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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.
131. For all men are but the one man, Adam. God created only him, and the other creatingl he left to man, that he should leave his will to God, and with God generate the other men out of himself in that likeness. But when that was not done God cursed the power that was given to man, so that the will of the creatures is opposite to him, seeing he would have them to misuse them, and would no more be a lord of the creatures, but mingles his love also with them: whereupon the four elements captivated him, and made him also a beast as to the body. And thus now he runs on in the will of the curse. 32. For he is God's image. But he fashions 2 his will into a bestial image, and disturbs the order of God, from what it was in the word of Creation: He suppresses the right true will of God, and sets his own will in the place. He is with his will an enemy to all creatures, and all creatures are his enemies. 33. And therefore must the divine will in man be now born again in such anguish in the opposite will, and the right divine will of the new birth must suffer itself to have the enmity of all creatures; and therefore, because man bears in his body a bestial will, wherein the bestial opposite will, together with the curse, is manifested, so now the life in the curse is at enmity with the life in the peace, and will not suffer it in itself.
234. But if the bestial will in the flesh could be wholly broken and killed, then the curse would cease, and so no creature could be at enmity more. 1 Or, procreating which was further to be done. 2 Images, models, or figures. 35. But seeing this cannot be, therefore must man stand in strife, and endure much evil to will in him from without, and to will much evil out from himself in and towards that which is without him; and so stands in strife between evil and good, and in evil and good; and lives in the strife of the elements, and also in the strife of his own willing that God gave him. 36. For he complains always, that wrong is done him, and yet [he] himself is a wrong will, and the right will, which he obtains in the regeneration, is not his own natural willing, but it is the willing of the grace of God, which is manifested in his willing; which willing daily kills his natural willing, and blames man by God's instrument with the children of the anger openly.
337. Moses speaks further, and says, They answered him, and said, Wherefore speaks my lord such words? It is far from your servants to do such a thing: Behold, the money, which we found aloft in the sack, we have brought to you again out of the land of Canaan: how should we then have stolen out of your lord's house either silver or gold? He with whom it is found among us your servants, let him be put to death; and moreover, we will be the servants of my lord. He said, Let it be as you have spoken: he with whom it is found shall be my servant; but you shall be quit (Gen. xliv. 7-10). 38. This figure now shows how the conscience desires to justify itself; when it is apprehended by the wrath of God's anger, that either, when God with his plagues in nature, also many times in the hiding of his graces, or through the evil world, blames it, and represents it unrighteous, then it will always justify itself, that wrong is done it. 39. For if it have once turned toward grace, and broken itself off from ungodly courses, then it thinks no evil at all shall happen: God is bound to protect it, and the world does it wrong, when it reproaches it as wicked; it ought no more to be subject to plagues and punishments, and it accounts that honesty and righteousness, whereby it steals grace from God, and reckons it for its own, as if it were no more guilty of sins.
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.
131. For all men are but the one man, Adam. God created only him, and the other creatingl he left to man, that he should leave his will to God, and with God generate the other men out of himself in that likeness. But when that was not done God cursed the power that was given to man, so that the will of the creatures is opposite to him, seeing he would have them to misuse them, and would no more be a lord of the creatures, but mingles his love also with them: whereupon the four elements captivated him, and made him also a beast as to the body. And thus now he runs on in the will of the curse. 32. For he is God's image. But he fashions 2 his will into a bestial image, and disturbs the order of God, from what it was in the word of Creation: He suppresses the right true will of God, and sets his own will in the place. He is with his will an enemy to all creatures, and all creatures are his enemies. 33. And therefore must the divine will in man be now born again in such anguish in the opposite will, and the right divine will of the new birth must suffer itself to have the enmity of all creatures; and therefore, because man bears in his body a bestial will, wherein the bestial opposite will, together with the curse, is manifested, so now the life in the curse is at enmity with the life in the peace, and will not suffer it in itself.
234. But if the bestial will in the flesh could be wholly broken and killed, then the curse would cease, and so no creature could be at enmity more. 1 Or, procreating which was further to be done. 2 Images, models, or figures. 35. But seeing this cannot be, therefore must man stand in strife, and endure much evil to will in him from without, and to will much evil out from himself in and towards that which is without him; and so stands in strife between evil and good, and in evil and good; and lives in the strife of the elements, and also in the strife of his own willing that God gave him. 36. For he complains always, that wrong is done him, and yet [he] himself is a wrong will, and the right will, which he obtains in the regeneration, is not his own natural willing, but it is the willing of the grace of God, which is manifested in his willing; which willing daily kills his natural willing, and blames man by God's instrument with the children of the anger openly.
337. Moses speaks further, and says, They answered him, and said, Wherefore speaks my lord such words? It is far from your servants to do such a thing: Behold, the money, which we found aloft in the sack, we have brought to you again out of the land of Canaan: how should we then have stolen out of your lord's house either silver or gold? He with whom it is found among us your servants, let him be put to death; and moreover, we will be the servants of my lord. He said, Let it be as you have spoken: he with whom it is found shall be my servant; but you shall be quit (Gen. xliv. 7-10). 38. This figure now shows how the conscience desires to justify itself; when it is apprehended by the wrath of God's anger, that either, when God with his plagues in nature, also many times in the hiding of his graces, or through the evil world, blames it, and represents it unrighteous, then it will always justify itself, that wrong is done it. 39. For if it have once turned toward grace, and broken itself off from ungodly courses, then it thinks no evil at all shall happen: God is bound to protect it, and the world does it wrong, when it reproaches it as wicked; it ought no more to be subject to plagues and punishments, and it accounts that honesty and righteousness, whereby it steals grace from God, and reckons it for its own, as if it were no more guilty of sins.
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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