Who He Is
Adam is the fourth light that appears among the three apostles in the fixed stars, when Beatrice says that within those rays the first soul, the one whom the first power created, contemplates its maker. The poem never gives him a name: Dante calls him the fruit that was produced alone when ripe, the ancient father to whom every bride is daughter and daughter-in-law, and it is tradition that identifies this soul with the first man. The light that covers him stirs like a covered animal whose affection shows through, and shows how gladly he comes to content him. He reads Dante's desire better than Dante reads anything certain, because he sees it in the true mirror, and he lists, without being asked, the four things the pilgrim wants to know: how long it has been since God placed him in the garden, how great was the delight of his eyes, the cause of the great wrath, and the language he used and made. He answers the four points in order, with numbers, with a correction of theology, and with a correction of Dante's own work on language. He is one of the rare characters in the canticle who teaches without being asked, and he corrects the popular image of guilt.
Trajectory
In canto XXVI Dante calls him thus:
E cominciai: «O pomo che maturo / solo prodotto fosti, o padre antico / a cui ciascuna sposa è figlia e nuro, / divoto quanto posso a te supplìco / perché mi parli: tu vedi mia voglia, / e per udirti tosto non la dico», and I began: "O fruit that, when ripe, were produced alone, O ancient father to whom every bride is daughter and daughter-in-law, as devoutly as I can I beg you to speak to me: you see my desire, and so that I may hear you soon, I do not say it."
Adam takes the weight off the gesture: the wood was not the cause of the exile; the limit was.
Or, figluol mio, non il gustar del legno / fu per sé la cagion di tanto essilio, / ma solamente il trapassar del segno, now, my son, the tasting of the wood was not in itself the cause of so great an exile, but only the overstepping of the mark.
About times, he says he longed for the council of heaven for four thousand three hundred and two courses of the sun in Limbo, and that he lived on earth nine hundred and thirty revolutions of the sun. The language he spoke was extinct before the work of Nimrod, which contradicts what Dante had maintained in a treatise, where Adam's language survived in Hebrew. The name of God changed in the mouths of men:
Pria ch’i’ scendessi a l’infernale ambascia, / I s’appellava in terra il sommo bene / onde vien la letizia che mi fascia; / e El si chiamò poi: e ciò convene, / ché l’uso d’i mortali è come fronda / in ramo, che sen va e altra vene, before I descended to infernal anguish, on earth the supreme good, whence comes the joy that wraps me, was called I; and El was called afterward: and this is fitting, for the custom of mortals is like a leaf on a branch, which goes away and another comes.
He speaks of the mountain where he dwelt, with pure life and then dishonest, from the first hour until the one that follows the sixth, when the sun changes quadrant, and the explanation of the exile ties the canto to the echo of canto XXXI of Inferno, where Virgil says that one language is no longer used in the world. In canto XXXII Bernard places him as the root of the rose, on the left, for the daring taste of the one through whom the human species has tasted so much bitterness, beside Moses and opposite Lucy.
Themes Embodied
Adam embodies Language and narration: his language was extinct before Nimrod, and the use of mortals is like a leaf on the branch, which goes and another comes. He also embodies Justice and law, because the fault is the transgression of the sign, not the fruit. The Faith that Dante examines in the preceding cantos has here its origin and its fall.
The text sustains two readings of Adam's correction of the image of the fall. In the first, the fault is crossing the limit, which shifts the weight from the apple to the order that was disobeyed. In the second, the poem corrects its own author, because Adam contradicts what the Dante of the treatise on language affirmed. The attribution to the first man is from tradition, and the authority of the correction comes from what the poem does with the scene, not from the name spoken.
Relationships
- Dante: the distant descendant who calls him ancient father.
- Beatrice: the one who names the soul by what it contemplates.
- Saint Peter: the other root of the rose, on the right, at the opposite end.
- Saint Bernard: the guide who places him as the root of the rose, on the left.