Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

vi. The manner

Khunrath’s register lurches, and a reader should expect it to. In one sentence on p. 7 he has Philosophis, Medicis and judicio standing beside Eselsköpffe and Lestermeuler — asses’ heads and blasphemers’ mouths. He writes suspended periods that run over the page-turn without a main verb — pp. 6–7, 13–14, 44–46 and 51–53 each carry one — and then turns and says O du Thore! The learned vocabulary is learned and the abuse is coarse, and the translation of this edition follows him down and up rather than ironing the whole into one elevated voice.

Much of the abuse is in the margin, where he insults his opponents beside the page rather than in it: You Idiots and Sophists, mark this teaching well (p. 53); the Sophists’ swarm of hornets, who may come at her and buzz, screech, growl, grumble, snarl, swear by the sacraments, revile and blaspheme as much as they like (p. 64); An hoc est Philosophus obscurare omnes? Egregiè mentiris, ô Cain — is this what it is to be a Philosopher, to keep everyone in the dark? you lie magnificently, O Cain (p. 74). The sharpest exchange in the book is at p. 84, where he puts the demand in his opponent’s mouth — Doctor Khunrath, catch him for me! — and answers, O du Thore! Gickes geckes / hats auch Narren geregnet?

The longest stretch of unbroken abuse is pp. 168–171, and it is aimed not at the learned opponent but at the trade: a wretched vagabond crowd, ragamuffin rabble, men who have pushed into the Art against their own callings and against the calling of God and Nature, who understand as much of God’s mysteries as the crow does of Sunday or a Swiss cow of dancing, who change their opinion of the Materia several times in a week, and who blunder after every new gold-crier like a fly into buttermilk. He breaks it off himself at p. 172: Whither shall I flee, that I may escape tongues? — and then, Caballus generosus non curat latratus insequentis catelli. Idem & Ego faciam, in Nomine DOMINI.

He is also a coiner. Naturgemeß, Nature-conforming, is his standing adjective and is kept as one word in the English. Schwermament (p. 85) folds Firmament into schwärmen, to swarm and to rave, and the English keeps the pun rather than explaining it. argChymist is built on arg, wicked or arrant, not on Erz-; ardelionisiren (margins, pp. 22 and 70) is a verb made from Ardelio, the meddling busybody; Loß-sophi (margin, p. 168) is what the Philosophi of the trade might better be called.