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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.
122. For that this is so, let us take an example on our repentance: We cannot work any repentance, unless our inward human soul does repent that it has made, formed or brought forth the beast of vanity in itself. But if it will repent, then its formed word must enter or make its earnest approach into the heart of God, and press the same with an incessant importunity, and move in it. And now, when this comes to pass, then presently the deluge comes upon the evil man of the vain will, which must forthwith be drowned in its sorrow in the word of death. Here, then, God repents in man; that the evil beast, full of sinful desire, is born; and in this same divine sorrow it must be drowned in God's love, and die unto the wrathful evil life and will. 23. Now understand aright God's sorrow or repentance in the creature of the creatures. The spirit in the whole creation, even in every life which moves in the fire and air, said, It grieves me, that I have figured this image of vanity on me;
2and this sorrow of the formed spirit in the expressed Word grieved, that is, moved the eternal- speaking Word in it. Then said the eternal Word, / will yet give them an hundred and twenty years respite (for even so long the time in the dominion or government of Seth's spirit did continue), and then the turba in all flesh shall perish or be thrown down, for this sorrow was nothing else but that the Word in the Covenant did grieve at the misery and vanity of man, and would comfort mankind by the Covenant through Noah, which comfort did first open itself in Abraham, viz. in Enos, his manifestation. 24. For the comfort went forth in the love of the Covenant, and opened itself with its branch at its right limit or juncture of time; for God has confined all things into a certain limit, when everything shall come to pass. And from the comfort of the moving Word in the Covenant proceeded forth the judgement, that the old Adamical man, with all his desires, concupiscences and lusts, should, in the Covenant (when the same should open itself in the flesh) be drowned and mortified in the same new humanity of Christ; and out of the comfort of the Covenant a new human spirit and will should arise, which should live in righteousness and purity; of which the deluge was a type.
325. For the grief or repentance came out of the Covenant upon the formed Word in the life; and therefore, seeing the same Word repented of the vanity, thereupon the vanity of the creature must be drowned; for the will in the Covenant went forth from the vanity, and grieved the life of God, and moved the matrix of nature in the water's birth, and drowned the fiery wrath in the fire's nature. 26. But the spirit in Noah does especially complain here against man, for their Sodomitical, bestial concupiscence and filthy lusts of the flesh, viz. against unchastity, and unclean lascivious wantonness; and also against the high oppressors and tyrants, who put forth and advanced themselves in their own lust, and would rule and domineer, and no longer suffer the Spirit of God to rule in them, and reprove them that they had intruded themselves, to compel and tyrannise over one another without command. All this was an abomination before God; and it grieved the spirit in the formed Word that it had brought forth such evil beasts, and would no longer endure them. 27. Even this same prophetical spirit, whose root did open and display itself in Enoch, which also by Enoch did propagate and put forth its line with its branches; which also by Noah did grieve at the wickedness and iniquity of mankind, and drowned them with the deluge, even this is he which now also does grieve at the great sins and vanity of men: for his mouth is at present opened;
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.
122. For that this is so, let us take an example on our repentance: We cannot work any repentance, unless our inward human soul does repent that it has made, formed or brought forth the beast of vanity in itself. But if it will repent, then its formed word must enter or make its earnest approach into the heart of God, and press the same with an incessant importunity, and move in it. And now, when this comes to pass, then presently the deluge comes upon the evil man of the vain will, which must forthwith be drowned in its sorrow in the word of death. Here, then, God repents in man; that the evil beast, full of sinful desire, is born; and in this same divine sorrow it must be drowned in God's love, and die unto the wrathful evil life and will. 23. Now understand aright God's sorrow or repentance in the creature of the creatures. The spirit in the whole creation, even in every life which moves in the fire and air, said, It grieves me, that I have figured this image of vanity on me;
2and this sorrow of the formed spirit in the expressed Word grieved, that is, moved the eternal- speaking Word in it. Then said the eternal Word, / will yet give them an hundred and twenty years respite (for even so long the time in the dominion or government of Seth's spirit did continue), and then the turba in all flesh shall perish or be thrown down, for this sorrow was nothing else but that the Word in the Covenant did grieve at the misery and vanity of man, and would comfort mankind by the Covenant through Noah, which comfort did first open itself in Abraham, viz. in Enos, his manifestation. 24. For the comfort went forth in the love of the Covenant, and opened itself with its branch at its right limit or juncture of time; for God has confined all things into a certain limit, when everything shall come to pass. And from the comfort of the moving Word in the Covenant proceeded forth the judgement, that the old Adamical man, with all his desires, concupiscences and lusts, should, in the Covenant (when the same should open itself in the flesh) be drowned and mortified in the same new humanity of Christ; and out of the comfort of the Covenant a new human spirit and will should arise, which should live in righteousness and purity; of which the deluge was a type.
325. For the grief or repentance came out of the Covenant upon the formed Word in the life; and therefore, seeing the same Word repented of the vanity, thereupon the vanity of the creature must be drowned; for the will in the Covenant went forth from the vanity, and grieved the life of God, and moved the matrix of nature in the water's birth, and drowned the fiery wrath in the fire's nature. 26. But the spirit in Noah does especially complain here against man, for their Sodomitical, bestial concupiscence and filthy lusts of the flesh, viz. against unchastity, and unclean lascivious wantonness; and also against the high oppressors and tyrants, who put forth and advanced themselves in their own lust, and would rule and domineer, and no longer suffer the Spirit of God to rule in them, and reprove them that they had intruded themselves, to compel and tyrannise over one another without command. All this was an abomination before God; and it grieved the spirit in the formed Word that it had brought forth such evil beasts, and would no longer endure them. 27. Even this same prophetical spirit, whose root did open and display itself in Enoch, which also by Enoch did propagate and put forth its line with its branches; which also by Noah did grieve at the wickedness and iniquity of mankind, and drowned them with the deluge, even this is he which now also does grieve at the great sins and vanity of men: for his mouth is at present opened;
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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