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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.
1“/t is not possible to describe what kind of a Purgatory - }* such a Soul will have to pass through before, by means of her little spark of love, she can enter into Eternal life. The World would not believe such a description; the World is too clever and likewise too blind *to understand it. People cling for ever * “ Three Principles.” + Jacob Boehme was of the “ Lutheran ” form of Belief. .xiy ‘Prefatory {Memoir . to the letter. I wish to God that no one should have to pass through that experience. I would then gladly keep still and say nothing about it”*
2There is no Writer with whom Jacob B&ehme can be compared. His “Way to Christ” might to some minds suggest the “ Jmitation of Christ ” written by that good man THOMAS A Kempis ; but their similarity consists only in the identity of their subject. For the space of seventy-one years Thomas A KEMPIS led a calm monastic life, comfortably sheltered from the World and most of its every-day trials ; and his work, though traly beautiful in its composition, is of a nature, perhaps, more poetical than practical, and is indeed in the original written in metre. Jacob Boehm E on the contrary had to adhere to his convictions at the loss of his employment and means of sustenance : forced to silence respecting mysteries into which he had the deepest insight ; and banished from hjs home disgraced and ridiculed. It is therefore not surprising that his work should be of a nature strenuously practical ; the tfery title of his book the “ Way,” rather than the “ Imitation,” suggesting activity rather than passivity of its author’s own experiences.
3In conclusion. Those whom this republication may lead to the study of Jacob BoEIIME’S Works should recollect the homely, but true, Maxim — that Where there is no Love there can be no True Knowledge ; and, if inclined — like the unenviably memorable Gregory Richter, Primate of Qoerlitz — to reject and condemn them, let it not be in his manner; but rather let them bear - in mind the cautious tolerance displayed by the old German Theologian Dr. Meissner, who, when asked for his opinion of them, replied: “How can we judge what we have not understood ?” G. B. M. \jth of January, 1894. * Answers to Forty Questions. O F TRUE REPENTANCE. SHOWING How Man should stir up himself IN M' I N D and WILL , AND What his EARNEST CONSIDERATION and PURPOSE should be. Written in the German Language, (Anno. 1622) By y A COn no EH ME. J ESUS said unto Nicodemus, Verily , verily , / unto thee , Except a Man be born again , tye cannot see the Kingdom of God. <■ Nicodemus saith unto him , How can a Man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second Time into his Mother s Womb and be born ? 4 Jesus answered , Verily , verily, I say unto thee , Except a Man be born of Water , 0 / Spirit , cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. 'That which is born of the Flesh , z'j Flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit , « Spirit.
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.
1“/t is not possible to describe what kind of a Purgatory - }* such a Soul will have to pass through before, by means of her little spark of love, she can enter into Eternal life. The World would not believe such a description; the World is too clever and likewise too blind *to understand it. People cling for ever * “ Three Principles.” + Jacob Boehme was of the “ Lutheran ” form of Belief. .xiy ‘Prefatory {Memoir . to the letter. I wish to God that no one should have to pass through that experience. I would then gladly keep still and say nothing about it”*
2There is no Writer with whom Jacob B&ehme can be compared. His “Way to Christ” might to some minds suggest the “ Jmitation of Christ ” written by that good man THOMAS A Kempis ; but their similarity consists only in the identity of their subject. For the space of seventy-one years Thomas A KEMPIS led a calm monastic life, comfortably sheltered from the World and most of its every-day trials ; and his work, though traly beautiful in its composition, is of a nature, perhaps, more poetical than practical, and is indeed in the original written in metre. Jacob Boehm E on the contrary had to adhere to his convictions at the loss of his employment and means of sustenance : forced to silence respecting mysteries into which he had the deepest insight ; and banished from hjs home disgraced and ridiculed. It is therefore not surprising that his work should be of a nature strenuously practical ; the tfery title of his book the “ Way,” rather than the “ Imitation,” suggesting activity rather than passivity of its author’s own experiences.
3In conclusion. Those whom this republication may lead to the study of Jacob BoEIIME’S Works should recollect the homely, but true, Maxim — that Where there is no Love there can be no True Knowledge ; and, if inclined — like the unenviably memorable Gregory Richter, Primate of Qoerlitz — to reject and condemn them, let it not be in his manner; but rather let them bear - in mind the cautious tolerance displayed by the old German Theologian Dr. Meissner, who, when asked for his opinion of them, replied: “How can we judge what we have not understood ?” G. B. M. \jth of January, 1894. * Answers to Forty Questions. O F TRUE REPENTANCE. SHOWING How Man should stir up himself IN M' I N D and WILL , AND What his EARNEST CONSIDERATION and PURPOSE should be. Written in the German Language, (Anno. 1622) By y A COn no EH ME. J ESUS said unto Nicodemus, Verily , verily , / unto thee , Except a Man be born again , tye cannot see the Kingdom of God. <■ Nicodemus saith unto him , How can a Man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second Time into his Mother s Womb and be born ? 4 Jesus answered , Verily , verily, I say unto thee , Except a Man be born of Water , 0 / Spirit , cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. 'That which is born of the Flesh , z'j Flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit , « Spirit.
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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