Tintin Forums

Portrayals of unicorns obviously feature prominently in The Secret of 'The Unicorn' and in Red Rackham's Treasure - the figureheads of the model ships, the figurehead of the actual ship, on the parchments etc.

But in which other Tintin book can we see a depiction of yet another unicorn?

In The Black Island (p.62), the crest of the 'Daily Reporter' from Glasgow features a tiny unicorn by its side.

Is that what you meant, Balthazar?

That's it, yamilah. Well spotted! The unicorn does indeed feature on one side of that royal coat of arms (the Queen's I think), facing the lion.

A point to you, and good luck with getting the phrasing of your next question accurate and intelligible. ;-)

Balthazar
good luck with getting the phrasing of your next question accurate and intelligible. ;-)

Thanks Balthazar!
Please don't forget faults* and mistakes* are intrisically connected with Tintin, so please be so kind to consider mine as some special training for the many more distortions* found in Tintin!

yamilah
Please don't forget faults* and mistakes* are intrisically connected with Tintin
How so? That is to say that the very nature of either the series of books, or the character (I’m not certain how you are applying Tintin in this case) is faulty or mistaken? I cannot agree with this at all.

Of course in any body of work created by a human there is always room for error, Hergé was only human, and the forums here over the years have identified and examined many of the mistakes in the series, but I wouldn’t say that they were in such abundance or of such importance that they constituted the inherent nature of the thing.

Remember:
- Herge mentions 'spatiotemporelle virtualite' in The Alph-art (p.55)
AND the albums feature quite a few spatiotemporal faults* that make that weird virtuality visible.

- Herge asserted he was very meticulous about his 'aurtografe' (in 'Herge', by P.Assouline, 1996), whereas the original books hold hundreds of random spelling mistakes that usually concern a single letter.
In contrast, no 'room for error' in the English versions, as not a single mistake has been reported -as far as I know- and those versions are certainly not less 'human' than the original ones.

Considering some letters are wrong but most are correct in the original versions, maybe there's some Baconian-like biliteral writing system on top of it in Tintin?

see http://www.prs.org/gallery-bacon.htm

yamilah
Herge asserted he was very meticulous about his 'aurtografe'
What does 'aurtografe' mean, please?

What does 'aurtografe' mean, please?

This is an 'homophone pun' designed by Herge, read and pronounced like 'orthographe', the word that means 'correct spelling' in English.

Edited 29 Nov: Herge's proposal actually reads 'hortograffe' (in 'Herge', P.Assouline)

I didn't quite understand your explanation of "aurtografe", yamilah, but it did spark a further thought:

In Tintin in the Congo, Tintin drives an automobile out into the savanah to hunt giraffe (amongst other animals). So does this make him an "auto-g'raffe hunter"?

Balthazar
In Tintin in the Congo, Tintin drives an automobile out into the savanah to hunt giraffe (amongst other animals). So does this make him an "auto-g'raffe hunter"?

It certainly will, if you manage to find any crossmatching between your personal distorted proposal and Herge's text and image!