The Unicorn from the Stars
FATHER JOHN: Tell me what you have seen where you have been. MARTIN: There were horses … white horses rushing by, with white, shining riders … there was a horse without a rider, and someone caught me up and put me upon him, and we rode away, with the wind, like the wind…. FATHER JOHN: [...]
The Book of Job (39: 9-11)
Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? Or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him because his strength is great? From the 1611 King James’ translation of the Bible.
The Royal Picture Alphabet
The Royal Picture Alphabet is a free e-book produced by Project Gutenberg. It’s a lovely illustrated educational book which links each of the letters of the alphabet to a moral tale. Of course any book that features a unicorn on the front cover (top right) is always going to be an interesting read. The book [...]
Kafka and His Precursors
Translated by James E. Irby. I once premeditated making a study of Kafka’s prescursors. At first I had considered him to be as singular as the phoenix of rhetorical praise; after frequenting his pages a bit, I came to think I could recognize his voice, or his practices, in texts from diverse literatures and periods. [...]
The Brave Little Tailor
ONE summer’s morning a little tailor was sitting on his table by the window; he was in good spirits, and sewed with all his might. Then came a peasant woman down the street crying, “Good jams, cheap! Good jams, cheap!” This rang pleasantly in the tailor’s ears; he stretched his delicate head out of the [...]
The Unicorn and the White Doe
Unicorn with bursting heart Breath of love has drawn: On his desolate crags apart, At rumour of dawn, Has blared aloud his pride This long age mute, Lurched his horn from side to side, Lunged with his foot. `Like a storm of sand I run Breaking the desert’s boundaries, I go in hiding from the [...]
Foure-Footed Beastes
It is sayd that Unicorns above all other creatures, doe reverence Virgines and young Maides, and that many times at the sight of them they growe tame, and come and sleepe beside them, for there is in their nature a certain savor, wherewithall the Unicornes are allured and delighted: for which occasion the Indian and [...]
George Chapman
I once did see In my young travels through Armenia, An angrie Unicorne in his full carier Charge with too swift a foot a Jeweller, Who sought him for the Treasure of his browe; And ere he could get shelter of a tree, Naile him with his rich Antler to the Earth. Chapman, G. Bussy [...]
Bertrand Russell
‘A ‘unicorn’is an indefinite description which describes nothing Bertrand Russell: Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
Invictus
Invictus, was so named because, no matter what he did, his erection was perpetual, was furnished with an engine eleven inches long and seven and fifteen-sixteenths inches around. Greater ones, who had difficulty stiffening, had been turned away to make room for him who, regardless of the quantity of discharges produced in a day, rose [...]
Conversations with Unicorns
1. The Unicorns do not understand. We have had long conversations but it is difficult for them. They insist that I have come to collect the body of one of their number, but at the same time they point out that there is no body, that it was collected by another man before I arrived. [...]
The Chinese Unicorn
The Chinese Unicorn, or K’Lin, is one of the four animalsof good omen; the others are the Dragon, the Phoenix, and the Tortoise. The Unicorn is the foremost of the four legged animals; it has the body of a Kiun (or deer), the tail of an ox, and the hoofs of a horse; the horn [...]
The Lion & The Unicorn
The next moment soldiers came running through the wood, at first in twos and threes, then ten or twenty together, and at last in such crowds that they seemed to fill the whole forest. Alice got behind a tree, for fear of being run over, and watched them go by. She thought that in all [...]
Jorge Luis Borges’ Unicorn
The first version of the Unicorn is nearly identical with the latest. Four hundred years B.C., the Greek historian and physician Ctesias told that among the kingdoms of India there were very swift wild asses with white coats, purple heads, blue eyes, and in the middle of their foreheads a pointed horn whose base was [...]