Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
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.
1bare him. And Judah gave his son Er a wife, whose name was Tamar: but Er was evil in the sight of the Lord, and therefore the Lord slew him. Then said Judah to Onan, Lie you with your brother's wife, and take her in marriage, that you may raise up seed to your brother. But Onan, knowing that the seed should not be his own, when he should lie with his brother's wife, he let it fall to the ground and destroyed it, lest he should give seed to his brother. And it was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, which he did, and the Lord slew him also (Gen. xxxviii. I- 10). This figure stands thus: 4. Judah stands here in the figure of Adam, in that condition as when the Covenant of grace concerning the seed of the woman was again inspired or inspoken into Adam: just so he stands in that same figure. Showing that the Covenant of grace stood in the evil Adam, as Adam then was; for as in Judah the time of Christ, viz. the Covenant of grace, was in motion, as a boundary reaching to Mary: so also it was in Adam, and so along to and in Judah.
25. And Tamar stands in the figure of Eve, into whom God had inspired or inspoken his Promise, the Word of Regeneration, that the seed of the woman, in the power of the Word, should break the Serpent's head. So she stands as an earthly Eve, in whom inwardly the Covenant of grace stood; and outwardly there was the corrupt Eve, which in this figure stands outwardly as a whore, out of whom yet the line of Christ sprang in Pharez her son: as Abel out of Eve, though Eve were indeed become earthly. And we see here the type very plainly, how the spirit plays and takes delight in this figure with the old and new Adam, as also with the old and new Eve. 6. For Adam was, in his lust, gone forth from his Father's house, as ]udah to the Canaanites, and had taken to him in his lustful desire the Canaanitish woman, the four elements, of whom he begat three sons. The first called [Er or] Ger, viz. self [will or] desire, wherein the kingdom of the nature of man stood in self-desire or own will. And this son was the first world before the deluge or flood; to this the father gave him his name, to signify that he lived in the father's nature.
37. The second son she called Onan, whom the mother called so, which pointed at the second world after the flood, for the nature of the Father, in man, said to God, O nein [O no], my Lord, drown me no more. And the mother, viz. the woman of this world, in spiritu mundi [in the spirit of the world], in the expressed or out-spoken word and life, gave her son this name. For God had inspired his grace again into her, that this her second son, viz. the other world, should not be drowned with water: therefore this name stands thus in the high figure, and is called Onan, for the spirit hides it in the High Tongue, and calls him Onan, or O nein [O no]. 8. The third son she called Shelah, and she was at Chezib when she bare him. Chezib signifies in the High Tongue 1 an exhaling in and recomprehension. That is, this Shelah signifies the time of the manifestation of the Law, wherein the divine will in the Word has manifested itself through the expressed Word, and comprised it in a law or commandment. 1 Either theHebrew is here meant, or, rather, the Language of Nature. 9. These three sons signify the three times, from Adam to Christ: Er is the time before the flood, in selfwill, lust and desire; Onan is the second time after the flood. This son, viz. the world after the flood, has known God's judgement and punishment, which began to weep and lament before God, saying, O nein [Ono], Lord, punish us no more 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.
1bare him. And Judah gave his son Er a wife, whose name was Tamar: but Er was evil in the sight of the Lord, and therefore the Lord slew him. Then said Judah to Onan, Lie you with your brother's wife, and take her in marriage, that you may raise up seed to your brother. But Onan, knowing that the seed should not be his own, when he should lie with his brother's wife, he let it fall to the ground and destroyed it, lest he should give seed to his brother. And it was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, which he did, and the Lord slew him also (Gen. xxxviii. I- 10). This figure stands thus: 4. Judah stands here in the figure of Adam, in that condition as when the Covenant of grace concerning the seed of the woman was again inspired or inspoken into Adam: just so he stands in that same figure. Showing that the Covenant of grace stood in the evil Adam, as Adam then was; for as in Judah the time of Christ, viz. the Covenant of grace, was in motion, as a boundary reaching to Mary: so also it was in Adam, and so along to and in Judah.
25. And Tamar stands in the figure of Eve, into whom God had inspired or inspoken his Promise, the Word of Regeneration, that the seed of the woman, in the power of the Word, should break the Serpent's head. So she stands as an earthly Eve, in whom inwardly the Covenant of grace stood; and outwardly there was the corrupt Eve, which in this figure stands outwardly as a whore, out of whom yet the line of Christ sprang in Pharez her son: as Abel out of Eve, though Eve were indeed become earthly. And we see here the type very plainly, how the spirit plays and takes delight in this figure with the old and new Adam, as also with the old and new Eve. 6. For Adam was, in his lust, gone forth from his Father's house, as ]udah to the Canaanites, and had taken to him in his lustful desire the Canaanitish woman, the four elements, of whom he begat three sons. The first called [Er or] Ger, viz. self [will or] desire, wherein the kingdom of the nature of man stood in self-desire or own will. And this son was the first world before the deluge or flood; to this the father gave him his name, to signify that he lived in the father's nature.
37. The second son she called Onan, whom the mother called so, which pointed at the second world after the flood, for the nature of the Father, in man, said to God, O nein [O no], my Lord, drown me no more. And the mother, viz. the woman of this world, in spiritu mundi [in the spirit of the world], in the expressed or out-spoken word and life, gave her son this name. For God had inspired his grace again into her, that this her second son, viz. the other world, should not be drowned with water: therefore this name stands thus in the high figure, and is called Onan, for the spirit hides it in the High Tongue, and calls him Onan, or O nein [O no]. 8. The third son she called Shelah, and she was at Chezib when she bare him. Chezib signifies in the High Tongue 1 an exhaling in and recomprehension. That is, this Shelah signifies the time of the manifestation of the Law, wherein the divine will in the Word has manifested itself through the expressed Word, and comprised it in a law or commandment. 1 Either theHebrew is here meant, or, rather, the Language of Nature. 9. These three sons signify the three times, from Adam to Christ: Er is the time before the flood, in selfwill, lust and desire; Onan is the second time after the flood. This son, viz. the world after the flood, has known God's judgement and punishment, which began to weep and lament before God, saying, O nein [Ono], Lord, punish us no more 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.
No commentary for this page.