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.
147. But that the present potentates do thus gather together for their own honour, for voluptuousness and pride, and in that regard do the more hardly oppress and squeeze, that they may only therewith exercise their pride, and keep under the poor as dogs, and say in their hearts, They are bound to do so for me, I have bought or inherited it as a privilege, I have it of right. All this, one and other, is done in the anger of God: they all now in this property serve only Satan, viz. in the figure of God's anger, and no better. 48. All self-owning belongs to hell, make what you will of it; no seeming rhetoric will avail before God; you gather together into hell: God requires the ground of the heart, and will have trusty officers. 49. But the miserable is to know, that in such restraint and service, if he endure it without murmuring and grudging, in faithfulness, he serves even his Lord Christ: for God thereby draws him away from this world, so that he sets his hope upon that which is to come, and in this servility of his hands he gathers to him with his prayer into this house of lamentation, his heavenly treasure; whereas if he for this time of his restraint stood in the voluptuousness of the flesh, he would gather no good thing: therefore all things must serve to the best of them that love God (Rom. viii. 28).
250. Thus a man ought to understand the figure under the history and acts of Joseph; for indeed the history is described with great diligence, according to the inward figure, according to the inspiration 2 of the spirit of God, which always more respects Christ's kingdom than any history of a slight and simple act. 1 Or householder. 2 Eingebung, inward suggestion. 51. For the acts of the Bible are not set down therefore because men should see the life and deeds of the old holy men or saints, as Babel supposes. No, the kingdom of Christ above all is thereby deciphered, as also the kingdom of hell: the visible figure continually points at the invisible, which shall be manifested in the spiritual man. 52. Moses here finishes the figure of the new regeneration, under the history of Joseph, and says further, Thus Israel dwelt in Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and possessed it, and grew and multiplied very much. And Jacob lived seventeen years in Egypt: so that his whole age was one hundred forty and seven years (Gen. xlvii. 27,28).
353. And when the time was come that Israel was to die, he called his son Joseph, and said to him, If I have found grace before you, then lay your hand under my thigh, that you will be loving and faithful to me, and not bury me in Egypt. But I will lie with my fathers, and you shall carry me out of the land of Egypt, and bury me in their burying place. He said, I will do as you have said. But he answered, and said, Swear to me. And he sware to him. Then Israel bowed himself, sitting up at the head of the bed (Gen. xlvii. 29-31). 54. This now is a very mystical figure, and points at the resurrection of the dead, when the soul shall come to the body again; and the body will be pure and holy. For the land of Canaan, which was also full of the abominations of the heathen, signifies the earthly body; and Egypt, where Pharaoh dwelt, and Joseph was steward, signifies the soul, which dwells in God's Word, viz. by or near the eternal King.
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.
147. But that the present potentates do thus gather together for their own honour, for voluptuousness and pride, and in that regard do the more hardly oppress and squeeze, that they may only therewith exercise their pride, and keep under the poor as dogs, and say in their hearts, They are bound to do so for me, I have bought or inherited it as a privilege, I have it of right. All this, one and other, is done in the anger of God: they all now in this property serve only Satan, viz. in the figure of God's anger, and no better. 48. All self-owning belongs to hell, make what you will of it; no seeming rhetoric will avail before God; you gather together into hell: God requires the ground of the heart, and will have trusty officers. 49. But the miserable is to know, that in such restraint and service, if he endure it without murmuring and grudging, in faithfulness, he serves even his Lord Christ: for God thereby draws him away from this world, so that he sets his hope upon that which is to come, and in this servility of his hands he gathers to him with his prayer into this house of lamentation, his heavenly treasure; whereas if he for this time of his restraint stood in the voluptuousness of the flesh, he would gather no good thing: therefore all things must serve to the best of them that love God (Rom. viii. 28).
250. Thus a man ought to understand the figure under the history and acts of Joseph; for indeed the history is described with great diligence, according to the inward figure, according to the inspiration 2 of the spirit of God, which always more respects Christ's kingdom than any history of a slight and simple act. 1 Or householder. 2 Eingebung, inward suggestion. 51. For the acts of the Bible are not set down therefore because men should see the life and deeds of the old holy men or saints, as Babel supposes. No, the kingdom of Christ above all is thereby deciphered, as also the kingdom of hell: the visible figure continually points at the invisible, which shall be manifested in the spiritual man. 52. Moses here finishes the figure of the new regeneration, under the history of Joseph, and says further, Thus Israel dwelt in Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and possessed it, and grew and multiplied very much. And Jacob lived seventeen years in Egypt: so that his whole age was one hundred forty and seven years (Gen. xlvii. 27,28).
353. And when the time was come that Israel was to die, he called his son Joseph, and said to him, If I have found grace before you, then lay your hand under my thigh, that you will be loving and faithful to me, and not bury me in Egypt. But I will lie with my fathers, and you shall carry me out of the land of Egypt, and bury me in their burying place. He said, I will do as you have said. But he answered, and said, Swear to me. And he sware to him. Then Israel bowed himself, sitting up at the head of the bed (Gen. xlvii. 29-31). 54. This now is a very mystical figure, and points at the resurrection of the dead, when the soul shall come to the body again; and the body will be pure and holy. For the land of Canaan, which was also full of the abominations of the heathen, signifies the earthly body; and Egypt, where Pharaoh dwelt, and Joseph was steward, signifies the soul, which dwells in God's Word, viz. by or near the eternal King.
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.