In 1798, yellow fever had reached the status of epidemic in New York. Little was known then about the transmission of this disease, but it killed 5,000 people in Philadelphia in a single year and was on its way to causing the same havoc in this State. He panic began to spread and everyone who had financial means began to flee. That’s how Washington Irvingwho was 15 years old at the time, arrived in Tarry Town, a village located north of New York, in the Hudson River Valley, a stone’s throw from the small Dutch settlement that is now called Sleepy Hollow.
Irving’s biographer Brian Jay Jones notes that the writer was deeply struck by the beauty of the natural places of the area (years later, after his work as ambassador in Spain, he bought a farm, Sunnyside, today his house museum) and for the ghost legends. It is not clear if the story of the headless horseman already existed at that time, what is clear is that Irving’s story elevated it to the category of myth and that it was established as the star story of Halloween, a holiday that, by the way, It didn’t exist at that time.
Antonio Lorentewhose work has also accompanied the first versions of ‘Anne of Green Gables’‘Tom Sawyer’ or ‘Little Women’ He has illustrated the original text in a volume of Edelvives. «I had wanted to give a twist to the classics theme for a long time. After several years illustrating sweeter stories, I was seduced by the opportunity to obscure the theme and I immersed myself in this wonderful story that always attracted me since I was a child. I knew Tim Burton’s version, but it has little to do with Irving’s story… That’s why I found it interesting to respect the text and focus on giving a contemporary vision with my characteristic characters,” he explains.
Adrien Brody and Ichabod
One of the most striking is undoubtedly the protagonist, Ichabod Crane, who under the brush of this illustrator takes on the surprising appearance of Adrien Brody. «People were very shocked that he did not use Johnny Deep for the main character. And it is precisely because of Burton’s imagination. But the original story describes a lanky, angular character, with big ears and pointed nose. When I read it I couldn’t get Adrien Brody out of my head. So I decided to borrow his soul for this project. Then I started researching and saw some photographs of the real character from which Irving himself had been inspired.
Indeed, Ichabod Crane existed in real life. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1809 and was stationed at Fort Pike, New York, on the shores of Lake Ontario, where Irving was also located, during the War of 1812 against the British. There are more doubts about the origin of the legend of the headless horseman (some suggest Germany, others Ireland…), but Irving was in charge of printing it as well. war reminiscencessince the story suggests that he is a Hessian mercenary horseman who lost his head to a cannonball during the War of Independence.
Likewise, Elizabeth L. Bradley, vice president of Programs and Engagement in the Historic Hudson Valley and author of the foreword to a recent reissue of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is the author of the theory, published in Smithsonian magazine. , that the yellow fever epidemic inspired Irving. It is based on the fact that the entire community of Sleepy Hollow seems to live in a kind of torpor (the literal translation is ‘sleepy hollow’), as if they were infected by a spell.
The perfect breeding ground for visions of strange beings. “The fables and superstitions They take root better in this type of isolated and ancient settlements, while the restless mob that occupies most of the territory of our country tends to trample them,” he writes of its inhabitants. Irving’s narrator, Diedrich Knickerbocker, describes it as a place where the very air is permeated with dreams and fantasies that affect both natives as well as newcomers.
«The character of Ichabod destabilizes the town. It’s like the stranger who comes to take away ‘ours’. That fear of the unknown that is in the nature of human beings, especially in places where progress has not arrived. I think Irving could be reflecting on the human nature of clinging to tradition and resistance to change, even when the world is constantly evolving,” says Lorente.
During his research for this work, the illustrator found surprising similarities with any village, town or small rural environment in any corner of Spain from more than a century ago. According to him, the scenarios of fear, deep-rooted traditions and rejection of the outsider are strikingly similar. “We were practically no different from the society that once inhabited Sleepy Hollow,” he says.
Fade to black
Fear increases and expands freely in this fable. «It grows in the story like the psychology of fear. It starts in a very calm way and goes ‘in crescendo’ to panic. The color that I have used in this illustrated album works like fear itself. I start with brown and end with squid ink. If you open the book, the light and calm colors invade the first pages to merge into complete black. The last is a dawn. A metaphor for the calm that always comes after bad moments,” Lorente appreciates.
In fact, the illustrator has drawn two types of headless horseman. The one at the beginning is created by the imagination of those who speak about it. That is why the forest forms it. The branches and roots of the trees create the spectrum. And then there’s the one at the end, which chases Ichabod. «Here you can see it more real, and its own layer does not let you see “If it is a decapitated person or if you want to simulate it,” he says.
The fact that the protagonist mysteriously disappear After the hunt, it therefore offers a kind of “symbolic vaccination”, which leaves contagion and superstition behind, according to Bradley. Meanwhile, Lorente believes “that in history we talk about two ghosts. That of the headless knight and that of Crane himself. Ichabod Crane disappears without a trace, as if he were one of them.
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