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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 God: O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, O Lord, you have said unto me, Return again into your country, and to your first kindred; I am less than the least of all these mercies which you have bestowed on your servant; to signify that it was only in divine mercy that these two bands, viz. the twofold humanity, returned home again into its first country of Paradise to the angelical kindred. 9. And when Jacob had humbled himself before God, and his brother Esau, He stayed there all night, and took of that which came to his hand, for a present to his brother Esau, two hundred she goats, and twenty he goats, two hundred ewes, and twenty rams, and thirty milch camels with their foals, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty she asses with ten foals. And put them under the hand of his servants, every herd by itself; and said to them, Go on before me, and leave room for one herd after another. And he commanded the foremost, and said, When my brother Esau meets you, and asks you to whom do you belong? where do you go? and whose these are that you drive? you shall then say, They are your servant Jacob's, who sends them for a present to his lord Esau; and he follows behind after us (Gen. xxxii. 13-18).
210. This type is now the great earnestness, whereby the spirit of God in the figure points at the future. For this present of Jacob to his angry brother Esau, points at the place and condition of Christ. When he should appease the anger of his Father, then he must first send these beasts in our implanted humanity for an atonement, which should be presented to the anger of God. 11. But these beasts, which Christ sent to the anger of God before his passion and death, were our implanted beasts, viz. pride, covetousness, envy, wickedness, lying; whereby one man slanders, disparages, disgraces, shamefully censures with words, discourages, suppresses and exclaims against, as wicked and ungodly; and, summarily, all abominations of the devil and the wicked world. 12. These evil beasts are in Adam in sin all awakened and become living. These very forms or conditions of life, wherein Adam generated his evil beasts, wherein the temperature of nature was rent asunder, Christ took all upon him in our humanity: as they are well intimated in the figure of Jacob by five hundred and eighty; and sent them to the anger of God for an atonement, when he was redeeming the humanity from these beasts.
313. And these beasts were, as to Christ, his being despised, scorned, spat upon; whatsoever the Jewish priests did to him, were all our beasts, which Christ, in his body, gave up to the anger of God, as if he himself were the transgressor: and yet he had generated none of these beasts in his will. But Adam had generated them: and Christ took them on him as a lamb, and presented them to the anger of God on his body and life, and did it as if he himself were the transgressor; so that the anger of God devoured them on his body and life, viz. his inheritance which he had in man, as a natural right; whereby the anger of God laid hold of its own; and his wrath and hunger after this vanity to devour these beasts was appeased. 14. And the spirit of Moses speaks further in the figure of Christ, and says, thus, The present of Jacob went before him, but he stayed that night with the company. And arose in the night, and took his two wives and handmaids, and his eleven children, and went over the ford. And he took them and sent them over the water, and sent over that which he had, and stayed alone (Gen. xxxii. 21-24). The figure of Christ stands thus:
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 God: O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, O Lord, you have said unto me, Return again into your country, and to your first kindred; I am less than the least of all these mercies which you have bestowed on your servant; to signify that it was only in divine mercy that these two bands, viz. the twofold humanity, returned home again into its first country of Paradise to the angelical kindred. 9. And when Jacob had humbled himself before God, and his brother Esau, He stayed there all night, and took of that which came to his hand, for a present to his brother Esau, two hundred she goats, and twenty he goats, two hundred ewes, and twenty rams, and thirty milch camels with their foals, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty she asses with ten foals. And put them under the hand of his servants, every herd by itself; and said to them, Go on before me, and leave room for one herd after another. And he commanded the foremost, and said, When my brother Esau meets you, and asks you to whom do you belong? where do you go? and whose these are that you drive? you shall then say, They are your servant Jacob's, who sends them for a present to his lord Esau; and he follows behind after us (Gen. xxxii. 13-18).
210. This type is now the great earnestness, whereby the spirit of God in the figure points at the future. For this present of Jacob to his angry brother Esau, points at the place and condition of Christ. When he should appease the anger of his Father, then he must first send these beasts in our implanted humanity for an atonement, which should be presented to the anger of God. 11. But these beasts, which Christ sent to the anger of God before his passion and death, were our implanted beasts, viz. pride, covetousness, envy, wickedness, lying; whereby one man slanders, disparages, disgraces, shamefully censures with words, discourages, suppresses and exclaims against, as wicked and ungodly; and, summarily, all abominations of the devil and the wicked world. 12. These evil beasts are in Adam in sin all awakened and become living. These very forms or conditions of life, wherein Adam generated his evil beasts, wherein the temperature of nature was rent asunder, Christ took all upon him in our humanity: as they are well intimated in the figure of Jacob by five hundred and eighty; and sent them to the anger of God for an atonement, when he was redeeming the humanity from these beasts.
313. And these beasts were, as to Christ, his being despised, scorned, spat upon; whatsoever the Jewish priests did to him, were all our beasts, which Christ, in his body, gave up to the anger of God, as if he himself were the transgressor: and yet he had generated none of these beasts in his will. But Adam had generated them: and Christ took them on him as a lamb, and presented them to the anger of God on his body and life, and did it as if he himself were the transgressor; so that the anger of God devoured them on his body and life, viz. his inheritance which he had in man, as a natural right; whereby the anger of God laid hold of its own; and his wrath and hunger after this vanity to devour these beasts was appeased. 14. And the spirit of Moses speaks further in the figure of Christ, and says, thus, The present of Jacob went before him, but he stayed that night with the company. And arose in the night, and took his two wives and handmaids, and his eleven children, and went over the ford. And he took them and sent them over the water, and sent over that which he had, and stayed alone (Gen. xxxii. 21-24). The figure of Christ stands thus:
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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