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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.
1But here God says, / have seen you righteous before me at this time. The creature was not the righteous one, without evil; but HE, who at this time did in Noah open and manifest himselfout of the Covenant, who grieved at the evil of this time, and introduced his sorrow into God's love and mercy, and so brought the righteousness of the mercy into the sorrow, and manifested the grieving mournful spirit in the ens of the Covenant in the creature. Thus Noah was righteous before God at this time, when the Covenant did move itself in him. 14. This time is [or signifies] the motion of the Covenant, which made Noah righteous. For this was the time when Noah received life in the womb. The spirit looked with his first glimpse of life out of the divine ens of the formed Word into the beginning whence the life was come, and into the end which was the kingdom of Christ. In this aspect [or divine glimpse] the life of Noah receives the righteousness in the mark of the Covenant at this time, for that was the time in him wherein he was found righteous.
215. God brought eight persons into the ark, and of the clean beasts seven and seven, 3 the male and its female. The seven persons point at the seven properties of the natural life, that God will have children out of all the properties into his eternal ark. The eighth person was Noah, and in Noah was the Righteous One, that was the Covenant, out of which the kingdom of Christ should come; therein stood the ark of Noah. But the ark has three stories, which are the three Principles in one only divine manifestation, for each property of the three has its own peculiar heaven and certain choir in itself. 1 Or, hierarchies. 2 Or, generation. 3 Or, seven pair. 16. The seven pair of clean beasts are even the very same mystery, for the centre has seven properties; and yet they are but one in the divine power. But according to the eternal nature there are seven of them as to the divine manifestation.
3Which signifies unto us, that the creatures were brought forth into life out of this sevenfold ens, where each degree has again seven in it, to its manifestation, whence the infiniteness, viz. the form of God's wisdom, does appear and shine forth, and that in the formed wisdom, whose image and figure shall not vanish or perish. Although their life, and the creature, which has a temporal beginning, does pass away; but the form shall remain in the divine wisdom, viz. in the ens of the formed Word in the figure, to the praise of God's wondrous deeds. Indeed, not to a restoration of their creature, but for a visible mirror or looking-glass in the formed wisdom of God. 17. But of the unclean beasts God commanded Noah to take only one pair of each kind with him into the ark. Understand it thus: The unclean beasts have, on one part, their original out of the limus of the earth, according to the grossness, viz. according to the dark world's property. Although their spirit takes its rise out of nature, yet we are to consider the difference in nature in respect of that which came forth, in the Verbum Fiat, out of the source of the dark world's property, into a compaction;
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.
1But here God says, / have seen you righteous before me at this time. The creature was not the righteous one, without evil; but HE, who at this time did in Noah open and manifest himselfout of the Covenant, who grieved at the evil of this time, and introduced his sorrow into God's love and mercy, and so brought the righteousness of the mercy into the sorrow, and manifested the grieving mournful spirit in the ens of the Covenant in the creature. Thus Noah was righteous before God at this time, when the Covenant did move itself in him. 14. This time is [or signifies] the motion of the Covenant, which made Noah righteous. For this was the time when Noah received life in the womb. The spirit looked with his first glimpse of life out of the divine ens of the formed Word into the beginning whence the life was come, and into the end which was the kingdom of Christ. In this aspect [or divine glimpse] the life of Noah receives the righteousness in the mark of the Covenant at this time, for that was the time in him wherein he was found righteous.
215. God brought eight persons into the ark, and of the clean beasts seven and seven, 3 the male and its female. The seven persons point at the seven properties of the natural life, that God will have children out of all the properties into his eternal ark. The eighth person was Noah, and in Noah was the Righteous One, that was the Covenant, out of which the kingdom of Christ should come; therein stood the ark of Noah. But the ark has three stories, which are the three Principles in one only divine manifestation, for each property of the three has its own peculiar heaven and certain choir in itself. 1 Or, hierarchies. 2 Or, generation. 3 Or, seven pair. 16. The seven pair of clean beasts are even the very same mystery, for the centre has seven properties; and yet they are but one in the divine power. But according to the eternal nature there are seven of them as to the divine manifestation.
3Which signifies unto us, that the creatures were brought forth into life out of this sevenfold ens, where each degree has again seven in it, to its manifestation, whence the infiniteness, viz. the form of God's wisdom, does appear and shine forth, and that in the formed wisdom, whose image and figure shall not vanish or perish. Although their life, and the creature, which has a temporal beginning, does pass away; but the form shall remain in the divine wisdom, viz. in the ens of the formed Word in the figure, to the praise of God's wondrous deeds. Indeed, not to a restoration of their creature, but for a visible mirror or looking-glass in the formed wisdom of God. 17. But of the unclean beasts God commanded Noah to take only one pair of each kind with him into the ark. Understand it thus: The unclean beasts have, on one part, their original out of the limus of the earth, according to the grossness, viz. according to the dark world's property. Although their spirit takes its rise out of nature, yet we are to consider the difference in nature in respect of that which came forth, in the Verbum Fiat, out of the source of the dark world's property, into a compaction;
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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