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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.
136. Not that we are to understand that this tower is not at all profitable before God; it is even the great mystery of God's manifestation according to love and anger. As God has created out of the great mystery all manner, kinds and sorts of beasts, birds, worms, trees and herbs, evil and good; and that, all to the manifestation of the great wonders; thus likewise the human tree has brought forth such wonders out of its sensual tongue, out of the multiplicity of the properties, and introduced them into a substance for its growth [and glory], viz. to the great harvest of God; where each property of love and anger, light and darkness, shall reap in its own fruit, and every thing shall possess its heaven in itself; in its own formed and conceived ens, out of the only Word of God, which has given forth itself to every life (even unto every life and being, according to its own proper quality and virtue, according to, and out of; its Principle) as a universal Word, to the glorious manifestation of eternity.
237. Now, when we further consider of this beast, with the whore, what it is in itself; within 'and without, then we find that it is the formed compacted word of the spirits of the letters; for men are all of one only property as to their life; all are begotten out of one flesh and soul; and have all but one only kind of life; as a tree in many boughs and branches, where the boughs and twigs do not perfectly and wholly seem alike, or the same in form, but all have one only sap and virtue: so likewise the creature of mankind, among Jews, Christians, Turks and Heathen. 38. And the only difference is this: the spirits of the letters in the formed word do sever us in the understanding; else we live all alike in the four elements, and eat of the fruits of one mother, and remain in her, when we die to this outward life.
339. The compacted sensual tongue, which is divided in the spirits of the letters, does [confound us and] make us to err; so that we do suppose we are strange one to another; and yet we are all but one only tree, which the devil has poisoned with his desire in Adam, so that the equal temperature or accord was brought into distemper and discord; whereupon the spirits of the letters were [variously] made manifest, so that we speak from many speeches; that is, we have introduced the powerful word of God into the multiplicity of the divided properties; and have made, in each tongue's property, a selfhood, or a selfish desire to arrogation, self-apprehension and assumption. 40. Hence arise the contrarieties, differences, and opinions, 1 in that we have introduced the unformed word into [the form of our own selfmade] image. Now we contend and strive about these images [and conceits]; and everyone supposes his own to be best; and when we bring all these images [and several semblances] again into one language and speech, and mortify them, then the only quickening Word of God, which gives power and life to all things, is again manifest; and strife ceases, and God is all in all.
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.
136. Not that we are to understand that this tower is not at all profitable before God; it is even the great mystery of God's manifestation according to love and anger. As God has created out of the great mystery all manner, kinds and sorts of beasts, birds, worms, trees and herbs, evil and good; and that, all to the manifestation of the great wonders; thus likewise the human tree has brought forth such wonders out of its sensual tongue, out of the multiplicity of the properties, and introduced them into a substance for its growth [and glory], viz. to the great harvest of God; where each property of love and anger, light and darkness, shall reap in its own fruit, and every thing shall possess its heaven in itself; in its own formed and conceived ens, out of the only Word of God, which has given forth itself to every life (even unto every life and being, according to its own proper quality and virtue, according to, and out of; its Principle) as a universal Word, to the glorious manifestation of eternity.
237. Now, when we further consider of this beast, with the whore, what it is in itself; within 'and without, then we find that it is the formed compacted word of the spirits of the letters; for men are all of one only property as to their life; all are begotten out of one flesh and soul; and have all but one only kind of life; as a tree in many boughs and branches, where the boughs and twigs do not perfectly and wholly seem alike, or the same in form, but all have one only sap and virtue: so likewise the creature of mankind, among Jews, Christians, Turks and Heathen. 38. And the only difference is this: the spirits of the letters in the formed word do sever us in the understanding; else we live all alike in the four elements, and eat of the fruits of one mother, and remain in her, when we die to this outward life.
339. The compacted sensual tongue, which is divided in the spirits of the letters, does [confound us and] make us to err; so that we do suppose we are strange one to another; and yet we are all but one only tree, which the devil has poisoned with his desire in Adam, so that the equal temperature or accord was brought into distemper and discord; whereupon the spirits of the letters were [variously] made manifest, so that we speak from many speeches; that is, we have introduced the powerful word of God into the multiplicity of the divided properties; and have made, in each tongue's property, a selfhood, or a selfish desire to arrogation, self-apprehension and assumption. 40. Hence arise the contrarieties, differences, and opinions, 1 in that we have introduced the unformed word into [the form of our own selfmade] image. Now we contend and strive about these images [and conceits]; and everyone supposes his own to be best; and when we bring all these images [and several semblances] again into one language and speech, and mortify them, then the only quickening Word of God, which gives power and life to all things, is again manifest; and strife ceases, and God is all in all.
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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