Le lieu des morts,
 C'est peut-être le plis de l'etouffe rouge.
 Peut-être tombent-ils
 Dans ses mains rocailleuses ; s'aggravent-ils
 Dans les touffes en mer de la couleur rouge.
 Yves Bonnefoy " Le lieu des morts ".

"The Masque of the Red Death" (1842) è un racconto dove le metafore si raccolgono in modo particolarmente pressante intorno ai colori delle stanze della galleria che il principe Prospero ha costruito nella sua turrita abbazia. Il colore per eccellenza che ha il predominio sugli altri è il colore del sangue e del contagio: il rosso, personificazione cromatica della morte come pestilenza e orrore, cui il Principe dedica la settima camera della sua labirintica galleria. Prima di esaminare la rassegna delle sue stanze vediamo come ci è presentata la sua abbazia come rifugio dalla Red Death e quanto la pestilenza sia legata al sangue ed abbia un significato simbolico. "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."1 Nell'unico romanzo che Poe ci ha lasciato ("The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nuntacket", 1838) troviamo un passo concernente il sangue:

" I succeeded only in reading the seven concluding words, which thus appeared- < <blood- your life depends upon lying close.>> And <<blood,>> too, that word of all words- so rife at all times with mystery, and suffering, and terror- how trebly full of import did it now appear- how chilly and heavily (disjointed, as it thus was, from any foregoing words to qualify or render it distinct) did its vague syllables fall, amid the deep gloom of my prison, into the innermost recesses of my soul!"2 Le parole che legge Arthur Gordon Pym sono scritte su un foglio di carta che il suo amico Augustus Barnard è riuscito a fargli avere cercando di avvertirlo di un pericolo mortale. Pym deve rimanere nascosto per salvarsi da un pericolo connesso col sangue, da una minaccia inspiegabile. Prospero allo stesso modo deve rinchiudersi dentro la sua tenuta per sfuggire al contagio della Morte Rossa. Siamo di fronte ad una reclusione in ambedue i casi. " 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, ther e were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the <<Red Death.>>"3

L'isolamento di questa abbazia salta subito agli occhi: è impossibile, una volta chiusi i cancelli, sia uscirne che accedervi. I cancelli di ferro rimandano alla porta di ferro che chiude Madeline nella cripta in "The Fall of the House of Usher"4. Nel caso di "The Masque of the Red Death"si tratta di una prigione, sia per chi l'ha allestita che per i suoi ospiti. La differenza sostanziale tra l'ospite narrante amico di Roderick e gli invitati del principe Prospero è la fuga concessa al narratore in "The Fall of the House of Usher". La vita e lo svago sono assicurati dentro l'abbazia: le ampie provvigioni e gli intrattenimenti sono vari. Lo stesso nome "Prospero"del principe, garantisce sia un'abbondanza materiale sia immaginativa.5 Richard Wilbur afferma che ci troviamo di fronte ad un'altra architettura allegorica: "The Masque of the Red Death is a better-known and even more obvious example of architectural allegory. You will recall how Prince Prospero, when his dominions are being ravaged by the plague, withdraws with a thousand of his knights and ladies into a secluded, impregnable and windowless abbey, where after a time he entertains his friends with a costume ball. The weird decor of the seven ballrooms expresses the Prince's own taste, and in strange costumes of the Prince's own design the company dances far into the night, looking, as Poe says, like <<a multitude of dreams.>>"6 Il ballo in maschera c'introduce nella galleria di camere in cui la festa si svolge: "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."7 Le sette stanze formano un dedalo talmente irregolare da permettere all'osservatore di vedere solo una camera per volta. Ecco come il narratore anonimo descrive le stanze che la fantasia del Principe Prospero ha realizzato: "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 protected 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."8 La settima stanza, l'unica che non fa corrispondere il colore della tappezzeria (nero) con quello dei vetri della finestra (scarlatto), è posizionata nel lato occidentale dell'abbazia. "Western" è uno degli aggettivi con cui si definisce questa camera9 per tre volte consecutive. Si può agevolmente sospettare che l'occidente, americano in particolare, rappresenti per Poe una minaccia: il grande American Dream della spinta verso l'Ovest, a partire dai viaggi dei pionieri per finire col Gold Rush ( la corsa all'oro), nell'anno della morte di Poe(1849), diviene un incubo in questo racconto. Leslie Fiedler analizza questo concetto in "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nuntacket": "Poe's realm of refuge and escape seems finally a place of death rather than one of love: the idyllic American dream turned nightmare as it is dreamed in its author's uneasy sleep. If the West means archetypically some ultimate innocence, there is no West in Poe's book at all- only an illusory hope that draws men toward inevitable disenchantment and betrayal. It is not merely that a Gothic horror balances the quest for innocence in