The Seed Man

Traduction de L'homme semence de Violette Ailhaud, en anglais, par Nancy
Huston - The Seed Man translated from the French by Nancy Huston : In 1852,
Violette Ailhaud was about to get married when the govenment’s repression of
the republican uprising of December 1851 suddenly wiped out all the men of her
village in the Lower Alps. For two years, the women lived in total isolation.
They promised each other that if a man came along some day he would be husband
to them all, so that their wombs could bring forth the next generation.
“It came from the farthest depths of the valley. Long before it forded the
river, long before its shadow interrupted the gleam of water between sandbars
like a slow blink, we knew it was a man. Our empty, husbandless women’s bodies
had started thrumming in a way there was no mistaking. In unison, our
exhausted arms left off stacking hay. Glancing at one another, each and all of
us remembered our oath. We grasped hands, squeezing each other’s hands so hard
that our knuckles fairly snapped – our dream, icy with fear and burning with
desire, had been set into motion.”
With an Afterword by historian Jean-Marie Guillon, University of Provence,
member of the 1851 Association.
The Seed Man has been adapted as theater, film, tale, dance, cartoon and
engraving.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in 1835, Violette Ailhaud died in 1925. She wrote The Seed Man in 1919 –
when her village lost all its men for the second time.