So, this weekend two short stories by Edgar Allen Poe who does the macabre better than almost anyone I know. His stories are often weirdly creepy. The first I liked very much the second I only felt a little "meh" about but was still an entertaining read. Both are from the little Bantam Classic, The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings. I seem to be chipping away at this book. My all-time favorite Poe story is and will likely always remain "A Cask of Amontillado" which I have read and reread and would have done so again this weekend but thought I should really try something new.
First up is "The Masque of the Red Death" which I think is fairly famous and it reminds me of the folk tale "appointment in Samarra" about the man who tries to cheat death by traveling far away from the city where he is meant to meet his death. As it turns out he happens across him in this other city knowing he had a meeting with him elsewhere. So the moral is that you can't escape death.
In Poe's story not only does Prince Prospero try to cheat death but he snubs it and the rest of the population along the way. So maybe in the end he gets what he deserves. The red death is a pestilence that has devastated the country.
"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, where the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour."
Hale and hearty the prince is, and in his happy way he invites a thousand (so many?!) healthy knights and dames from his court to go with him and take up residence in one of his "castellated" abbeys. It will offer itself as a fortress against the red death, and they have amply provisioned it to last any assaults on his refuge. The group doesn't cower in fear of the terror the death has inflicted on the population. No, they have a grand party instead--the outside world can fend for themselves. They have "all the appliances of pleasure" including jokers, musicians and ballet-dancers. "It was a voluptuous scene that masquerade."
Poe tells in great detail of the seven rooms that make up the interior of the abbey--each decorated in its own color. The last one is done up in black. And no one dares enter it. Inside that last room stands an ebony clock and with each circuit of the minute hand the masqueraders pause . . .
" . . . 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 moment passes the nervousness passes and the music begins once again. You know where this is going, don't you? The hours tick tock away. The party goes on and just what is happening in the outside world? How long can it all go on? All those revelers dancing away in their costumes and when the hour sounds they stop and look worriedly at each other. Phantasms is what they appear to be. And then a phantasm is amongst them. He is masked as if he is the "red death". And Prince Prospero wishes to unmask him. To find out what happens next, you can read the story here.
I assumed the red death must refer to the plague, but I read that it might refer to tuberculosis from which his wife was suffering at the time. It might also refer to an outbreak of cholera which had been happening in Baltimore. And if you want to get really deep, I read that the "red death" might well be sickness of humankind--otherwise known as Original Sin. Or you could just take it as a nice, creepy Gothic entertainment. It was adapted to the screen in the mid-1960s and starred Vincent Price. I wonder if I can get my hands on that one?!
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I've not left myself much space to write about "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar". It just didn't do much for me, and seems to rely on the more gory aspect of of the story to give thrills. The story recounts a case of mesmerism at the moment of death of a man suffering from TB. I think when it was published (in 1845) Poe (or the publisher?) didn't dissuade the reading public from thinking that such a thing was possible. I'm just not sure what the point of mesmerizing the poor man was meant to be? At the point of near death M. Valdemar summons the narrator to mesmerize him, and in this state he remains for seven months. Just in a state of near death, but not death yet not being alive either. Do you want to know what happens when the man is woken? Read on. Otherwise skip the quote!
"As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of "dead! dead!" absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the sufferer, his whole frame at once --within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk --crumbled --absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome --of detestable putridity."
Eww, gross. But maybe you need one of these sorts of stories for RIP, too! If you are up for a little mesmerism and want to find out what happens for yourself, read along here.
I'm not quite sure what I am in the mood for next. Something a little more contemporary maybe. Any suggestions?