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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 noble Bridegroom , stand still with thy Countenance towards me, and give me thy Rays of Fire. Bring thy Desire into me, 3 & T^he W^ay to Qhrist . and enkindle me thereby, and then I will bring the Ray.sof my Love, from my Meekness into thy fiery Essence, and hi united with thee for ever. 4 O my Bridegroom, how well am I, now I am in Union with thee ? O kiss me with thy Desire in thy Strength and Power, and then I will show thee all my Beauty, and will rejoice and solace myself with thy sweet Love and shining Brightness in thy fiery Life. All the holy Angels rejoice with us, to see us united again. My dear Love, I now entreat thee to abide in my Faith, and do not turn thy Face away from me any more. Work thou t.hy Wonders in my Love, for which Purpose God hath created thee and brought thee into Being. ,, t 1 The Soul saith again to its noble Sophia , its Love , that is born again in it.
2O MY noble Pearl, and opened Flame of Light in my anxious fiery Life, how thou changest me into thy foy ! O beautiful Love, 1 have broken my Faith with thee, in my Father Adam, and with my fiery Strength have turned myself to the Pleasure and Vanity of the outward World. I have fallen in Love with a Stranger, and had been constrained to walk in the Valley of Darkness in this strange Love, if thou hadst not come into the House of my Misery, in' thy great Faithfulness, by thy piercing through and destroying Gqd’s Anger, Hell, and dark Death, and restored thy Meekness and Love to my fiery Life. O sweet Love ; thou hast brought the Water of eternal Life out of the Fountain of God, with thee into me, and refreshed me in my great Thirst. I behold in thee the Mercy of God, which was hidden from me before by the strange Love. In thee I can rejoice ; thou changest my Anguish of Fire into great Joy in me. O amiable Love , give me thy Pearl, that I may continue in tliis foy for ever. Upon this the noble Sophia answereth the Soul again , and saith , M Y dear Love and faithful Treasure, thou highly rejoiceth me in thy Beginning. I have indeed broken into the? through the deepGates of God, through God’s A nger, through Hell and Death, into the House of thy Misery ; and have graciously bestowed my Love upon thee, and delivered , thee from the Chains and Bonds wherewith thou wert fast bound. I have kept my Faith with thee, though thou hast not kept thine
3Of True "Repentance . witn^e. But thou desireth now an exceeding great Thing of me, whic:h I cannot willingly trust in thy Hands. — Thou wouldest have my Pearl as thy proper own . Remember, I pray, O my beloved Bridegroom , that thou didst carelessly lose it before in Adam; and thou thyself standest yet in great Danger, and walkest in two dangerous Kingdoms. For in thy Original Fire , thou walkest in that Country wherein God calleth himself a strong jealous God, and a consuming Fire . The other Kiftgdom which thou walkest in, is the outward World , wherein thou dwellest in the vain corrupt Flesh and Blood, , and where the Pleasures of the World and the Assaults of the Devil beset thee every Hour. Thou ma^est perhaps in thy great joy bring Earthlines again into my Beauty, and thereby darken my Pearl. Or thou mayest possibly grow proud , as Lucifer did, when he had»the Pearl in his Possession, and so turn thyself away from the Harmony of God, as he did and then I must be deprived of my Love for ever afterwards.
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 noble Bridegroom , stand still with thy Countenance towards me, and give me thy Rays of Fire. Bring thy Desire into me, 3 & T^he W^ay to Qhrist . and enkindle me thereby, and then I will bring the Ray.sof my Love, from my Meekness into thy fiery Essence, and hi united with thee for ever. 4 O my Bridegroom, how well am I, now I am in Union with thee ? O kiss me with thy Desire in thy Strength and Power, and then I will show thee all my Beauty, and will rejoice and solace myself with thy sweet Love and shining Brightness in thy fiery Life. All the holy Angels rejoice with us, to see us united again. My dear Love, I now entreat thee to abide in my Faith, and do not turn thy Face away from me any more. Work thou t.hy Wonders in my Love, for which Purpose God hath created thee and brought thee into Being. ,, t 1 The Soul saith again to its noble Sophia , its Love , that is born again in it.
2O MY noble Pearl, and opened Flame of Light in my anxious fiery Life, how thou changest me into thy foy ! O beautiful Love, 1 have broken my Faith with thee, in my Father Adam, and with my fiery Strength have turned myself to the Pleasure and Vanity of the outward World. I have fallen in Love with a Stranger, and had been constrained to walk in the Valley of Darkness in this strange Love, if thou hadst not come into the House of my Misery, in' thy great Faithfulness, by thy piercing through and destroying Gqd’s Anger, Hell, and dark Death, and restored thy Meekness and Love to my fiery Life. O sweet Love ; thou hast brought the Water of eternal Life out of the Fountain of God, with thee into me, and refreshed me in my great Thirst. I behold in thee the Mercy of God, which was hidden from me before by the strange Love. In thee I can rejoice ; thou changest my Anguish of Fire into great Joy in me. O amiable Love , give me thy Pearl, that I may continue in tliis foy for ever. Upon this the noble Sophia answereth the Soul again , and saith , M Y dear Love and faithful Treasure, thou highly rejoiceth me in thy Beginning. I have indeed broken into the? through the deepGates of God, through God’s A nger, through Hell and Death, into the House of thy Misery ; and have graciously bestowed my Love upon thee, and delivered , thee from the Chains and Bonds wherewith thou wert fast bound. I have kept my Faith with thee, though thou hast not kept thine
3Of True "Repentance . witn^e. But thou desireth now an exceeding great Thing of me, whic:h I cannot willingly trust in thy Hands. — Thou wouldest have my Pearl as thy proper own . Remember, I pray, O my beloved Bridegroom , that thou didst carelessly lose it before in Adam; and thou thyself standest yet in great Danger, and walkest in two dangerous Kingdoms. For in thy Original Fire , thou walkest in that Country wherein God calleth himself a strong jealous God, and a consuming Fire . The other Kiftgdom which thou walkest in, is the outward World , wherein thou dwellest in the vain corrupt Flesh and Blood, , and where the Pleasures of the World and the Assaults of the Devil beset thee every Hour. Thou ma^est perhaps in thy great joy bring Earthlines again into my Beauty, and thereby darken my Pearl. Or thou mayest possibly grow proud , as Lucifer did, when he had»the Pearl in his Possession, and so turn thyself away from the Harmony of God, as he did and then I must be deprived of my Love for ever afterwards.
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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