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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.
19. Life has thus lost the temperament, viz. the eternal rest, and has by its own desire made itself dark, painful, harsh, hard and rough. It has become a mere restlessness, and runs now in earthly power in an eternal ground, and seeks rest in that which is frail or fragile, but finds none ; for fragility is not life's equality. Therefore the life sets itself forcibly above the existence of this world, and dominates the mortal power of the stars and elements as an individual God of Nature. And it is by such domination become silly and foolish, so that in such earthly imagination (Bildung) and self-assumption it cannot recognize its ground and original state, wherein its eternal rest stood; and is rightly called 194 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION foolish. For it has brought itself out of the divine Ens into an earthly (animal) ens, and placed itself in a fragile being; and will inile in that which nevertheless perishes for it, and passes away quickly like a smoke. 10. And when that breaks, over which it has ruled for a while, then the life remains in its contrariety in the first principle, in darkness ; and is nothing else than an everlasting, unquenchable, painful firesource, as the devils also are such.
211. To the aid of this captive life came again the great love of God; and immediately after such downfall inbreathed itself again into the inward ens, viz. into the deadened nature of divine quality ; and gave itself to the life for an object, introduced itself as a new fountain of divine unity, love and rest into the faded divine Ens, and revealed itself therein; from which the life is able to draw and its pain and restlessness in the centra of ownness to extinguish. 12. Further, this new fountain of divine love and unity has, by its outflow in Christ, embodied itself in the true life of all the three principles of human quality; and has entered into the image-like senses, viz. into life's natural, creaturely, dissentient, image-like will, and assumed humanity ; and has shattered egoism and self-will by the influence of the one love of God, as by the eternal One ; and turned Hfe's will inwards again to the eternal One, to the temperament, whereby the devil's introduced will was destroyed, and life's painfulness brought into the true rest. And has broken open the shutting-in, viz. death, and restored again the divine paradisaic ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 195
3budding with the holy senses and workings ; and led the holy life through the confining of death, and made death and the devil's will a reproach. And has thus powerfully demonstrated how the eternal One can predominate over plurality and particularity, that the might of what is image-like may not be a God, but the might of what is super- and unimage-like rule all. For what is image-like is only a counterstroke to the un-image-hke will of God, through which the will of God works. 13. But seeing the great love of God in Christ is thus come to the aid of human hf e in earthly form, and has made for us poor men in the life of the humanity of Christ an open gate of grace to the divine entrance ; therefore the matter now lies in this, that the life's will taken captive in its image-like existence should abandon again the earthly, viz. egoism and self-will, and immerse itself wholly and solely in this embodied grace (which pressed from one, as from the first man, upon all, Rom. v. 18) ; and take to itself this grace, and in virtue of such acceptance and divine union sink with the resigned life's will into the supersensible, superfathomable, eternal One, as into the first ground of life's beginning, and give itself up again to the ground from which life sprang forth ; then it is again in its eternal place, in the temperament, in the true rest.
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.
19. Life has thus lost the temperament, viz. the eternal rest, and has by its own desire made itself dark, painful, harsh, hard and rough. It has become a mere restlessness, and runs now in earthly power in an eternal ground, and seeks rest in that which is frail or fragile, but finds none ; for fragility is not life's equality. Therefore the life sets itself forcibly above the existence of this world, and dominates the mortal power of the stars and elements as an individual God of Nature. And it is by such domination become silly and foolish, so that in such earthly imagination (Bildung) and self-assumption it cannot recognize its ground and original state, wherein its eternal rest stood; and is rightly called 194 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION foolish. For it has brought itself out of the divine Ens into an earthly (animal) ens, and placed itself in a fragile being; and will inile in that which nevertheless perishes for it, and passes away quickly like a smoke. 10. And when that breaks, over which it has ruled for a while, then the life remains in its contrariety in the first principle, in darkness ; and is nothing else than an everlasting, unquenchable, painful firesource, as the devils also are such.
211. To the aid of this captive life came again the great love of God; and immediately after such downfall inbreathed itself again into the inward ens, viz. into the deadened nature of divine quality ; and gave itself to the life for an object, introduced itself as a new fountain of divine unity, love and rest into the faded divine Ens, and revealed itself therein; from which the life is able to draw and its pain and restlessness in the centra of ownness to extinguish. 12. Further, this new fountain of divine love and unity has, by its outflow in Christ, embodied itself in the true life of all the three principles of human quality; and has entered into the image-like senses, viz. into life's natural, creaturely, dissentient, image-like will, and assumed humanity ; and has shattered egoism and self-will by the influence of the one love of God, as by the eternal One ; and turned Hfe's will inwards again to the eternal One, to the temperament, whereby the devil's introduced will was destroyed, and life's painfulness brought into the true rest. And has broken open the shutting-in, viz. death, and restored again the divine paradisaic ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 195
3budding with the holy senses and workings ; and led the holy life through the confining of death, and made death and the devil's will a reproach. And has thus powerfully demonstrated how the eternal One can predominate over plurality and particularity, that the might of what is image-like may not be a God, but the might of what is super- and unimage-like rule all. For what is image-like is only a counterstroke to the un-image-hke will of God, through which the will of God works. 13. But seeing the great love of God in Christ is thus come to the aid of human hf e in earthly form, and has made for us poor men in the life of the humanity of Christ an open gate of grace to the divine entrance ; therefore the matter now lies in this, that the life's will taken captive in its image-like existence should abandon again the earthly, viz. egoism and self-will, and immerse itself wholly and solely in this embodied grace (which pressed from one, as from the first man, upon all, Rom. v. 18) ; and take to itself this grace, and in virtue of such acceptance and divine union sink with the resigned life's will into the supersensible, superfathomable, eternal One, as into the first ground of life's beginning, and give itself up again to the ground from which life sprang forth ; then it is again in its eternal place, in the temperament, in the true rest.
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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