La Legendo De Dorm-Valeto
1820
Washington Irving's ghost story invented an American mythology. Set in a drowsy Dutch valley near the Hudson River, it follows Ichabod Crane, a lanky, bookish schoolteacher with a passion for ghost stories and a keen eye for Katrina Van Tassel's substantial inheritance. His rival is Brom Van Brunt, a brawny local hero whose practical jokes mask something far more dangerous. When Ichabod pursues Katrina through the woods on a autumn night, he encounters a headless specter riding through the hollow, and the story pivots from colonial romance to genuine terror. Irving writes with wit and warmth, mocking his superstitious protagonists even as he lets the darkness win. What happened to Ichabod remains deliciously unclear. This is American Gothic's founding text, a tale that asks what happens when the past refuses to stay buried.
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“I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.””
— Washington Irving
“All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasent life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman.””
— Washington Irving
“Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him.””
— Washington Irving
“There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.””
— Washington Irving
“and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was”
— Washington Irving
“...ducks and geese are foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves.””
— Washington Irving
“And if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate...””
— Washington Irving
“Some minds corrode and grow inactive under the loss of personal liberty; others grow morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet to become tender and imaginitive in the loneliness of confinement. He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts, and, like the captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody.””
— Washington Irving
“There is nothing like the silence and loneliness of night to bring dark shadows over the brightest mind.””
— Washington Irving
