Last Page (pp. 497-502)
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Seventh Day: Night (pp. 480-93)
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Est ubi gloria nunc Babyloniae? (p. 501): "Where is the glory of Babylon
now?) [Joe Motta comments] At the end of the novel, Adso recites this line from Bernard of Cluny’s
poem, “On the Contempt of the World” (De Contemptu Mundi). The poem,
composed around 1140, is a bitter satire about the moral decadence of
his time and a denunciation of a secular world moving toward
destruction. No one is spared from Bernard’s invective: priests, nuns,
bishops, monks are all rebuked for their ethical and spiritual
deficiencies. The poem is centered on two major themes: the transitory
character of material delights, and the permanency of spiritual bliss.
The poem’s typically medieval outlook reflects Adso’s perspective
throughout the novel. Despite his exposure to William’s modern outlook,
which focuses on individual phenomena of the physical world and denies
the existence of universal truths, Adso remains committed to a divinely
ordered universe and believes in the ultimate supremacy of the spiritual
world over the material. Looking back on the destruction of the
monastery and its library, Adso experiences a sense of the transient
duration of human accomplishments and the approaching end of “the aged
world.”
Eco states in the Postscript to the Name of the Rose that Bernard’s
poem is also the source of the novel’s title and last line—“stat rosa
pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus” (yesterday’s rose endures in its
name, we hold empty names). For Bernard and Adso, this verse would
express the impermanence of physical objects. For Eco, however, the
“empty name” represents an indefinite semiotic sign. The rose of the
title is a symbol so rich in meaning that it now means everything and
nothing. It is empty space which readers can fill in with their own
interpretation.
Reference: The Catholic Encyclopedia, "Bernard of Cluny"
”
"I learned much later that he [William of Baskerville]
had died during the great plague" (p. 499): Adso refers
to the great plague, or bubonic plague, of 1347-1349, which
killed approximately one-third of the population of Europe.
"I pray always that God received his [William of Baskerville's]
soul" (p. 499): [Liisa Hake comments] Adso's voice as narrator reflects a complex personality. Did Umberto Eco
model Adso on one more particular historical characters? In The Book of
Legends/Sefer Ha-Aggadah (underline), an anthology of Rabbinic commentary on
the Talmud and midrashic literature, "R. Johnson said, 'Solomon first wrote
Song of Songs, the Proverbs, and then Ecclesiastes,' inferrring the order in
which these books were written from the way of the world. When a man is
young, he utters words of song; when mature, he speaks in proverbs; when
old, he talks of [life's] vanities'" (578:25).
With this quote, one cannot help being reminded not only of Adso's recitation of much of the Song of Solomon in the kitchen scene, but also of Adso's final comment on William of Baskerville: "I pray always that God received his soul and forgave him the many acts of pride that his intellectual vanity had made him commit" (Eco 499).
Interestingly, Adso's name, itself, takes the first two syllables of both
Adam and Solomon. He begins the story an innocent and ends with the voice
of a wisened storyteller.