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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.
117. Also there could be no Sound without a Conception, and therefore all Forms belong to the Sound : 1. The Desire makes Hardness. 2. The Compunction moves. 3. The Anguish does amass it into an Essence, for Distinction. 4. The Fire changes in its devouring the Grossness of the first amassed Essence into a Spirit or Sound. 5. Which the Desire does again receive in its Softness and Meekness, and forms it to a Voice, Tone, or Expression, according to the Powers. 6. And what is conceived or formed is the vital Sound, or distinct Understanding [or the articulate Knowledge of all Sounds, Voices, Powers, Colours, and Virtues in Nature and Creature.] 18. This is now the manifested Word, which in itself is only One Power, wherein all Powers are contained. But thus it manifests itself through the Eternal and Temporal Nature, and puts forth itself in Forms, for its Expression; for the formed Word has the like Might in it as to reproduce its Likeness, viz. such I Being as the Birth of the Spirit is.
219.1n the Light of God, which is called the Kingdom of Heaven, the Sound is wholly soft, pleasant, lovely, pure, and thin; yea as a Stillness in reference to our outward gross Shrillness in our pronouncing, speaking, sounding, singing, and chanting; as if the Mind did play and melodize in a Kingdom of Joy within itself, and did hear in a most intire inward Manner such a sweet, pleasing Melody and Tune, and yet outwardly did neither hear or understand it: for in the Essence of the Light all is subtile, in Manner as the Thoughts play and make mutual Melody in one another. And yet there is a real, intelligible, distinct Sound and Speech used and heard by the Angels in the Kingdom of Glory; but according to their World's Property. For where the Sound is gross, harsh, and shrill, there it is strong in the dark Impression; and there the Fire is vehement and burning; as we Men after the Fall of Adam have so awakened and enkindled the Fire of the dark World in our Vital Essence, that our vital Sound is gross, and Beast-like, resembling the Abyss. And the like is to be understood of the Sound in the Darkness; for as the Generation of the Word is, in its Manifestation in the Light, in the holy Power, so also in the Darkness, but altogether rigorous, harsh, hard, and gross. That which gives a pleasing Sound, and lovely Tune in the Light, that makes in the Darkness a dull, harsh, hideous Noise, void of any true Sound: And this proceeds from the Essence of the astringent, hard, compunctive, anxious Generation, viz. from the Original of the Coldness, or cold Fire's Source.
3The Sixth Chapter. Of the Essence of Corporality. The Seventh form of Nature. Luna (Moon) and Saturnus. Beginning End. 1. We acknowledge that God in his own Essence, is no Essence, but only the alone Power or the Understanding [or Original] to the Essence, viz. an unsearchable Eternal Will, wherein all Things are couched; and the same is ALL, and yet is only ONE, but yet desires to manifest itself, and introduce itself into a spiritual Essence, which is effected in the Power of the Light, through the Fire in the Lovedesire.
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.
117. Also there could be no Sound without a Conception, and therefore all Forms belong to the Sound : 1. The Desire makes Hardness. 2. The Compunction moves. 3. The Anguish does amass it into an Essence, for Distinction. 4. The Fire changes in its devouring the Grossness of the first amassed Essence into a Spirit or Sound. 5. Which the Desire does again receive in its Softness and Meekness, and forms it to a Voice, Tone, or Expression, according to the Powers. 6. And what is conceived or formed is the vital Sound, or distinct Understanding [or the articulate Knowledge of all Sounds, Voices, Powers, Colours, and Virtues in Nature and Creature.] 18. This is now the manifested Word, which in itself is only One Power, wherein all Powers are contained. But thus it manifests itself through the Eternal and Temporal Nature, and puts forth itself in Forms, for its Expression; for the formed Word has the like Might in it as to reproduce its Likeness, viz. such I Being as the Birth of the Spirit is.
219.1n the Light of God, which is called the Kingdom of Heaven, the Sound is wholly soft, pleasant, lovely, pure, and thin; yea as a Stillness in reference to our outward gross Shrillness in our pronouncing, speaking, sounding, singing, and chanting; as if the Mind did play and melodize in a Kingdom of Joy within itself, and did hear in a most intire inward Manner such a sweet, pleasing Melody and Tune, and yet outwardly did neither hear or understand it: for in the Essence of the Light all is subtile, in Manner as the Thoughts play and make mutual Melody in one another. And yet there is a real, intelligible, distinct Sound and Speech used and heard by the Angels in the Kingdom of Glory; but according to their World's Property. For where the Sound is gross, harsh, and shrill, there it is strong in the dark Impression; and there the Fire is vehement and burning; as we Men after the Fall of Adam have so awakened and enkindled the Fire of the dark World in our Vital Essence, that our vital Sound is gross, and Beast-like, resembling the Abyss. And the like is to be understood of the Sound in the Darkness; for as the Generation of the Word is, in its Manifestation in the Light, in the holy Power, so also in the Darkness, but altogether rigorous, harsh, hard, and gross. That which gives a pleasing Sound, and lovely Tune in the Light, that makes in the Darkness a dull, harsh, hideous Noise, void of any true Sound: And this proceeds from the Essence of the astringent, hard, compunctive, anxious Generation, viz. from the Original of the Coldness, or cold Fire's Source.
3The Sixth Chapter. Of the Essence of Corporality. The Seventh form of Nature. Luna (Moon) and Saturnus. Beginning End. 1. We acknowledge that God in his own Essence, is no Essence, but only the alone Power or the Understanding [or Original] to the Essence, viz. an unsearchable Eternal Will, wherein all Things are couched; and the same is ALL, and yet is only ONE, but yet desires to manifest itself, and introduce itself into a spiritual Essence, which is effected in the Power of the Light, through the Fire in the Lovedesire.
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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