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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.
1THE WAY to CHRIST, Described In the following TREATISES: Of True Repentance. Of Regeneration. Of True Resignation. Of the Super-Sensual Life. Written in the Year 1622, By JACOB BOEHME, of Goerlitz in Northern Germany. c Be Earnest — Be Earnest CANTERBURY : Rep ublished, with an Illustrated Memoir , by G. Moreton, 42, Bur gate Street, 1894. [Price Seven Shillings .) PREFATORY MEMOIR. r ^HE materials available for describing the Life of JACOB Boehme are but scanty, consisting for the most phrt of a few surprising incidents, some of which, were they not so well authenticated and narrated by himself, would be deemed to be fabulous and incredible — and these incidents, more or less paraphrased, have had to serve for the purpose of a Biography by successive Editors of his Works. Jacob Boeiime, thqpgh by trade a Shoemaker, was a very remarkable man, and became the greatest Theosopher that has ever lived. His writings are not to be understood without considerable effort working in spiritual sympathy with his ideas, consequently, they have proved to be foolishness to multitudes, and but few have discovered, what has been called, the Pearl hiddeft within them.
2Of Jacob Boehme’s birth and parentage, it is known that he was born in the year 1575 at Alt or Old, Seidenberg, a small market-town in Northern Qermany, now situated at the confines of the Prussian frontier ; and within two miles of the principal town of Qoerlitz, which at that time was a place of much importance, and still forms a considerable business centre. He was named after his father, and his Mother’s name was Ursula ; of whom he was not their only child, although neither the names of the other children nor any allusion to them beyond a “ dead brother,” appears to be recorded. As a boy he was employed with other lads to tend the cattle and such similar occupation, as could be found for him near home. Even at that age he appears to have been of a pensive and dreamy disposition and much inclined to reverie ; nor was he of a robust form of constitution ; to which even in manhood, he did not attain.
3One of the earliest recorded incidents of Jacob's life is that which occurred to him while herding the cattle. It is narrated that one day at noon, having left his companions to look after the herd, he went to a hill close by called the Land’s Crown, *where a formation ^of the rock bore some resemblance to a cave, where, finding an» opening through the brushwood, he entered, and saw a large wooden vessel filled with money : the sight of which so alarmed him*that he ran back to his companions and . told them of the occurrence ; but although they at once returned with him, both the entrance and the fairy-like money had disappeared. Some years afterwards, as Jacob Boehme himiv ‘Prefatory {Memoir . self narrates, a foreign artist ” found and appropriated the hidden treasure ; and, in consequence, came to an untimely end. The place of this strange occurrence is still known, and is one of the excursions from Qoerlitz . It is called the “ Landskrone,* ?nd is in reality a basaltic hill, on the summit of which an ancient Robbers’ Stronghold formerly stood — which may to some extent account for the hidden treasure — and is now occupied by a castellated form of building, used as an Inn and a “ Belvedere,” from which an expansive view of the surrounding country is obtained.
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.
1THE WAY to CHRIST, Described In the following TREATISES: Of True Repentance. Of Regeneration. Of True Resignation. Of the Super-Sensual Life. Written in the Year 1622, By JACOB BOEHME, of Goerlitz in Northern Germany. c Be Earnest — Be Earnest CANTERBURY : Rep ublished, with an Illustrated Memoir , by G. Moreton, 42, Bur gate Street, 1894. [Price Seven Shillings .) PREFATORY MEMOIR. r ^HE materials available for describing the Life of JACOB Boehme are but scanty, consisting for the most phrt of a few surprising incidents, some of which, were they not so well authenticated and narrated by himself, would be deemed to be fabulous and incredible — and these incidents, more or less paraphrased, have had to serve for the purpose of a Biography by successive Editors of his Works. Jacob Boeiime, thqpgh by trade a Shoemaker, was a very remarkable man, and became the greatest Theosopher that has ever lived. His writings are not to be understood without considerable effort working in spiritual sympathy with his ideas, consequently, they have proved to be foolishness to multitudes, and but few have discovered, what has been called, the Pearl hiddeft within them.
2Of Jacob Boehme’s birth and parentage, it is known that he was born in the year 1575 at Alt or Old, Seidenberg, a small market-town in Northern Qermany, now situated at the confines of the Prussian frontier ; and within two miles of the principal town of Qoerlitz, which at that time was a place of much importance, and still forms a considerable business centre. He was named after his father, and his Mother’s name was Ursula ; of whom he was not their only child, although neither the names of the other children nor any allusion to them beyond a “ dead brother,” appears to be recorded. As a boy he was employed with other lads to tend the cattle and such similar occupation, as could be found for him near home. Even at that age he appears to have been of a pensive and dreamy disposition and much inclined to reverie ; nor was he of a robust form of constitution ; to which even in manhood, he did not attain.
3One of the earliest recorded incidents of Jacob's life is that which occurred to him while herding the cattle. It is narrated that one day at noon, having left his companions to look after the herd, he went to a hill close by called the Land’s Crown, *where a formation ^of the rock bore some resemblance to a cave, where, finding an» opening through the brushwood, he entered, and saw a large wooden vessel filled with money : the sight of which so alarmed him*that he ran back to his companions and . told them of the occurrence ; but although they at once returned with him, both the entrance and the fairy-like money had disappeared. Some years afterwards, as Jacob Boehme himiv ‘Prefatory {Memoir . self narrates, a foreign artist ” found and appropriated the hidden treasure ; and, in consequence, came to an untimely end. The place of this strange occurrence is still known, and is one of the excursions from Qoerlitz . It is called the “ Landskrone,* ?nd is in reality a basaltic hill, on the summit of which an ancient Robbers’ Stronghold formerly stood — which may to some extent account for the hidden treasure — and is now occupied by a castellated form of building, used as an Inn and a “ Belvedere,” from which an expansive view of the surrounding country is obtained.
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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