Gordon Pym; such a balance is the standard pattern of all highbrow Westerns. Only in Poe's novel, however, is the dark counterpoint permitted to drown out the cantus firmus of hopeful joy or to mar a final harmonic resolution. "10 L'incubo è generato dalla scoperta dell'illusione del sogno, dal non cogliere l'inganno che vi è dietro questa indagine: la ricerca di un diverso spazio che assicuri il ritorno ad uno stato di beatitudine tipico dell'infanzia conduce alla morte, al seppellimento prematuro, alla "life-in-death". La corruzione del mondo materiale alla quale i personaggi di Poe cercano di sottrarsi tramite le loro bizzarre allegorie architettoniche aleggia come un fantasma fra le stanze, la tappezzeria, il cromatismo fantastico e irreale, le cangianti figure arabescate. Il solo modo di liberarsi da questa ossessione è ancora la morte: la fine del sogno coincide con la fine dell'incubo. Ketterer riassume la cognizione di Poe rispetto al mondo reale: "It is Poe's basic assumption that man lives in an inevitable state of deception as a result of the subjective, idiophatic nature of his awareness, which is limited externally by his circumscribed place in space and time, and internally by his personal experience, eccentricities, and in particular by his erratic, dissecting, and gullible reason. Time, space and self are treated directly in many of the grotesque tales as providing the co-ordinates of man's deception."11 L'inganno è la vita che non riesce a tradurre l'essenziale e a mettere in comunicazione l'uomo con l'infinito; come abbiamo visto per "Ligeia" nel capitolo precedente, l'unità è raggiunta attraverso la morte. Il colore rappresentativo della morte in questo racconto è il rosso, come dicevamo all'inizio del capitolo. In "The Philosophy of Furniture", "The Fall of the House of Usher"," e in "Ligeia", il colore "crimson" ricopre i vetri e la tappezzeria (insieme al dorato per la tappezzeria in "Ligeia" e nel saggio sull'arredamento, mentre in "The Assignation" solo i vetri sono color cremisi12 e la tappezzeria è dorata): questa tinta in particolare ricorre nella settima stanza di "The Masque of the Red Death": "The panes here were scarlet- a deep blood color." La differenza tra "crimson" e "scarlet" sarebbe, da dizionario, tra un "deep red" e un "bright red", ma Poe la annulla connotando lo scarlatto come il colore del sangue, notoriamente rosso scuro, e aggiungendo l'aggettivo "deep". La settima stanza appartiene alla Morte Rossa, l'unica camera nella quale gli invitati del principe non si avventurano e che presenta al suo interno un gigantesco pendolo di legno d'ebano: "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."13 L'orologio d'ebano nell'ultima stanza è la personificazione del tempo: un tempo ingordo, che depreda i sogni della loro eternità, e gli ricorda l'ineluttabile fuga dei minuti, delle ore, bloccando la loro danza: "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. Th e 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."14 L'orologio d'ebano risuona ogni ora per ricordare che il tempo per i sogni è contato, che le visioni avranno un termine. I sogni (ovvero gli invitati di Prospero) prendono la colorazione dalle stanze che frequentano e sono descritti come grotteschi e arabeschi. Nelle camere degli altri racconti sono i disegni arabeschi e grotteschi a comporre la tappezzeria: queste forme cangianti e fantasmagoriche che riflettono i sogni e sono a loro volta riflesse da essi, corrispondono agli effetti allucinatori prodotti dalla stessa ambientazione. Patricia Smith ha studiato il significato dell'arabesco e del grottesco in Poe: " The popular writings also suggest modern uses for the style, generally recommending arabesque or grotesque decor for use in rather limited, circumscribed areas - retiring rooms, small apartments, tapestries, carpets. One thinks of the rooms of the hero in < <The Assignation>>, and of the man in <<The Philosophy of Furniture>>, of Angelo in Al Aaraaf, and of Rowena's death chamber, all equipped with arabesque fittings. The <<Grotesque>>15 article in Rees' Cyclopedia of 1819 says a major use of the style is in masquerade habits, <<the more valued the more grotesques they are,>> bringing to mind the revellers of <<The Masque of the Red Death,> > whom Poe describes as both grotesques and arabesques."16 Gli stili appena citati facilitano la conversione delle forme in elementi fantastici, onirici, paralleli all'immaginazione del sognatore. Fanno da cassa di risonanza all'universo generato dal narratore. "Tales of the Arabesque and Grotesque" (1839) è il titolo di una raccolta di venticinque racconti fra i più conosciuti di Poe in cui l'autore prende in prestito da questi due stili decorativi, spesso confusi fra di loro, la definizione. Ketterer17 esegue un ulteriore suddivisione tra racconti grotteschi e racconti arabeschi. Dieci dei suoi più famosi sono racconti arabeschi, fra i quali "The Masque of the Red Death". Addentrandoci nell'etimologia del termine "arabesque" troviamo: " This study focuses upon the historical meaning of Arabesque. A New English Dictionary lists three uses of the word as adjective. The first of these is the etymological meaning, "Arabian, arabic." The earliest reported istance of the word employed in this sense occurs in the 1842 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. A second adjectival usage is much older:<< Arabian or Moorish in ornamental design; carved or painted in arabesque.