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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.
11 Or, as a follower of Christ. 2 Or, undertakes. 56. But for all this Joseph is not yet passed through the judgement, for even in this government he first meets with the greatest danger of his life: for there the steward's wife burns in lust towards him (Gen. xxxix. 7). That is, the false sects, who would fain woo and wed themselves into his spirit, and therewith adorn their doctrine and doings, for temporal honour, art and science. And if this Joseph's spirit will not mix itself with their human fiction and fables, then they exclaim against him, and say all manner of evil of him, and accuse him of unchastity, viz. of false doctrine; and appeal him before the steward, that is, the magistrate.
257. And then Joseph must he cast into prison, and lie there captive (Gen. xxxix. 20), and be tried to purpose, till God shall bring him out again from thence, and set him before Pharaoh. And then his wisdom and fear of God is revealed, that it is plainly discerned and known that his understanding is given him of God; and so his understanding is made ruler over the land of Egypt, so that he rules not only strange nations, but his own brethren must at length also come unto him in their famine, when the right understanding of the divine manifestation [and mystery] is scarce and rare with them; and he nourishes them also by his wisdom. Thus God has sent him aforehand to be their father, that they afterwards must be fain to come and seek and enjoy their brother Joseph's wisdom among other 1 nations.
358. For so also did Israel persecute the prophets (Matt. v. 12), till they [Israel] were brought into darkness and idolatry in the lust of their flesh; and all those things came upon them of which the prophets told them; and then, when they sat in hunger and misery, and their land was full of abomination, they sought out the writings of the prophets; and even then they acknowledged that what they [the prophets] had spoken was true, and that they had done them [the prophets] wrong, and adorned their graves, and said, Had we lived in our forefathers' time, we would not have killed them (Matt, xxiii. 29, 30). But the Most High does so order his judgement that it begins at the house of Israel; and he extinguishes his anger and indignation in the children of grace: for the blood of the saints, in the power of Christ, has at all times resisted the anger, so that Israel has not been consumed (Mai. iii. 6). 1 Or, strange. 59. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver (Gen. xxxvii. 28), and Christ for thirty (Matt. xxvi. 15); to signify that the humanity of Christ is higher and more perfect than the humanity of others which are his children, seeing he was not conceived of the seed of man, but sprang
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.
11 Or, as a follower of Christ. 2 Or, undertakes. 56. But for all this Joseph is not yet passed through the judgement, for even in this government he first meets with the greatest danger of his life: for there the steward's wife burns in lust towards him (Gen. xxxix. 7). That is, the false sects, who would fain woo and wed themselves into his spirit, and therewith adorn their doctrine and doings, for temporal honour, art and science. And if this Joseph's spirit will not mix itself with their human fiction and fables, then they exclaim against him, and say all manner of evil of him, and accuse him of unchastity, viz. of false doctrine; and appeal him before the steward, that is, the magistrate.
257. And then Joseph must he cast into prison, and lie there captive (Gen. xxxix. 20), and be tried to purpose, till God shall bring him out again from thence, and set him before Pharaoh. And then his wisdom and fear of God is revealed, that it is plainly discerned and known that his understanding is given him of God; and so his understanding is made ruler over the land of Egypt, so that he rules not only strange nations, but his own brethren must at length also come unto him in their famine, when the right understanding of the divine manifestation [and mystery] is scarce and rare with them; and he nourishes them also by his wisdom. Thus God has sent him aforehand to be their father, that they afterwards must be fain to come and seek and enjoy their brother Joseph's wisdom among other 1 nations.
358. For so also did Israel persecute the prophets (Matt. v. 12), till they [Israel] were brought into darkness and idolatry in the lust of their flesh; and all those things came upon them of which the prophets told them; and then, when they sat in hunger and misery, and their land was full of abomination, they sought out the writings of the prophets; and even then they acknowledged that what they [the prophets] had spoken was true, and that they had done them [the prophets] wrong, and adorned their graves, and said, Had we lived in our forefathers' time, we would not have killed them (Matt, xxiii. 29, 30). But the Most High does so order his judgement that it begins at the house of Israel; and he extinguishes his anger and indignation in the children of grace: for the blood of the saints, in the power of Christ, has at all times resisted the anger, so that Israel has not been consumed (Mai. iii. 6). 1 Or, strange. 59. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver (Gen. xxxvii. 28), and Christ for thirty (Matt. xxvi. 15); to signify that the humanity of Christ is higher and more perfect than the humanity of others which are his children, seeing he was not conceived of the seed of man, but sprang
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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