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.
123. It cannot sufficiently be described, what refining the soul hath, and how it is * hindered and plagued by the devil, ere it can get this spark into itself. But this wise world will not believe this, it is too wise, and yet it is so stark blind, it understands nothing, but hangeth continually to the letter: O! that none might feel this by experience, we would willingly be silent. 24. We speak not here of any strange * source, but only of that which is in the turba, and also of no other power of the devil over the poor soul, but its own horror and 2 abominable suggestions, by which the imagination of the soul is so tormented. 25. The condition of hell is far otherwise than Babel teacheth; she saith that the devil 3 beateth and tormenteth the soul; but this is spoken in mere blindness; the devil is not at odds with his own children; they must all do his will; the anguish and horror of hell plague every one of them sufficiently in their own abominations; every one hath his own hell; there is nothing but his own poison that apprehendeth him. 1 Or pain. 2 Or wicked. 3 whippeth. * "hindered" (gehalten), "held," or "held back."
226. *The four forms of the original of nature, are the common plague which every one feeleth according to his own turba, but one far otherwise than another: the covetous hath frost; the angry, fire; the envious, bitterness; the proud, a high aspiring, and yet an eternal sinking and falling into the abyss; the 1 scorner swalloweth down the turba of those abominations which he here belched forth; the false f deceitful heart hath the fourth form, viz. the great 2 anguish. 27. For the turba standeth in the circle of the fire, viz. in the heart of the soul; and false speaking, lying, and 3 untruths, are an abomination and gnawing, and make it curse itself. 28. A potentate who hath oppressed the poor, and consumed his 4 sweat in pride, he rideth in the curses of the poor in the height of fire; for all the 5 necessities of the poor stick in him. 29. He hath no rest, his pride always climbeth up, he behaveth himself just as he did here; he continually seeketh, and yet wanteth all things; what he had too much of, that he hath too little of there; he continually desireth to devour his own essence, but he hath none, for he is magical. 30. He hath lost his 6 true image; he hath the image, as it were, of a proud prancing horse, or of what else he hath been delighted with; whatsoever he took with him in his will, that is his image; where his heart is, there is his treasure also, and that in its eternity.
331. But hearken, Friend, what the Last Judgment will bring with it! then all things shall pass through the fire, and the floor shall be swept clean; and every one shall go into his own place; at this the very devils themselves do tremble. 1 Or blasphemer. 2 Or aching. 3 idle words, unfaithfulness, or jeering. 4 Or labour. 5 Or miseries. 6 Or right. * "The four forms . . . are the common," etc. Both 1682 and 1730 editions have "The fourth form ... is the common," etc. t "deceitful" (verleumderisch), "slandering." THE NINETEENTH QUESTION How is the Soul Mortal? and how Immortal? 1. A THING which hath an eternal beginning, hath also an eternal end, and so hath the essence of the soul. 2. As concerning the image which God created, and which hath a temporal beginning, that is born out of the eternal, and is placed in the eternal essence without 1 source. 3. And where there is no 1 source, there is also no death; and though there be a source (as there is a source in heaven), yet it is but in one only will, and that hath its foundation in the eternity; and as nothing is there that can find it, so there is nothing that can come into it. 4. But where there is one will only (as in God, who is All in All), there is nothing that can find the will; there is no turba there; for the will desireth nothing but itself only, and its 2 twigs, which all stand in one tree, in one essence; the tree is its own beginning, and its own end.
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.
123. It cannot sufficiently be described, what refining the soul hath, and how it is * hindered and plagued by the devil, ere it can get this spark into itself. But this wise world will not believe this, it is too wise, and yet it is so stark blind, it understands nothing, but hangeth continually to the letter: O! that none might feel this by experience, we would willingly be silent. 24. We speak not here of any strange * source, but only of that which is in the turba, and also of no other power of the devil over the poor soul, but its own horror and 2 abominable suggestions, by which the imagination of the soul is so tormented. 25. The condition of hell is far otherwise than Babel teacheth; she saith that the devil 3 beateth and tormenteth the soul; but this is spoken in mere blindness; the devil is not at odds with his own children; they must all do his will; the anguish and horror of hell plague every one of them sufficiently in their own abominations; every one hath his own hell; there is nothing but his own poison that apprehendeth him. 1 Or pain. 2 Or wicked. 3 whippeth. * "hindered" (gehalten), "held," or "held back."
226. *The four forms of the original of nature, are the common plague which every one feeleth according to his own turba, but one far otherwise than another: the covetous hath frost; the angry, fire; the envious, bitterness; the proud, a high aspiring, and yet an eternal sinking and falling into the abyss; the 1 scorner swalloweth down the turba of those abominations which he here belched forth; the false f deceitful heart hath the fourth form, viz. the great 2 anguish. 27. For the turba standeth in the circle of the fire, viz. in the heart of the soul; and false speaking, lying, and 3 untruths, are an abomination and gnawing, and make it curse itself. 28. A potentate who hath oppressed the poor, and consumed his 4 sweat in pride, he rideth in the curses of the poor in the height of fire; for all the 5 necessities of the poor stick in him. 29. He hath no rest, his pride always climbeth up, he behaveth himself just as he did here; he continually seeketh, and yet wanteth all things; what he had too much of, that he hath too little of there; he continually desireth to devour his own essence, but he hath none, for he is magical. 30. He hath lost his 6 true image; he hath the image, as it were, of a proud prancing horse, or of what else he hath been delighted with; whatsoever he took with him in his will, that is his image; where his heart is, there is his treasure also, and that in its eternity.
331. But hearken, Friend, what the Last Judgment will bring with it! then all things shall pass through the fire, and the floor shall be swept clean; and every one shall go into his own place; at this the very devils themselves do tremble. 1 Or blasphemer. 2 Or aching. 3 idle words, unfaithfulness, or jeering. 4 Or labour. 5 Or miseries. 6 Or right. * "The four forms . . . are the common," etc. Both 1682 and 1730 editions have "The fourth form ... is the common," etc. t "deceitful" (verleumderisch), "slandering." THE NINETEENTH QUESTION How is the Soul Mortal? and how Immortal? 1. A THING which hath an eternal beginning, hath also an eternal end, and so hath the essence of the soul. 2. As concerning the image which God created, and which hath a temporal beginning, that is born out of the eternal, and is placed in the eternal essence without 1 source. 3. And where there is no 1 source, there is also no death; and though there be a source (as there is a source in heaven), yet it is but in one only will, and that hath its foundation in the eternity; and as nothing is there that can find it, so there is nothing that can come into it. 4. But where there is one will only (as in God, who is All in All), there is nothing that can find the will; there is no turba there; for the will desireth nothing but itself only, and its 2 twigs, which all stand in one tree, in one essence; the tree is its own beginning, and its own end.
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.