>> In its figurative sense, the adjective means << strangely mixed, fantastic.>> The Dictionary reports also three uses of the words as substantive, two of which are pertinent here. One of these is the most popular substantive usage:<< A species of mural or surface decoration in colour or low relief, composed in flowing lines of branches, leaves, and scroll-work fancifully intertwined.>> In a more restricted sense the noun might refer to <<the figure described by the leading lines of the composition, in a drawing or painting.>>"18 Se consideriamo gli invitati come sogni, figure arabesche (appunto come sono chiamate nel racconto " arabesque figures") che si stagliano sullo sfondo delle camere, abbiamo un solo carattere, il principe Prospero, e il suo doppio, la "Red Death", che prendono vita proprio nella settima stanza della galleria. Questa figura, che i sogni temono, secondo Wilbur rappresenta la coscienza temporale e terrena della morte a cui l'immaginazione poetica vuole sfuggire attraverso il sogno. Prospero ha ubicato la sede del tempo, la forma plastica del pendolo che batte le ore, nell'ultima stanza, in fondo a tutte le altre, per allontanare il più possibile (sebbene sia certo della sua incapacità di sfuggirle) il pericolo di veder uccisi i propri sogni. Ecco come si esprime Wilbur in proposito: " More than once, in his dialogues or critical writings, Poe describes the earth-bound, time-bound rationalism of his age as a disease. And that is what the Red Death signifies. Prince Prospero's flight from the Red Death is the poetic imagination's flight from temporal and worldly consciousness into dream. The thousand dancers of Prince Prospero's costume ball are just what Poe says they are- <<dreams>> or <<phantasms, >> veiled and vivid creatures of Prince Prospero's rapt imagination. Whenever there is a feast, or carnival, or costume ball in Poe, we may be sure that a dream is in progress."19 Possiamo al riguardo ricordare la festa in maschera in "The Cask of Amontillado" e il carnevale in "William Wilson": occasioni queste in cui lo scambio dei ruoli è il motivo culminante del festeggiamento. In "The Masque of the Red Death" le stanze stesse della galleria sono "mascherate" dallo spettro di colori che le caratterizza, esse stesse traducono i sogni. L'unica area in cui i sogni non hanno il permesso di ballare, dalla quale si ritraggono, è la stanza tappezzata di tinte fosche e dalle finestre scarlatte perché vi sono trascritte le regole appartenenti ad un mondo rifiutato che sta per prendere il sopravvento sui sogni. Lo spazio costruito da Prospero è stato "preparato" per l'arrivo della morte, come la camera di Ligeia è stata addobbata con arredamenti funebri per accogliere il ritorno della moglie defunta. La settima camera aspetta l'arrivo della personificazione della morte, essendo questo il ruolo di questa camera: "His vesture was dabbled in blood -and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror. "20 La morte rossa è descritta con gli stessi termini usati per la camera: "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."21 Inoltre i termini "blood" e "scarlet"22sono usati soltanto per descrivere la camera e la morte rossa. La stanza, vista come uno specchio dei timori di Prospero, si rivela anch'essa come un ulteriore doppio: allo stesso modo della casa di Usher, finisce per inglobare sia Prospero che i suoi sogni, risucchiandoli nella sua tela colorata. Questo specchio cromatico, in quanto simbolo dell'identità, racchiude entro di sé i valori della vita e della morte, ecco perché è in grado di riassumere anche la Red Death, la parte soppressa, rimossa, dell'identità di Prospero. Se leggiamo un passo da "William Wilson"(1839), racconto precedente a "The Masque of the Red Death", ci rendiamo conto di quanto rassomiglino i due finali: "At that instant some person tried the latch of the door. I hastened to prevent an intrusion, and then immediately returned to my dying antagonist. But what human language can adequately portray that astonishment, that horror which possessed me at the spectacle then presented to view? The brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been sufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in the arrangements at the upper or farther end of the room. A large mirror, --so at first it seemed to me in my confusion --now stood where none had been perceptible before; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait. Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist -it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Not a thread in all his raiment --not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own! It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said: "You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead --dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist --and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."23 Dopo aver colpito a morte il suo omonimo e nemico di sempre, William Wilson nota una trasformazione negli arredi della stanza, in dettaglio si accorge dell'esistenza di uno specchio che prima non aveva visto. E' un suicidio allo specchio: solo nel momento in cui la sua immagine si riflette su questa superficie mostrandogli la reale portata del suo gesto, William Wilson si confronta con la parte negata che lo compone. La maschera che indossava "l'altro" William Wilson è tolta, così come la maschera della morte rossa si rivela ai sogni invitati da Prospero come una "forma intangibile". La camera e l'orologio in perfetta sincronia riuniscono nel finale Prospero e i suoi sogni: "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."24 La Red Death si manifesta come un contagio, una malattia che uccide prima Prospero e poi i suoi sogni nell'unica camera dove non palpita la vita, quindi sede della morte. La vita infatti è descritta come una "febbre", una malattia anch'essa: "But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life."25 Se leggiamo la poesia "For Annie"(1849) troviamo la vita descritta negli stessi termini: "Thank Heaven! the crisis- The danger is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last- And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last. (...) The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:- ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing! The sickness- the nausea- The pitiless pain- Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain- With the fever called "Living" That burned in my brain. (...) And ah! let it never Be foolishly said That my room it is gloomy And narrow my bed; For man never slept In a different bed- And, to sleep, you must slumber In just such a bed."26 Oltre a riconoscere il parallelo con la vita intesa come malattia se ne scorge un altro a proposito del pulsare del cuore con il rintocco delle ore dell'orologio, Wilbur spiega: " We call the human heart a thicker, meaning that it is the clock of the body; and that is what Poe means here. In sleep, our minds may roam beyond the temporal world, but our hearts thick on, binding us to time and mortality. Whenever the ebony clock strikes, the dancers of Prince Prospero's dream grow momentarily pale and still, in half-awareness that they and their revel must have an end; it is as if a sleeper should half-awaken, and know that he has been dreaming, and then sink back into dreams again."27 La vita, essendo legata ad un tempo ed uno spazio determinati, si trasforma in malattia anch'essa, perché ricorda ai sogni i confini spazio-temporali da rispettare. La camera di cui parla l'ultima strofa citata è una tomba nella quale riposare per sempre. Similmente alla settima camera di Prospero questa stanza si configura come l'unico spazio nel quale è concessa la tregua dalla febbre della vita. La morte, attraverso lo spazio fisico della camera, anche in questo racconto è capace di assolvere al compito di contenere la vita quanto la morte e di farle combaciare. Come a dire che la vera vita, senza malattie che la attanaglino, inizia con la morte. In questo senso l'immagine della camera rappresenta il desiderio latente della morte che mette fine ad una vita "malata" e l'immagine della camera è la prefigurazione germinante della Morte Rossa che ha preso possesso dell'abbazia. Nonostante sembri il contrario, ovvero che Prospero voglia difendersi dal contagio, Prospero lo brama perch é è l'effige della morte. La stanza è il correlativo oggettivo del desiderio di Prospero di porre fine all'insano altalenarsi tra i sogni e la realtà terrena. L'alienazione e la frustrazione di Prospero scaturiscono dall'impossibilit à di tramutare i propri sogni in realtà, e la proiezione dell'anelito di morte che si sostanzia attraverso l'immagine della camera, ne è la rappresentazione più evidente. Wunenburger precisa l'attività di quest'immagine alienante: "L'immagine focalizza e anima un'idea, stimolando così il desiderio e l'azione. (...) Da una parte l'immagine fa scattare e alimenta il desiderio, poiché la rappresentazione di un oggetto in absentia non può che provocare la consapevolezza della sua mancanza, inevitabile premessa del desiderio: anzi, la consapevolezza desiderante, investendo il contenuto della rappresentazione e propiziandone la concreta realizzazione, rende possibile l'appagamento, legato alla sua riappropriazione. Dall'altra, si compie il percorso inverso: la consapevolezza di una mancanza, vale a dire la frustrazione, spinge il soggetto a procurarsi l'oggetto in forma di rappresentazione, a foggiarsene un surrogato, a vivere il proprio appagamento per procura, nella sfera dell'immaginario."28 La settima camera è l'area di transizione dalla vita alla morte dove i sogni possono entrare soltanto nel momento in cui le loro immagini si fondono con quelle generate da Prospero con la raffigurazione delle stanze, illustrando lo spazio mentale e proibito del rimosso in termini visivi. L'occupazione dello spazio della camera appartenente alla Red Death è la conquista della morte fisica ma anche della rinascita vitale in un contesto in cui la morte si rivela "positiva", in quanto non perpetua l'inganno della vita e promette la congiunzione con l'infinito atemporale dell'immaginazione poetica.

