeth darkness: it is free as the eye of God, which beholdeth itself through a 4 substance. 4. * When that imagineth after anything, in lust, then the will entereth into that thing, which the desiring lust itself maketh; and this receiveth the will into itself, and overshadoweth it, so that it dwelleth in darkness, and can have no light, unless it goeth forth again out of that thing into the liberty. 1 Or bitterness. 2 Viz. the light of the sun. 3 giveth, maketh, or causeth. 4 Or being, or essence.
2* "When that imagineth," etc. "When that imagineth [makes use of the imaging power] in a desire (Lust) for anything, then the will entereth into that thing, which the eager desire itself maketh." The meaning of the German "Lust" is not identical with that of the English "lust." St Martin has rendered it in this case, "attrait." 5. Thus we give you earnestly to understand, that we have no hght in all * our 1 affairs and works,if we let our will enter into that which we have wrought, by setting our heart and 2 will upon the work of our own hands, in covetousness; then the soul is wholly blind, and we have no hght in us, but only the outward hght of the sun, which giveth hght to the outward body; and when that perisheth, then the soul is imprisoned by that 3 thing. 6. You must here understand the spirit and will of the soul; for the prison of the soul is a dark 4 vale, 5 having no hght; and although it do elevate itself, and inflame itself, yet it becometh only a wrathful flash of fire, and is hke the devil, and cannot 6 attain the divine hght in itself. 7. The cause is, it hath brought abominations into its will and spirit, which darken the spirit, and hold it captive with the turba: for God's light goeth not backwards, but forwards, into the eternity. 8. And therefore God's eye is 7 twofold, standing back to back, as before in the Figure; one part goeth forwards into the still eternity, into the eternal nothing, viz. into the hberty. 1 matters, or business.
32 Or sacrifice to our own net. Hab. i. 16. Note the cause of our spiritual blindness. 3 it was set upon. 4 cave, or hole. 5 void of light. 6 Or reach. 7 Or in two halves, or parts. * "our affairs and works" (wiser Wesen und Macheri), "our being and doing." 9. And the other part goeth backwards into the desire, and maketh darkness and the centre of nature therein, and driveth it to the greatest anguish and sharpness. 10. And then the will again sinketh out of the anguish through the darkness, into the still liberty, and bringeth the wrathfulness of the mobility and earnest sharpness out of the anguish with it. 11. In which sharpness, the liberty (when the will bringeth the sharpness into it) becometh a highly triumphing majestic light, which is called God's light, which shineth for ever, and cannot be 1 smothered by anything, for it giveth light in the eternal liberty, and desireth no more. 12. And if (as thou earthly man perhaps doth suppose) God would receive thy spirit into his majestic light, while thou lettest in thy abomination (viz. covetousness, which hath brought forth pride, which is the fiery life of covetousness) into thy will, so that thy will sticketh wholly in earthliness; thou wouldst darken God's Majesty, and thy spirit and will would nevertheless stick in covetousness, and burn out with the fiery source of the soul, as a reflection in a glass, viz. in pride, and thou shouldst not be able to reach the Majesty of God.
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.