“Le Printemps” d’Agrippa d’Aubigné, un “Printemps” charnel

Here we focus on two poems from Le Printemps in the Droz edition, Ode XXIV, «Que je te plains, beauté divine!» opposing old and young, ugly and beautiful woman, and the Mélanges, XVI, «Encor’ le Ciel cruel…», announcing an episode in Les Fers, the fifth book of the Tragiques. While in Ode XXIV the female sex is forbidden, when it happens to be desirable, piece XVI of the Mélanges contains the beginnings of the Tragiques knot, when the wounded poet rushes to his death «recueilli à Talcy, sur une table, seul». In composing these two long pieces, and in the intertwining of anterotics and juvenile love, Agrippa d’Aubigné was preparing the vast laboratory of the Tragiques.