ABSTRACT
Evocation of human amorous love - even erotic love - is familiar in mysticism, and Marguerite exploits the Song of Songs, which articulates divine love in sensual terms. In the space of the same sentence, Marguerite very overtly uses the image of cinders to evoke the opposites of union with God, on the one hand, and sinful human distance from God, on the other. Sceve's love lyric, then, recalls Marguerite's lyric and letters insofar as both involve the desire of a je for a divine who is absolutely opposite to them, of whom they cannot hope to be the image. However, Marguerite is ultimately more hopeful that her 'beloved' will, in his immense generosity, choose to redeem her. The rejection of the je by the divine lady is clearly tied up with sexuality. In the Dialoghi, too, Sophie, like Delie, implicitly constitutes an image of a God who does not love.
