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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.
1Joseph manifested himself out of the Covenant, for he could no longer withhold, in regard of man's misery, and brings his great mercy and compassion through the Covenant into the Law. Which compassion is signified by Joseph's great weeping, when he could no more withhold from his brethren, and he wept so that even the Egyptians and the people of Pharaoh's house heard; which signifies that this weeping, viz. the mercy and compassion of God through Christ, the Egyptians also, that is, all heathen and people, should hear and receive it; even as it came to pass, when Christ's weeping and compassion sounded among all nations, so that they all received it into their hearts, and turned themselves to this Joseph, who received them all, and fulfilled the Law, together with the Covenant. 5. But that Joseph cried, Let every one go forth from me! when he made himself known to his brethren, that none should stay with him, it signifies this: When Jesus Christ, viz. the highest mercy and compassion of God, manifested itself out of the Covenant, then must the Law, with all ceremonies, together with the Covenant, cease and be gone, also all man's ability and power, as also all willing, going and running, must go forth and depart.
26. For, that presented itself out of the Covenant and the Law, which, fulfilled both the Covenant and the Law, and set itself in the stead of the Covenant and the Law, in the middle, as a Mediator between and in God and man, as a God-Man, and Man-God, who alone should bring Adam into Paradise, and destroy sin. None should be with him, he alone would and should manifest himself for a Light (John viii. 12) and for a new Life to the humanity. 7. And it is the figure which shows how the repentant man must come to God: for he must cast away all things from himself; all his works and doings cannot reach the top and point of this, he must wholly enter into resignation and dereliction, and turn himself away from the comfort and help of every creature, that he may stand naked and alone before the most clear and merest mercy and compassion of God in Jesus Christ. 8. No hypocrisy or human comfort, wherewith men please and tickle the heart, will avail in this presence of Joseph, but a total forsaking of every creature, wherein everything is left to the naked soul, and that must in itself sink down in the presence of the heavenly Joseph, in its will and whole desires, and totally leave itself to him, and will nothing without his will, and set no other means or medium aloft in esteem, for all will avail nothing.
39. The whole creaturely life must be resigned and forsake its will and desires, that the creaturely will may be received and purified again by the un-creaturely will, that God's will and man's will may be one will. And then God is all in all in him, according to the inward and the outward world, in each world according to its property, viz. according to the eternal speaking Word in the soul; and according to the animal soul, in spiritu mundi [in the spirit of the world], in all, as an instrument of God. 10. Now when this is done, then says the heavenly Joseph in his mercy and compassion, / am Jesus in you, and opens the inward eye in the soul, that it knows him in a moment; and he speaks friendly into the soul, and says, Does my Father yet live? that is, is the Father's nature yet in the soul, is there yet a breath of the divine life in it? 11. Before this manifestation now the soul's own will is terrified, so that it has in its own power no word more to speak, nor can it,
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.
1Joseph manifested himself out of the Covenant, for he could no longer withhold, in regard of man's misery, and brings his great mercy and compassion through the Covenant into the Law. Which compassion is signified by Joseph's great weeping, when he could no more withhold from his brethren, and he wept so that even the Egyptians and the people of Pharaoh's house heard; which signifies that this weeping, viz. the mercy and compassion of God through Christ, the Egyptians also, that is, all heathen and people, should hear and receive it; even as it came to pass, when Christ's weeping and compassion sounded among all nations, so that they all received it into their hearts, and turned themselves to this Joseph, who received them all, and fulfilled the Law, together with the Covenant. 5. But that Joseph cried, Let every one go forth from me! when he made himself known to his brethren, that none should stay with him, it signifies this: When Jesus Christ, viz. the highest mercy and compassion of God, manifested itself out of the Covenant, then must the Law, with all ceremonies, together with the Covenant, cease and be gone, also all man's ability and power, as also all willing, going and running, must go forth and depart.
26. For, that presented itself out of the Covenant and the Law, which, fulfilled both the Covenant and the Law, and set itself in the stead of the Covenant and the Law, in the middle, as a Mediator between and in God and man, as a God-Man, and Man-God, who alone should bring Adam into Paradise, and destroy sin. None should be with him, he alone would and should manifest himself for a Light (John viii. 12) and for a new Life to the humanity. 7. And it is the figure which shows how the repentant man must come to God: for he must cast away all things from himself; all his works and doings cannot reach the top and point of this, he must wholly enter into resignation and dereliction, and turn himself away from the comfort and help of every creature, that he may stand naked and alone before the most clear and merest mercy and compassion of God in Jesus Christ. 8. No hypocrisy or human comfort, wherewith men please and tickle the heart, will avail in this presence of Joseph, but a total forsaking of every creature, wherein everything is left to the naked soul, and that must in itself sink down in the presence of the heavenly Joseph, in its will and whole desires, and totally leave itself to him, and will nothing without his will, and set no other means or medium aloft in esteem, for all will avail nothing.
39. The whole creaturely life must be resigned and forsake its will and desires, that the creaturely will may be received and purified again by the un-creaturely will, that God's will and man's will may be one will. And then God is all in all in him, according to the inward and the outward world, in each world according to its property, viz. according to the eternal speaking Word in the soul; and according to the animal soul, in spiritu mundi [in the spirit of the world], in all, as an instrument of God. 10. Now when this is done, then says the heavenly Joseph in his mercy and compassion, / am Jesus in you, and opens the inward eye in the soul, that it knows him in a moment; and he speaks friendly into the soul, and says, Does my Father yet live? that is, is the Father's nature yet in the soul, is there yet a breath of the divine life in it? 11. Before this manifestation now the soul's own will is terrified, so that it has in its own power no word more to speak, nor can it,
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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