"In the body of death, I have enclosed my life": the motif of the living dead in "Spring" by Agrippa d'Aubigne

Readers will readily recall from Printemps, and especially from the H & eacute;catombe & agrave; Diane and the Stances, the horrible image of the bloody chest of the lover whose heart has been torn out and of-fered as a holocaust to the cruel Diana. This metaphorical motif, inherited from Petrarchanism, is not, however, unrelated to the author's convictions and life experiences. His interest in the occult sciences and, more generally, his acceptance, albeit suspicious and worried, of the irruption of the supernatural into real life, can be seen in his Lettres sur les divers points de science and in Sa vie & agrave; ses enfants. Agrippa d'Aubign & eacute;, through the obsessive figure of the living dead, with whom he identi-fied, questioned the porosity of the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead