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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.
119. O you self-exalting vapourer, of what do you smell and savour? Even of the Serpent's wantonness, lust, concupiscence and poison, and the temporal and eternal death. And this you are in your own self-tree, and not a whit better, and though you were a king, yet that which is under your jurisdiction is only for your office, and not your own. 20. If you will enter again into the life-tree, and be a twig on the only life of man, then you must utterly forsake in your mind and desire all whatsoever that is in this world; and become as a little child; and look only upon that which your own life's astrum doth cast upon you in your estate, calling and place; and therein you must work, and not say, It is mine alone ! Albeit you are a steward therein, yet you serve therein the root alone upon which you stand. You bear fruit to the root in your labour, which you must let stand free, and therewith be diligent and careful in preserving your calling and place, to serve your brother, and help to increase his sap, that he may grow up with you, and bear fruit.
221. In all self-hood and own-hood [ Selfish interests, minehood, and thine-hood, meum and tuum] there is a false plant; one brother should be the sovereign cure and refreshment to another, and delight or content his mind with the insinuation of his love- will. There were enough and enough in this world, if covetousness drew it not into a selfish property, and would bear good will to his brother as to himself; and let his pride go, which is from the devil. 22. He runs, with great pride and belly-carking, only to the devil in the bottomless pit [Into the abyss]. He will be noble, and better than his brother. But whence will he have it? Did not God give but one life to man, and out of that one comes the life of all men? 23. But that he fancies to himself that he is more noble and genteel therein [than others] and vaunts therewith, that is an apostacy and fall from God and his Word, for in the Word of God was the only life of man, which the Word breathed into the created image; and this same one only life is from eternity, and never had any beginning. Wherefore does man then bring in a strange life thereinto, that does disquiet and disturb the only life? Now it must come to this pass: that he does either with his will and desire enter again into the only childlike life, and forsake all whatsoever he has introduced, or else remain for ever in disquietness in that, his in-foisted, essence or [life].
324. Now then, seeing I must forsake all whatsoever I have introduced into myself for property, and that the same is only my hurt [loss,damage], wherefore then do not I forsake this false desire, which brings death and hellish vexation and torment into me? Better it is to quash and destroy the desire, then afterward the substance with great anguish and sadness; as it is a very difficult and painful combat when a man must come to destroy the substance in him, by an earnest conversion into the childlike life. 25. But if the free will does in the beginning break and quell the desire and lust, so that the lust does not become substantial, then the cure is already produced; and afterward there need not be such an earnest purpose and endeavour, as he must have who is to depart from his contrived abominations, and forsake and destroy that substance [or matter] which he has forged and made in his mind. And yet it must come so about, or else he cannot attain the gates of the eternal only life which God gave to man; and if he reaches it not, then he also reaches not the gates of God [Or enters not into Paradise].
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.
119. O you self-exalting vapourer, of what do you smell and savour? Even of the Serpent's wantonness, lust, concupiscence and poison, and the temporal and eternal death. And this you are in your own self-tree, and not a whit better, and though you were a king, yet that which is under your jurisdiction is only for your office, and not your own. 20. If you will enter again into the life-tree, and be a twig on the only life of man, then you must utterly forsake in your mind and desire all whatsoever that is in this world; and become as a little child; and look only upon that which your own life's astrum doth cast upon you in your estate, calling and place; and therein you must work, and not say, It is mine alone ! Albeit you are a steward therein, yet you serve therein the root alone upon which you stand. You bear fruit to the root in your labour, which you must let stand free, and therewith be diligent and careful in preserving your calling and place, to serve your brother, and help to increase his sap, that he may grow up with you, and bear fruit.
221. In all self-hood and own-hood [ Selfish interests, minehood, and thine-hood, meum and tuum] there is a false plant; one brother should be the sovereign cure and refreshment to another, and delight or content his mind with the insinuation of his love- will. There were enough and enough in this world, if covetousness drew it not into a selfish property, and would bear good will to his brother as to himself; and let his pride go, which is from the devil. 22. He runs, with great pride and belly-carking, only to the devil in the bottomless pit [Into the abyss]. He will be noble, and better than his brother. But whence will he have it? Did not God give but one life to man, and out of that one comes the life of all men? 23. But that he fancies to himself that he is more noble and genteel therein [than others] and vaunts therewith, that is an apostacy and fall from God and his Word, for in the Word of God was the only life of man, which the Word breathed into the created image; and this same one only life is from eternity, and never had any beginning. Wherefore does man then bring in a strange life thereinto, that does disquiet and disturb the only life? Now it must come to this pass: that he does either with his will and desire enter again into the only childlike life, and forsake all whatsoever he has introduced, or else remain for ever in disquietness in that, his in-foisted, essence or [life].
324. Now then, seeing I must forsake all whatsoever I have introduced into myself for property, and that the same is only my hurt [loss,damage], wherefore then do not I forsake this false desire, which brings death and hellish vexation and torment into me? Better it is to quash and destroy the desire, then afterward the substance with great anguish and sadness; as it is a very difficult and painful combat when a man must come to destroy the substance in him, by an earnest conversion into the childlike life. 25. But if the free will does in the beginning break and quell the desire and lust, so that the lust does not become substantial, then the cure is already produced; and afterward there need not be such an earnest purpose and endeavour, as he must have who is to depart from his contrived abominations, and forsake and destroy that substance [or matter] which he has forged and made in his mind. And yet it must come so about, or else he cannot attain the gates of the eternal only life which God gave to man; and if he reaches it not, then he also reaches not the gates of God [Or enters not into Paradise].
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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