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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.
133. The spirit complains against all flesh upon the face of the earth, even whatsoever has breath and sense. 1 The outward nature had corrupted itself in every kind of life, and brought the formed, expressed Word into an ens of vanity; this was the perverseness and violent self-willedness of the natural life. The spirit of nature, which takes its original in the fire, had exalted itself in its fiery property, and introduced itself into a wrathful life, and driven itself even to the utmost end of meekness. 1 Text, lives in the air and fire. 34. For the devil was an insinuating predominant prince in the wrath's property, which had incited and stirred up the centre of the outward nature in the fire's matrix, and had not only corrupted the natural life of man, but also the creatures; for he moved and acted man in God's anger, who used the creatures for their service and food, so that the curse and the vanity was also manifest in every life, that man in his conversation stood in the curse and vanity, and so came, in the vanity in the curse, even into the abyss, viz. into the end of this world. Therefore said the spirit, the end of all flesh, in its perverseness and violence, is come before me. Every life had, through the vanity of man, brought itself unto the end of the outward nature; and the throat of wrath was open in nature, and would devour and swallow up all things in the wrath.
235. For the kingdom of God's anger, viz. the dark world, had gotten the upper hand in its property, and brought the good part of nature even unto the end. Therefore the formed, expressed Word did move, or repent through every life of this vanity, that it should bear the abomination on it; and said, that it would destroy with water the womb or pregnatress of vanity proceeding from the fire's mother, and break its power and force. 36. For before the flood the fire's root was more strong and potent than the water's root, and that, from the original of the fiery motion; that is, the Fiat stood in the fiery property, and compacted the earth and stones. So that there was then a great wrath poured forth in nature, and that, by reason of the casting out or ejection of the hierarch Lucifer into the darkness. 37. And here, by the flood or deluge, the force and violence was taken from the wrathful fire root in the centre of nature, for the repenting or grieving of the formed Word was nothing else but a type of Christ, where the eternal living divine Word in the human property did repent and grieve in the formed creatural word, at our sins and vanity, and mortified the same vanity in his death in the creature; 1 and drowned the formed creatural word in the human property with the divine water of love and meekness in the holy heavenly blood. 1 Died from the vanity.
338. So also in this place, the formed Word grieved at the vanity of the creatures, in that they were laden therewith, and brought the life of all the creatures into death; and in its sorrow moved the meekness of the water-source in nature, so that all the fountains of the deep did open themselves, as Moses says, and devoured the firesource in the water. This signifies unto man the Baptism of Christ, where the fire-source of the soul in God's anger was, in the Word of Christ's Covenant, baptised with the regenerated water of the spirit (understand the spiritual water), which shall quench the fire of God's anger. As it was above mentioned concerning the seven times, that each time of the seven degrees of nature has brought itself unto its end; and in the end there was a sorrow for the abomination; and in the repentance and sorrow the turba was broken and destroyed. 39. Now behold here aright: by Noah, with the flood, the second time, viz. Seth's time, was at the end; and with Adam, in the fall, when he lusted to eat of the vanity, the first time was at the end. 40. In Adam the Word repented, and gave itself with a Covenant into the life, to help comfort and restore the life. And by Noah the Word repented, and moved all the fountains of the deep in nature, and drowned the wrath, and opened the Covenant of grace.
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.
133. The spirit complains against all flesh upon the face of the earth, even whatsoever has breath and sense. 1 The outward nature had corrupted itself in every kind of life, and brought the formed, expressed Word into an ens of vanity; this was the perverseness and violent self-willedness of the natural life. The spirit of nature, which takes its original in the fire, had exalted itself in its fiery property, and introduced itself into a wrathful life, and driven itself even to the utmost end of meekness. 1 Text, lives in the air and fire. 34. For the devil was an insinuating predominant prince in the wrath's property, which had incited and stirred up the centre of the outward nature in the fire's matrix, and had not only corrupted the natural life of man, but also the creatures; for he moved and acted man in God's anger, who used the creatures for their service and food, so that the curse and the vanity was also manifest in every life, that man in his conversation stood in the curse and vanity, and so came, in the vanity in the curse, even into the abyss, viz. into the end of this world. Therefore said the spirit, the end of all flesh, in its perverseness and violence, is come before me. Every life had, through the vanity of man, brought itself unto the end of the outward nature; and the throat of wrath was open in nature, and would devour and swallow up all things in the wrath.
235. For the kingdom of God's anger, viz. the dark world, had gotten the upper hand in its property, and brought the good part of nature even unto the end. Therefore the formed, expressed Word did move, or repent through every life of this vanity, that it should bear the abomination on it; and said, that it would destroy with water the womb or pregnatress of vanity proceeding from the fire's mother, and break its power and force. 36. For before the flood the fire's root was more strong and potent than the water's root, and that, from the original of the fiery motion; that is, the Fiat stood in the fiery property, and compacted the earth and stones. So that there was then a great wrath poured forth in nature, and that, by reason of the casting out or ejection of the hierarch Lucifer into the darkness. 37. And here, by the flood or deluge, the force and violence was taken from the wrathful fire root in the centre of nature, for the repenting or grieving of the formed Word was nothing else but a type of Christ, where the eternal living divine Word in the human property did repent and grieve in the formed creatural word, at our sins and vanity, and mortified the same vanity in his death in the creature; 1 and drowned the formed creatural word in the human property with the divine water of love and meekness in the holy heavenly blood. 1 Died from the vanity.
338. So also in this place, the formed Word grieved at the vanity of the creatures, in that they were laden therewith, and brought the life of all the creatures into death; and in its sorrow moved the meekness of the water-source in nature, so that all the fountains of the deep did open themselves, as Moses says, and devoured the firesource in the water. This signifies unto man the Baptism of Christ, where the fire-source of the soul in God's anger was, in the Word of Christ's Covenant, baptised with the regenerated water of the spirit (understand the spiritual water), which shall quench the fire of God's anger. As it was above mentioned concerning the seven times, that each time of the seven degrees of nature has brought itself unto its end; and in the end there was a sorrow for the abomination; and in the repentance and sorrow the turba was broken and destroyed. 39. Now behold here aright: by Noah, with the flood, the second time, viz. Seth's time, was at the end; and with Adam, in the fall, when he lusted to eat of the vanity, the first time was at the end. 40. In Adam the Word repented, and gave itself with a Covenant into the life, to help comfort and restore the life. And by Noah the Word repented, and moved all the fountains of the deep in nature, and drowned the wrath, and opened the Covenant of grace.
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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