1 "The Masque of the Red Death" in The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, cit., p. 254. 2 E.A.Poe. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nuntacket. Penguin Books, London, 1986, p. 76. 3 "The Masque of the Red Death", cit., p. 254. 4 " The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected.", in "The Fall of the House of Usher", in The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, cit., p. 150. 5 Cfr. R. Wilbur, The Recognition of Edgar Allan Poe, cit., pp.270-271. 6 R. Wilbur. "The House of Poe" in The Recogntion of Edgar Allan Poe, cit., pp. 275-276. 7 "The Masque of the Red Death", cit., pp. 254-255. 8 "The Masque of the Red Death", cit., pp. 255-256. 9 Cito dal racconto: "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.", pp. 255-256; "It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony.", p. 256; "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.", p. 257. 10 Lesile A. Fiedler. Love and Death in the American Novel. Lowe and Brydone, London, 1967, pp. 394-395 11 D. Ketterer. New Worlds for Old, cit., p. 53. 12 "The Assignation", in The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, cit., p. 297. 13 "The Masque of the Red Death", cit., p. 256. 14 "The Masque of the Red Death" , cit., pp. 256-257. 15"Grotesques. In painting, are often confounded with arabesques. All ornaments compounded in a fantastical manner, of men, beasts, flowers, plants, &c., are sometimes called arabesque, and sometimes grotesques; but there is a distinction between them. Arabesques are flower-pieces, consisting of all kinds of leaves and flowers, real or imaginary. They are so called from the Arabians, who first used them, because they were not permitted to copy beasts and men. As they were also used byt the Moors, they are sometimes called Moresques. The Romans ornamented their saloons with paintings, in which flowers, genii, men and beasts, buildings, &c., are mingled together according to the fancy of the artist. These ornaments are properly called grotesques, because they were found in the ruined buildings of the ancient Romans, and in subterranean chambers, which the Italians call grottoes . . . ": Encyclopaedia Americana (Philadelphia, 1831), in Patricia C. Smith, "Poe's Arabesque", Poe Studies, VII, n° 2, December 1974 , p. 42. 16 Ivi, p. 43. 17 " Poe is probably best known for what might be distinguished as his tales of the arabesque. Although the arabesques constitute only a fraction of his total output, critics have generally concentrated on these ten tales.Chronologically listed, they fall roughly into pairs: <<Metzengerstein>> and <<The Assignation>>, < <Berenice>> and <<Morella>>, <<Ligeia>> and <<The Fall of the House of Usher>>, <<Eleonora>> and <<The Oval Portrait >>, <<The Masque of the Red Death>> and <<The Pit and the Pendulum >>." in D. Ketterer, The Rationale of Deception in Poe, cit., p. 181. 18 L. Moffitt Cecil. "Poe's <<Arabesque>>.Comparative Literature, vol. XVIII.Eugene,Oregon, University of Oregon Press, 1966, p. 57.

19 R. Wilbur, "The House of Poe", cit., p. 276. 20 "The Masque of the Red Death", cit., p. 258. 21 Ivi, p. 255. 22 Ivi: "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. (...)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.", p. 254; "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."pp. 255-256; "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 th e 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.", p. 257; " 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.", p. 260. 23 "William Wilson", in The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, cit., p. 178. 24 "The Masque of the Red Death", cit., p. 260. 25 Ivi, p. 257. 26 "For Annie", in The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, cit., pp. 971-972. 27 R. Wilbur, "The House of Poe", cit., pp. 276-277. 28 Jean Jacques Wunenburger. Filosofia delle immagini. Einaudi, Torino, 1999, pp. 353-354.