lances raros y revuelto asunto,

De nuestro mundo y sociedad emblema....

Fiel traslado ha de ser, cierto trasunto

De la vida del hombre y la quimera

Tras de que va la humanidad entera.

Batallas, tempestades, amoríos,

Por mar y tierra, lances, descripciones

De campos y ciudades, desafíos,

Y el desastre y furor de las pasiones,

Goces, dichas, aciertos, desvaríos,

Con algunas morales reflexiones

Acerca de la vida y de la muerte,

De mi propia cosecha, que es mi fuerte.

Adam, hero of the epic, is introduced in Canto I as an aged scholar disillusioned with life, but dreading the proximity of Death, with whom he converses in a vision. The Goddess of Life grants him the youth of Faust and the immortality of the Wandering Jew. Unlike either, he has the physical and mental characteristics of an adult joined to the naïveté of a child. In Canto III Adam appears in a casa de huéspedes, naked and poor, oblivious of the past, without the use of language, with longings for liberty and action. Here his disillusionment begins. His nakedness shocks public morality; and the innocent Adam who is hostile to nobody, and in whom the brilliant spectacle of nature produces nothing but rejoicing, receives blows, stonings, and imprisonment from his neighbors. Childlike he touches the bayonet of one of his captors, and is wounded. This symbolizes the world's hostility to the innocent. In Canto IV we find Adam in prison. His teachers are criminals. He was born for good; society instructs him in evil. In Canto V he experiences love with the manola Salada, but sees in this passion nothing but impurity. He longs for higher 

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