by Poe · Cluster: Time · Tempus Fugit · Clock
Abstract
Allegory in which Prince Prospero’s sealed revel cannot escape the plague: the masked Red Death enters the seven chambers as the ebony clock tolls, asserting Death’s illimitable dominion.
Readability (prose)65.1 Flesch ease10.1 FK grade13.1 Fog9% complex23.7 words/sent
Connections
Topoi: Dance of Death, Memento Mori, Tempus Fugit, Vanitas, Sic Transit Gloria Mundi Archetypes: Death Personified (2), Tyrant Motifs: Death, Clock, Blood, Concealment Hidden Identity, Light and Dark, Time, Wine and Drink, Dreams Themes & Concepts: Mortality, Terror and Horror, Fate and Free Will, Pride, Power and Corruption Forms & Genres: Allegory, Short Story Settings: Castle Characters: Death Personified, Prince Prospero
Testo integrale / Full text
The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious.
When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his
presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the
knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the
deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an
extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s
own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled
it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having
entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.
They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the
sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey
was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might
bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of
itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The
prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were
buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers,
there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these
and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.”
It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his
seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad,
that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a
masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell
of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven—an imperial
suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and
straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the
walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is
scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have
been expected from the duke’s love of the bizarre. The apartments
were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little
more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty
or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right
and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic
window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the
windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose
color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the
decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the
eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue—and vividly blue
were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments
and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was
green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was
furnished and lighted with orange—the fifth with white—the sixth
with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black
velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the
walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material
and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows
failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were
scarlet—a deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments
was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden
ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the
roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or
candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that
followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy
tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that projected its rays through
the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus
were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But
in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that
streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes,
was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the
countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the
company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.
It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the
western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to
and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the
minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be
stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound
which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of
so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour,
the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause,
momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and
thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was
a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the
chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest
grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over
their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the
echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the
assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at
their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each
to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce
in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty
minutes (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of
the Time that flies), there came yet another chiming of the
clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and
meditation as before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent
revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye
for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere
fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions
glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have
thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was
necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was
not.
He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of
the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fête; and it was
his own guiding taste which had given character to the
masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare
and glitter and piquancy and phantasm—much of what has been since
seen in “Hernani.” There were arabesque figures with unsuited
limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the
madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the
wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a
little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in
the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams.
And these—the dreams—writhed in and about, taking hue from the
rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the
echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock
which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment,
all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The
dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the
chime die away—they have endured but an instant—and a light,
half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now
again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and
fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted
windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to
the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are
now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning
away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored
panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him
whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near
clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any
which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties
of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat
feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on,
until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the
clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the
evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy
cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve
strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it
happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time,
into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled.
And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes
of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many
individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of
the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention
of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new
presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at
length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of
disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, of horror,
and of disgust.
In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well
be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such
sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was
nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded
Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s indefinite
decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless
which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly
lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters
of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed
now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the
stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall
and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of
the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly
to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the
closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat.
And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the
mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume
the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and
his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was
besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image
(which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to
sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was
seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder
either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened
with rage.
“Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near
him—“who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him
and unmask him—that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise,
from the battlements!”
It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince
Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the
seven rooms loudly and clearly—for the prince was a bold and
robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his
hand.
It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of
pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a
slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the
intruder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with
deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker.
But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of
the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none
who put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed
within a yard of the prince’s person; and, while the vast
assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the
rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the
same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from
the first, through the blue chamber to the purple—through the
purple to the green—through the green to the orange—through this
again to the white—and even thence to the violet, ere a decided
movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that
the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own
momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers,
while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had
seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had
approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of
the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the
extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted
his pursuer. There was a sharp cry—and the dagger dropped
gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards,
fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the
wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw
themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer,
whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of
the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the
grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so
violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had
come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the
revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died
each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the
ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the
flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red
Death held illimitable dominion over all.