"these two, imparadis't in one anothers arms"

[Javblanc]

When Dante refers to Beatrice as “quella che imparadise la mia mente”, he uses a made-up verb, which will also occur to Milton. Milton paints Adam and Eve’s perfect union before the Fall as their fusion in a mutual embrace, and beautifully suggests that their arms are each other’s Paradise: "these two, imparadis't in one anothers arms"… In his retelling of the Fall, Milton shows us that Eve, disregarding Adam’s warnings, separates from him. The devil was waiting for that moment. Because the devil cannot do anything while they remain embraced. The Fall is only possible when they come apart. Milton emphasises this, as if suggesting the correlation between the Fall and the separation of the twin souls, as intuited by the ancient sages (Adam and Eve embody all those couples, they’re their prototype). As if, in Adam and Eve’s initial separation, Milton had foreseen the beginning of the Fall, or the Fall itself, of which the forbidden fruit episode would be but the symbolic climax. Other readers of the Genesis –I’m thinking Boehme and his disciples- trace the separation of Adam and Eve, the Fall, even further back: to Adam’s sleep. But it’s in the forbidden fruit episode where the Genesis places all the weight of the Fall, so that’s the episode we’ll tackle now…

You know the story: tempted by the devil, Eve defies God’s prohibition and takes a bite out of the forbidden fruit; then she offers it to her companion, who eats it too. In the Genesis, Adam agrees to eat the forbidden fruit without thinking. But, in Milton’s version, Adam is fully aware of the implications of this action. He knows that eating the fruit implies falling, separating from God. Yet he eats it anyway because he does not want to leave Eve’s side. He wants to share the same fate as her, even if it’s a terrible one. Deep down, he knows that their destinies are indissolubly linked. When Eve approaches and offers him the fruit (“Thou therefore also taste, that equal lot / May join us, equal joy, as equal love”, she tells him, as she also cannot conceive a destiny apart from him), Milton puts the following touching words on his lips:

Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!

How art thou lost! how on a sudden lost,

Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote!

Rather, how hast thou yielded to transgress

The strict forbiddance, how to violate

The sacred fruit forbidden! Some cursed fraud

Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown,

And me with thee hath ruined; for with thee

Certain my resolution is to die:

…/…

Should God create another Eve, and I

Another rib afford, yet loss of thee

Would never from my heart: no, no! I feel

The link of Nature draw me: flesh of flesh,

Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state

Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

It’s clear from Adam and Eve’s words that they are each other’s Paradise. Adam and Eve share a private Paradise, which is to be together, even in disgrace.