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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.
1O God in Christ Jesus , thou who for poor Sinners’ Sakes didst become Man to help them, to thee I complain, to thee I have ye? a Spark of Refuge in my Soul. I have not regarded thy purchased Inheritance , which thou hast purchased for us poor Men by thy bitter Death , but have made myself Partaker of the Heritage of Vanity, in the Anger of my Father in the Curse of the Earth, and am ensnared in Sin, and nearly dead as to thy Kingdom. I lie in Feebleness as to thy Strength, and the wrathful Death waiteth for me. The Devil hath poisoned me, so that I know not my Saviour : I am become a wild Branch on thy Tree, and have consumed mine Inheritance which is in thee, •with the Devil's Swine. What shall I say before thee, who am not worthy of thy Grace ? I lie in the Sleep of Death which hath captivated me, and am fast bound with three strong Chains . O ra The Way to Qhrist . thou Breaker-through-death , assist me, I beseech thee, I cannot, I am able to do nothing! I am dead in myself, and have no Strength before thee, neither dare I for great Shame lift up mine Eyes unto thee. For I am the defiled Keeper of Swine, and have spent mine Inheritance with the false adulterous Whore of Vanity in the Lusts of the Flesh ; I have sought myself in my own Lust, and not thee . Now in myself I am become a Fool ;
2I am naked and bare ; my Shame standeth before mine Eyes ; I cannot hide it; thy Judgment waiteth for me. What shall I say before thee, who art the Judge of all the World? I have nothing to bring before thee. — Here I stand naked and bare in thy Presence, and fall down before thy Face bewailing my Misery, and fly to thy great Mercy, though I am nob worthy of it ; yet receive me but in thy Death, and let me but die from my Death in thine . Cast me down I pray thee to the Ground in my innate Self \ and kill this Self of mine through thy Death , that I may live no more to myself \ seeing I in myself work nothing but Sin. Therefore, I pray thee, cast down to the Ground this wicked Beast which is full of false Deceit and Selfdesire, and deliver this poor Soul of mine from its heavy Bonds.
3O merciful GOD, it is owing to thy Love and Long-suffering that I lie not already in Hell. I yield myself, with my whole Will, Senses and Mind , unto thy Grace, and fly to thy Mercy. I call upon thee through thy Death, from that small Spark of Life in me encompassed with Death and Hell, which open their Throat against me and would wholly swallow me up in Death; upon thee I call, who hast promised that thou wilt not quench the smoking Flax. I have no other Way to thee but by thy oivn bitter Death and Passion , because thou hast made our Death Life by thy Humanity , and broken the Chains of Death , and therefore I sink the Desire of my Soul down into thy Death, into the Gate of thy Death which thou hast broken open. O thou great Fountain of the Love of God, I beseech tbee, help me, that I may die from my Vanity and Sin in the Death of my Redeemer , Jesus Christ .
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.
1O God in Christ Jesus , thou who for poor Sinners’ Sakes didst become Man to help them, to thee I complain, to thee I have ye? a Spark of Refuge in my Soul. I have not regarded thy purchased Inheritance , which thou hast purchased for us poor Men by thy bitter Death , but have made myself Partaker of the Heritage of Vanity, in the Anger of my Father in the Curse of the Earth, and am ensnared in Sin, and nearly dead as to thy Kingdom. I lie in Feebleness as to thy Strength, and the wrathful Death waiteth for me. The Devil hath poisoned me, so that I know not my Saviour : I am become a wild Branch on thy Tree, and have consumed mine Inheritance which is in thee, •with the Devil's Swine. What shall I say before thee, who am not worthy of thy Grace ? I lie in the Sleep of Death which hath captivated me, and am fast bound with three strong Chains . O ra The Way to Qhrist . thou Breaker-through-death , assist me, I beseech thee, I cannot, I am able to do nothing! I am dead in myself, and have no Strength before thee, neither dare I for great Shame lift up mine Eyes unto thee. For I am the defiled Keeper of Swine, and have spent mine Inheritance with the false adulterous Whore of Vanity in the Lusts of the Flesh ; I have sought myself in my own Lust, and not thee . Now in myself I am become a Fool ;
2I am naked and bare ; my Shame standeth before mine Eyes ; I cannot hide it; thy Judgment waiteth for me. What shall I say before thee, who art the Judge of all the World? I have nothing to bring before thee. — Here I stand naked and bare in thy Presence, and fall down before thy Face bewailing my Misery, and fly to thy great Mercy, though I am nob worthy of it ; yet receive me but in thy Death, and let me but die from my Death in thine . Cast me down I pray thee to the Ground in my innate Self \ and kill this Self of mine through thy Death , that I may live no more to myself \ seeing I in myself work nothing but Sin. Therefore, I pray thee, cast down to the Ground this wicked Beast which is full of false Deceit and Selfdesire, and deliver this poor Soul of mine from its heavy Bonds.
3O merciful GOD, it is owing to thy Love and Long-suffering that I lie not already in Hell. I yield myself, with my whole Will, Senses and Mind , unto thy Grace, and fly to thy Mercy. I call upon thee through thy Death, from that small Spark of Life in me encompassed with Death and Hell, which open their Throat against me and would wholly swallow me up in Death; upon thee I call, who hast promised that thou wilt not quench the smoking Flax. I have no other Way to thee but by thy oivn bitter Death and Passion , because thou hast made our Death Life by thy Humanity , and broken the Chains of Death , and therefore I sink the Desire of my Soul down into thy Death, into the Gate of thy Death which thou hast broken open. O thou great Fountain of the Love of God, I beseech tbee, help me, that I may die from my Vanity and Sin in the Death of my Redeemer , Jesus Christ .
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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