The first man created by God. The name Adam, in Hebrew “ādām” and in Greek Ἀδάμ, signifying “man”. Ancient exegesis has established a relationship between “âdhâm” (man) and âdâhmah (earth) or “homo” equivalent to “humus.”
Dante frequently employs, allusively or explicitly, the name of the first man in his work. Such is the case in the Convivio, the De Vulgari Eloquentia, the Monarchy and the Comedy.
In Purgatory, the poet uses Adam’s name to express the physicality of the human condition as well as his physical presence in two passages, evoking fatigue from the ascent that ascribes a degree of corporeality to his character (“I, who had with me something of Adam,” Purg. 9, 10, and “clothed with Adam’s flesh,” Purg. 11, 44).
This name is also used to indicate man’s state of nature in reference to his filial relationship with the first man. For example, in the Convivio (IV, XV, 3-5 and 7), Dante evokes the idea that human beings, as descendants of Adam, are similar to the latter (that is to say, either noble or vile); he refers to Solomon who calls all men “sons of Adam.” In the ritual that celebrates, during the mystical procession, the virtues of Beatrice, woman of graces (“Blessèd are you / among the daughters of Adam” Purg. 29, 85-86), all women are called daughters of Adam. Or in Inf. 3, 115, the sinners waiting to cross Acheron and begin their eternal punishment are referred to as the evil seed of Adam.
Elsewhere, references to Adam refer to a variety of religious, ethical, political, and linguistic concepts; they introduce rich issues that solicit the poet’s interest and nourish his reflection. Dante notes the fact that Adam is the first man (Cv. IV, XV, 3 and Inf. 4, 55) and the father of all humanity (Purg. 33, 61-63; Par. 7, 25-27; 13, 110-111; 26, 82-84, and 91-93). God, who created his body and soul, (DVE I, V, 1 and VI, 1), granted him free natural and supernatural gifts; by acts of love, he had filled him with all perfection (Par. XIII 37-38, 43-45, 82-83, and 111). Adam was worthy of looking directly at his creator. Now, defying the divine will, he sinned against his own good by his own fault, and all his descendants were thus condemned to suffer the consequences of original sin. He was banished from Earthly Paradise, which had been assigned to him at the time of Creation as his home, and was denied all his assets; he found himself unable to reach the state of natural bliss and perfection. The corruption associated with the primitive nature of man is therefore the consequence of Adam’s sin (Mon. I, XVI, 1 and II, XI, 2), that has invested all successive generations. After his death, Adam was forced to wait a long time in Limbo until his fault was finally punished and atoned for by Christ, the new Adam, who brought back the sons of wrath to the state of sons of Grace. This theme, found in the patristic and scholastic tradition, is taken up by Dante in Par. 7, 85-93; he identifies sin with madness, which brings great disasters.
Adam’s name is also mentioned in an episode of Purgatory (32, 37-39) where Dante spots a tree that, during the mystical procession, is explicitly linked to the one of Earthly Paradise presented in the bible. The ethical and political meaning of this passage recalls the rupture of the concord between God and humanity.
By representing Earthly Paradise as a gift of God offered to humanity, and lost by the fault of Adam, Dante underlines the brevity of the state of bliss and innocence (Purg. 28, 142-144): the first man would have stayed only seven hours in Eden (Par. 26, 139-142), while he would have lived 930 years on earth and would have waited 4302 years in Limbo before being taken to heaven by Christ (Inf. 4, 55 and Par. 36, 118-123). The remorse linked to the long wait is evoked at the end of Purgatory, in the songs of the Earthly Paradise (Purg. 33, 61-63), where an intimate correspondence between sin and redemption is proposed. Similarly, canto 25 of Paradise refers to Adam: Dante, seeing an end of his ascension and the beginning of the exhaustive conclusive phase of the ultimate vision, is then asked about the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity).
The fact that Adam was created directly by God grants him the privilege of being seated, in the Empyrean, at Mary’s left (Par. 32, 121-123): “He who sits beside her to her left, / is that father for whose reckless tasting / mankind still tastes such bitterness.” Or, in v. 138, he is indicated as the first father of the family.
Dante also evokes Adam to deal with the extinction of the language of the first men. In the De Vulgari Eloquentia, he affirms that Adam would have talked before Eve (I, IV, 3), reporting a fact that is contrary to the Holy Scripture. The language that he spoke, created by God at the same time that he created his soul, would have been the language used by humanity until the linguistic confusion caused by the episode of the tower of Babel (DVE I, VI, 4-5). Contrary to the opinion exposed in his treatise, in the Comedy, Dante makes Adam say that everything transmitted inter-generationally undergoes transformations, and it is the same for language: “The tongue I spoke was utterly extinct / before the followers of Nimrod turned their minds / to their unattainable ambition. / For nothing ever produced by reason -- / since human tastes reflect the motion / of the moving stars – can last forever. / It is the word of nature man should speak / but, it in this way or in that, nature leaves to you, / allowing you to choose at your own pleasure. / Before I descended to anguish of Hell, / I was the name on earth of the Sovereign Good, / whose joyous rays envelop and surround me. / Later El becomes His name, and that is as it should be, / for the mortal custom is like a leaf upon a branch, / which goes and then another comes” (Par. 26, 124-138). Again, in the DVE I, IV, 3-5, Dante affirms, taking up the idea of the doctor of the Church Isidore of Seville, that the first word pronounced by Adam was, without doubt, the name of God – El. This is another statement radically contradicted by Adam in the Comedy, as seen in the previous quote.
Consult the entry of the Enciclopedia Dantesca in Italian.
Entry taken from the Enciclopedia Dantesca published by the Istituto Treccani — Texts revised by the Centre d’études médiévales of the Université de Montréal.
Editing: Gabrielle Hamelin, Martyna Kander.
English translation: Brittany Buscio.
