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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.
1To which end we make many outward experiments, and thereby happen to cause nature to produce her wonderful effects: but few examine how the spirit of Nature works therein, she works under a veil or shell, within which, the Spirit produces all its wonders, and so spiritual things are hid from our outward eyes, though visible things are a glass wherein the resemblance and similitude of all spiritual things are represented; yet of all glasses the mind itself is the more clear and undeceiving, to behold the motions of that working Spirit; all things are there, to be seen, intimately; if we will search how things come there to be produced, and what makes so many various thoughts and representations; we shall there perceive a workmaster, the Spirit which created everything in the world, and in the mind, and he who yields to that Spirit, it will make known to him its own workings within and without; that, it is, which opens our understandings when we apprehend anything; and this is the Mighty God, the creator of all things, who knows when, and where, and how, itself made everything, and wrought in all wisdom, both of angels and men, and to this Spirit we must always have recourse as this author advises us, or we can have no true knowledge at all.
2Which way would any go that they may be able to perform an excellent thing, would they not first inquire of friends or others whether they knew of any that had attained the thing, if it were concerning a piece of fine workmanship, suppose a clock or watch, sure we would ask where such a thing may be had, and we should as readily be directed to go to those that sell, but perhaps none of them were to be seen in our native habitation; if so, we would desire some to write to a rare artist abroad beyond sea, in the Indies if it were not elsewhere to be had, entreating him to describe the making of it, in a letter to a friend of his with us, and if he should return an answer concerning the parts of it, the standing, or other defects, when it is foul, or a tooth broken, or string slipt, or any other fault; this would be prized highly from so skilful a man, and we would presently look out for his friend in our own country that understandeth the language to expound this letter, that we may have the right meaning thereof: yet when that is done, we could not thereby be instructed about the materials, how to begin, what tools to have, and many other particulars, requisite to the understanding of the thing; without still further and further directions, from him: and therefore we are desirous to speak with the party himself who was able to give such directions;
3but then if we should hear, that person were dead who made them best and had written that letter: what advice should we next take: we should seek out whether any books or other letters have been written by that artist, and for men most conversant in reading the writings of that nature, by which means competent knowledge what the thing is may be obtained; and the same course must be taken concerning any subject whether natural or divine; this is done with much toil and expense of time and cost; but if we could have notice where one for a pattern were to be gotten we might begin to look into it, and so imitate though but weakly at first, and by a long tract of experience come to a more exact knowledge than can be attained by all the books in the world, much more than if all the learned men were set together accurately to
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.
1To which end we make many outward experiments, and thereby happen to cause nature to produce her wonderful effects: but few examine how the spirit of Nature works therein, she works under a veil or shell, within which, the Spirit produces all its wonders, and so spiritual things are hid from our outward eyes, though visible things are a glass wherein the resemblance and similitude of all spiritual things are represented; yet of all glasses the mind itself is the more clear and undeceiving, to behold the motions of that working Spirit; all things are there, to be seen, intimately; if we will search how things come there to be produced, and what makes so many various thoughts and representations; we shall there perceive a workmaster, the Spirit which created everything in the world, and in the mind, and he who yields to that Spirit, it will make known to him its own workings within and without; that, it is, which opens our understandings when we apprehend anything; and this is the Mighty God, the creator of all things, who knows when, and where, and how, itself made everything, and wrought in all wisdom, both of angels and men, and to this Spirit we must always have recourse as this author advises us, or we can have no true knowledge at all.
2Which way would any go that they may be able to perform an excellent thing, would they not first inquire of friends or others whether they knew of any that had attained the thing, if it were concerning a piece of fine workmanship, suppose a clock or watch, sure we would ask where such a thing may be had, and we should as readily be directed to go to those that sell, but perhaps none of them were to be seen in our native habitation; if so, we would desire some to write to a rare artist abroad beyond sea, in the Indies if it were not elsewhere to be had, entreating him to describe the making of it, in a letter to a friend of his with us, and if he should return an answer concerning the parts of it, the standing, or other defects, when it is foul, or a tooth broken, or string slipt, or any other fault; this would be prized highly from so skilful a man, and we would presently look out for his friend in our own country that understandeth the language to expound this letter, that we may have the right meaning thereof: yet when that is done, we could not thereby be instructed about the materials, how to begin, what tools to have, and many other particulars, requisite to the understanding of the thing; without still further and further directions, from him: and therefore we are desirous to speak with the party himself who was able to give such directions;
3but then if we should hear, that person were dead who made them best and had written that letter: what advice should we next take: we should seek out whether any books or other letters have been written by that artist, and for men most conversant in reading the writings of that nature, by which means competent knowledge what the thing is may be obtained; and the same course must be taken concerning any subject whether natural or divine; this is done with much toil and expense of time and cost; but if we could have notice where one for a pattern were to be gotten we might begin to look into it, and so imitate though but weakly at first, and by a long tract of experience come to a more exact knowledge than can be attained by all the books in the world, much more than if all the learned men were set together accurately to
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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