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Chapter 12: Adam, Eve, and the Elephants: Asceticism and Animality
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C h a p t e r T w e l v e Adam, Eve, and the Elephants Asceticism and Animality PAtriciA cox MillEr A round the year 400 or perhaps shortly thereafter, a christian artist of unknown provenance carved an ivory diptych whose left leaf features a nude Adam seated in a languid position.1 located in the upper, central-right register of the diptych leaf, Adam looks out with a dreamy expression, not quite making eye contact with the viewer. remarkably, he is accompanied by a cascade of animals who tumble down the leaf: to Adam’s right there is an eagle, followed by a smaller bird, and then a leopard, a lioness, a roaring lion, a bear, a boar, a fox, a cartwheeling elephant, a horse, a goat, a lizard, a serpent , an ox, a grasshopper, a sheep, and finally a stag and doe, who are placed just above a representation of the four rivers of paradise.2 in the guise of orpheus charming the animals with the magic of his song, Adam floats in space in a topsy-turvy frolic with the beasts of paradise . What is Adam’s role here in this leaf of the carrand diptych? is he part of a “force-field of desire” for natural harmony?3 Does he, like 253 Carrand diptych, ca. 400, left leaf. Photo courtesy of Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich. [54.196.27.171] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:59 GMT) animals, exist in the world “like water in water,” as Georges Bataille suggested ?4 that is, isAdam’s intimacy with the world so profound that there is a natural continuity between the human and the animal? As Bataille, again, remarked, “the animal opens before me a depth that attracts me and is familiar to me. in a sense, i know this depth: it is my own.”5 Bataille ’s perspective supports an orphic reading of the figures in this image, including Adam, as an idyll of cavorting animal life. While most art historians acknowledge the indebtedness of this bucolic scene to artistic images of orpheus, most would reject the animalhuman symbiosis implied by the phrase “like water in water.”6 this is because the presumed scriptural referent of this scene, Adam naming the animals in Genesis 2:19–20, is understood, by an intertextual sleight of hand, in concert with Genesis 1:26, the passage in which God gives humankind dominion over the fish, the birds, and the domestic and wild animals. in art-historical interpretation, this scene thus positions Adam, on top and larger even than the elephant, as one who controls the animals rather than harmonizing with them.7 the gesture of Adam’s right hand, in this perspective, does not point to the roaring lion in wonder but instead establishes Adam’s dominance and superiority. Such a view of the dominical Adam separates the human from the animal rather than placing the human in a continuum with the flesh-and-bones materiality of the natural world. the intertextual reading that understands naming as a being-over rather than a being-with is indebted to a certain strain of patristic commentary onAdam and the beasts. Especially in the Hexameron tradition as exempli fied by Basil of caesarea, Ambrose, and John chrysostom, Adam’s dominion over the animals as namer is attributed to his creation in the image of God: only humans have reason and hence are superior to the irrational beasts.8 As Basil of caesarea put the case for animals, “there is only one soul of brute beasts, for there is one thing that characterizes it, namely, lack of reason [ἀλογία].”9 As for Adam, chrysostom was especially enthusiastic about the exalted status of the human: “Do you see the unrivalled authority? Do you see [Adam’s] lordly dominance?”10 Noting that Genesis specifies that Adam gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven, and all the beasts of the earth, chrysostom continues: “Notice, i ask you, dearly beloved, his independence of decision and the eminence Adam, Eve, and the Elephants 255 of his understanding, and don’t say he didn’t know right from wrong. i mean, the being that has the ability to put the right names on cattle, and birds, and beasts without getting the sequence mixed up, not giving to wild beasts the names suited to the tame ones nor allotting to the tame animals what belonged to the wild ones, but giving them all their right...