The article discusses the content of the concept “adamism”, which is traditionally considered to be an alternative term for acmeism. The founders of this poetic school – S. Gorodetsky and N. Gumilev – defined adamism in different ways. Gorodetsky equalled it with acmeism and described it as an appeal to the poetics of thingness and naturalism. For Gumilev, however, adamism was a world view, i.e. ideological, but not an aesthetic category. The author substantiaties his proposal that Gumilev was the founder of the term “adamism”, because the character of Adam appeared in Gumilev’s poetry several years before the rise of acmeism and this character continued to be the central element of the poet’s Adamic myth.