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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 Lord Jesus Christ ; I fly to thee under the Cross ; O dear Immanuel, receive me, and carry me into thyself through the Path of thy Pilgrimage, in which thou didst walk in this World ; narpely through thy Incarnation, Poverty , Reproach and Scorn ; also through thy Anguish , Passion and Death. Make me conformable unto thy Example ; send thy good Angel along with me to show me the way through the horrible Thorny Wilderness of this World. Assist me in my Misery ; comfort me with that Comfort wherewith the Angel comforted thee in the Garden, when thou didst pray to thy Father, and didst sweat great Drops of Blood. Support me in my Anguish and Persecution, under the Reproach of the Devils and all wicked Men, who know not thee. 28 f Fhe W'ay to Qhrist. and refuse to walk in thy Paths. O great Love of God// they know not thy Way, and do this in Blindness, through the'jDeceit of the Devil . Have Pity on them, and bring them out of their Darkness into thy Light , that they may learn to know themselves , and how they lie Captive in the Filth and Mire of the Devil, in a dark Dungeon fast bound with three Chains . O great God, have Mercy upon Adam and his Children, redeem them in Christ the new Adam. I fly to thee, O Christ , God and Man, in this Pilgrimage and Journey which I must take through this dark Valley , despised and troubled on all Sides, and accounted an ungodly wicked Man,
20 LORD, it. is thy Judgment upon me ; that my Sins and inbred Corruption may be judged in this earthly Pilgrimage before thee, and I as a Curse be made an open Spectacle, on which thy Anger may satiate itself, and thereby may take the eternal ' Reproach away from me. It is the Token of thy Love ; by which thou bringest me into the Reproach , Anguish, Suffering and Death of my Saviour Jesus Christ , that so I may die from Vanity and spring up in His Spirit with a new Life , through His Reproach , Ignominy , and Death . I beseech thee, O Christ, thou patient Lamb of God, grant me Patience in this my Way of the Cross , through all thy Anguish and Reproach , thy Death and Passion, thy Scorn and Contempt upon the Cross , where thou wast despised in my Stead; and bring me therein, as a patient Lamb to thee, into thy Victory. Let me live with thee in thee : and do thou convert my Persecutors, who (unknown to themselves) by their Reproaching sacrifice my Vanity and inbred Sins before thy Anger. They know not what they do ; they think they do me Harm, but they do me Good ! They do that for me which I should do myself before thee. For
31 should daily lay open and acknowledge my Shame and Vileness before thee, and thereby sink myself down into the Death of thy beloved Son , that my Shame might die in his Death . But I being too negligent, weary, faint, and feeble, therefore thou usest these mine Enemies in thy A uger, to open and discover my Vileness before thee, which thy Wrath taketh hold of, and sinketh it down into the Death of my Saviour . O merciful God, my vain Flesh cannot know how well thou intendest towards me, when thou sufferest mine Enemies to take my Vileness from me, and sacrifice it before the# My Earthly Mind supposeth that thou affiictest me for my Sins, and I am extremely perplexed at it ; but thy Spirit , in my inward New Man , telleth me, that it is of thy Love towards me, and that thou intendest Good to me by it. When thou sufferest my Enemies to persecute me, it is best for me that they perform the Work in Of \ True ‘Ifepentance. *29
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 Lord Jesus Christ ; I fly to thee under the Cross ; O dear Immanuel, receive me, and carry me into thyself through the Path of thy Pilgrimage, in which thou didst walk in this World ; narpely through thy Incarnation, Poverty , Reproach and Scorn ; also through thy Anguish , Passion and Death. Make me conformable unto thy Example ; send thy good Angel along with me to show me the way through the horrible Thorny Wilderness of this World. Assist me in my Misery ; comfort me with that Comfort wherewith the Angel comforted thee in the Garden, when thou didst pray to thy Father, and didst sweat great Drops of Blood. Support me in my Anguish and Persecution, under the Reproach of the Devils and all wicked Men, who know not thee. 28 f Fhe W'ay to Qhrist. and refuse to walk in thy Paths. O great Love of God// they know not thy Way, and do this in Blindness, through the'jDeceit of the Devil . Have Pity on them, and bring them out of their Darkness into thy Light , that they may learn to know themselves , and how they lie Captive in the Filth and Mire of the Devil, in a dark Dungeon fast bound with three Chains . O great God, have Mercy upon Adam and his Children, redeem them in Christ the new Adam. I fly to thee, O Christ , God and Man, in this Pilgrimage and Journey which I must take through this dark Valley , despised and troubled on all Sides, and accounted an ungodly wicked Man,
20 LORD, it. is thy Judgment upon me ; that my Sins and inbred Corruption may be judged in this earthly Pilgrimage before thee, and I as a Curse be made an open Spectacle, on which thy Anger may satiate itself, and thereby may take the eternal ' Reproach away from me. It is the Token of thy Love ; by which thou bringest me into the Reproach , Anguish, Suffering and Death of my Saviour Jesus Christ , that so I may die from Vanity and spring up in His Spirit with a new Life , through His Reproach , Ignominy , and Death . I beseech thee, O Christ, thou patient Lamb of God, grant me Patience in this my Way of the Cross , through all thy Anguish and Reproach , thy Death and Passion, thy Scorn and Contempt upon the Cross , where thou wast despised in my Stead; and bring me therein, as a patient Lamb to thee, into thy Victory. Let me live with thee in thee : and do thou convert my Persecutors, who (unknown to themselves) by their Reproaching sacrifice my Vanity and inbred Sins before thy Anger. They know not what they do ; they think they do me Harm, but they do me Good ! They do that for me which I should do myself before thee. For
31 should daily lay open and acknowledge my Shame and Vileness before thee, and thereby sink myself down into the Death of thy beloved Son , that my Shame might die in his Death . But I being too negligent, weary, faint, and feeble, therefore thou usest these mine Enemies in thy A uger, to open and discover my Vileness before thee, which thy Wrath taketh hold of, and sinketh it down into the Death of my Saviour . O merciful God, my vain Flesh cannot know how well thou intendest towards me, when thou sufferest mine Enemies to take my Vileness from me, and sacrifice it before the# My Earthly Mind supposeth that thou affiictest me for my Sins, and I am extremely perplexed at it ; but thy Spirit , in my inward New Man , telleth me, that it is of thy Love towards me, and that thou intendest Good to me by it. When thou sufferest my Enemies to persecute me, it is best for me that they perform the Work in Of \ True ‘Ifepentance. *29
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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