The Red Masque

"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."

So begins Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death". While not a precise metaphor for AIDS, the similarities are too much to overlook. Blood is the primary carrier of HIV. Red is the color of the awareness ribbon. The early victims of AIDS had lesions on the body and the face, and were wasting away to ghoulish forms. While death was not as quick, the horrors which ultimately led to the fatal end seemed quick and merciless. And, like with the Red Death, those with AIDS were shut out "from the aid and sympathy of his fellow-men."

“But the Prince [...] 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. [...] The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. [...] there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the ‘Red Death.’”

That was the other corollary, not commonly known. Groups of gay men in San Francisco, New York City and other metropolitan areas sought to protect themselves from this plague with a pact that they would only have sex with members of their group. Whatever this thing was, they would be safe if they kept to the oath and never strayed.

Yet as with Masque’s Prince Prospero, the folly of this quickly became clear: they had locked themselves in, not knowing the enemy was already amongst them. The idea that it could take years from infection to the first sign of symptoms was yet unknown. And by practicing unprotected sex with multiple partners, and with no treatment, the virus found itself able to mutate and mix with other strains.

This is the superinfection that has been paraded in the news media in recent years, long before such issues were discussed. By passing the virus between so many partners, having it mutate then passed back created a strain that was more deadly than a single infection could become.

To say that Poe was prophetic is a bit much to believe. But one has to wonder at it all. Perhaps Edgar’s drug-induced visions had given him a glimpse at what was, or what would be. Or both.

Yet who could doubt the coincidence held in the chambers of Prince Prospero’s “castellated abbeys”, described by Poe in such intimate detail?

“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.”

Other than white, these are the colors of the modern gay pride flag. A black bar is often used to represent those lost to AIDS. A black room hued with the light from the crimson-stained glass. Poe’s Red Death has a corollary with AIDS.

“...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.”

I imagine this is how those revelers of our world, believing themselves to have escaped the plague, must have felt when the first indication of AIDS had revealed itself to them. Whether he appearance of a Kaposi Sarcoma (KS) lesion, as seen on Tom Hank’s character Andrew Beckett’s torso in the 1993 film Philadelphia, or one of their members hospitalized due to pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), cytomegalovirus (CMV) or progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML).

It must have seemed to them as though the mummer from Poe’s tale had crashed the party, its attendance noticed too late to escape the horror:

"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 revelers 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."

And so ends Poe’s tale. It is for the reader to decide if the comparisons made are worthy of thought, discussion or consideration. Or perhaps, one should ask Edgar for his opinion...