In the experimental novel Un ventre di donna. Romanzo chirurgico (1919), the Tuscan actor and writer Enif Robert tells the story of a woman who has her uterus removed following an inflammatory disease. The story describes the protagonist’s suffering during her recovery, and – interspersed with parolibere (liberated words) and letters that her friend Marinetti sent her from the front – describes the surgery as her own private, feminist war. Defying her gynaecologist, who objected to the idea of making her sterile, Robert emphasises the advantages of her hysterectomy; she declares herself free of the volubility that society associated with women, and thus finally capable of true, Futurist creativity. The cover illustration by Lucio Venna for the book’s first reprint perfectly sums up the author’s intentions: portraying a slim, fashionable female figure, it shows Robert as a woman reinvigorated by her battle against the doctor sitting behind her. In her contributions to the Florentine journal L’Italia futurista (1916–1918) – and above all her parolibere compositions of 1917 Malattia+infezione and Sensazioni chirurgiche – Robert had already suggested a link between bodily health and the mind. But while those works were meant to rouse the political conscience of a nation at war, Un ventre di donna emphasises the need to consider the female body invested with a new independence, and points to the possibility of changing one’s destiny, even through invasive bodily transformations.
Stefano Mudu
