Un brillant sujet
- by Jacques Rigaut
- Flash Fiction
- Comedy, Experimental
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- French
- “Un brillant sujet” by Jacques Rigaut, Littérature #2, April 1922.
Now that we’re in the enlightened 21st century, every self-respecting reader is intimately familiar with all the early time travel classics. Anno 7603, Paris avant les hommes,[/em] “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “The Clock That Went Backward,” El Anacronópete, The Time Machine, blah blah blah. But let’s be honest and call a Morlock a Morlock: All those old tales are tales of vacuous travelers through time, none of them giving a thought to contorted paradoxes, none wondering which lover they would get back (or get revenge on) if given the chance, none fretting about what might happen should they kill their younger self, and none having impure thoughts about sleeping with their mothers or the consequences of doing so. Yep, I’d always proudly boasted that it was my generation who discovered such sauciness.
And then I stumbled upon Jacques Rigaut’s century-old gem that managed all that and more in under 1,000 words more than a century ago.
And then I stumbled upon Jacques Rigaut’s century-old gem that managed all that and more in under 1,000 words more than a century ago.
—Michael Main
Divers incestes sont consommés. Palentête a quelques raisons de croire qu’il est son propre père.translate
Various incests are consummated. Skullhead has some reason to believe that he is his own father.
Tags
(28)
- Time Periods
- Ancient History (3000 BC to AD 476: Bronze/Iron Ages): multiple locations
- Circa AD 1800 to 1899: Napolean
- Circa AD 1900 to 1929: presumed starting time
- Timeline Models
- Multiple Naive Timelines: indiscriminate changing of timelines
- Time Travel Methods
- Time Spheres, Eggs, et al.: We’re calling the d’œuf géant a time sphere. Live with it.
- Themes
- Fix Your Love Life!: Palentête’s original motivation is to fix his love life, and things just spiral from there.
- Oedipal Time Travel: Various incests are consummated.
- Self-Blackmail: Young Palentête threatens old Palentête with suicide.
- Selves-Visitation: about twenty Palentête of all sizes
- Travel to the Past Unintentially Makes You Younger
- Traveler Becomes a God, Royalty, Wizard, etc.
- Traveler Becomes Historical Figure: Exekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah.
- Real-World Tags
- Ancient Egypt
- Augustus
- Ezekiel
- Genesis Creation Myth
- Hannibal
- Homer
- Isaiah
- Jeremiah
- Jesus
- Napoleon
- Precolonial Americas: early South America
- Fictional Tags
- Abrahamic God: the Genesis God
- Deities
- Genesis Flood Narrative
- Groupings
Variants
(1)
- “Un brillant sujet” by Jacques Rigaut, Littérature #2, April 1922.
Indexer Notes
(2)
- Debut—from Les revues littéraires. And see a scan at Wikimedia.
- Translation—The translation of the quote is primarily from Google translate, but the translation of Palentête to Skullhead comes from the chapter “Judas Iscariot and Skullhead” in I, Judas by James Reich.