Mărgărita Miller Verghy

Mărgărita Miller Verghy (Romanian pronunciation: [mərɡəˈrita ˈmiler ˈverɡi]; first name also Margareta, surname also Miller-Verghy, Miller-Verghi, Miller-Vergy; full name also Marg. M-V.; January 1, 1865–December 31, 1953) was a Romanian socialite and author, also known as a feminist activist, schoolteacher, journalist, critic and translator. A cultural animator, she hosted a literary club of Germanophile tendencies during the early part of World War I, and was later involved with Adela Xenopol in setting up feminist cultural venues. Her main contributions to Romanian literature include translations from English literature, a history of feminine writing in the national context, a novella series and an influential work of detective fiction. Many of her other works have been described as mediocre and didactic.

As a socialite, Mărgărita Miller Verghy was noted for her close relationships with prominent cultural figures of her lifetime. Among them were the acclaimed writers Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea, Mateiu Caragiale and Lucia Demetrius, as well as musician Cella Delavrancea. She helped found several women's activist organizations, and was also a pioneer of Romanian Scouting.

Biography

Early life

Born in the city of Iaşi, Mărgărita Miller Verghy was of partial Polish-Romanian descent.^[1] Her family was related to that of authors Ionel and Păstorel Teodoreanu,^[2] and she was also akin to members of the aristocratic Ghica family, being an aunt of socialite Grigore "Grigri" Ghica.^[3] The adolescent Miller Verghy was close to the family of Delavrancea, with whom she corresponded.^[4] Reportedly, in the 1880s she was also acquainted with Mihai Eminescu, later recognized as Romania's national poet.^[5]

Miller Verghy went on to study in Switzerland, at the University of Geneva, where she graduated in Letters and took a Doctorate in Philosophy (1895).^[6] She began her writing career in 1885, when one of her novellas was published by România Liberă daily,^[6] and, in 1892, tried her hand at translating into French some of Eminescu's works, as possibly the first-ever person to have published such poetry translations.^[7] There resulted a volume in her translation, prefaced by poet Alexandru Vlahuţă and called "remarkable" by Familia reviewers, was published as Quelques poésies de Michaïl Eminesco ("Some of Mihai Eminescu's Poems", 1901).^[8]

Upon her return from Switzerland, Miller Verghy became a teacher at girls' schools in Bucharest, and was headmistress of the Elena Doamna High School for girls.^[6][8] By 1910, she had authored a novel, eponymously titled after Theano, a character in Greek mythology, and the play Pentru tine ("For You"), published respectively under the male pen names Dionis ("Dionysus") and Ilie Cambrea.^[9] Pentru tine was followed by several other original contributions to Romanian theater,^[6] and a translation of William Shakespeare's King Lear, used by the National Theater Bucharest.^[10] She also contributed a series of shorter works, which she signed with the names Marg. M-V., Ariel, Mama Lola and Ion Pravilă.^[11] They comprised memoirs and contributions to children's literature, noted for both their refinement and sentimentality.^[6] Literary critic Bianca Burţa-Cernat refers to the style she developed as "romanticized-moralizing prose for all-girl schools."^[12] Others have included her as among the first female representatives of modern literature in Romania.^[6]

By then, Miller Verghi had also embarked on a career as a journalist. Throughout her life, she contributed to diverse newspapers and magazines, such as Sămănătorul, Viaţa Românească, Dreptatea, Flacăra and the French-language La Roumanie.^[9] She also had a strong social profile, as a member of leadership committees for several associations,^[12] and authored a number of textbooks.^[6][12] In 1912, Flacăra's almanac featured her translation from English woman writer Elizabeth Barrett Browning.^[13] Three years later, she also contributed the Romanian version of a story by English-born Romanian Queen Marie of Edinburgh, under the title Patru anotimpuri din viaţa unui om ("Four Seasons from a Man's Life", an edition illustrated by painter Nicolae Grant).^[14] With Izabela Sadoveanu-Evan, Bucura Dumbravă and other women writers, Miller Verghy was also a founding member of the Româncele Cercetaşe Association, an early branch of Romanian Scouting (created in 1915, ancestor of Asociaţia Ghidelor şi Ghizilor din România).^[15]

World War I and after

In 1914-1916, the period between the outbreak of World War I and the Romanian Kingdom's affiliation to the Entente Powers (see Romania during World War I), she was the animator of a Bucharest-located cultural circle noted for its Germanophilia and support for the Central Powers.^[16] This club was notably attended by pianist Cella Delavrancea and by prominent poet and prose writer Mateiu Caragiale, and it was reportedly here that Caragiale met Marica Sion, daughter of the intellectual Gheorghe Sion, which led to their 1932 marriage.^[16] Miller Verghy extended her patronage on the impoverished Caragiale, and, according to Grigri Ghica, helped him store his belongings in a stable she owned. Ghica also reported his aunt's astonishment upon discovering that Mateiu Caragiale was using the building to house his destitute mother.^[3] According to one critic's interpretation, Miller Verghy inspired the character Arethy in Caragiale's prose work Sub pecetea tainei ("Under the Seal of Secrecy", 1930).^[17]

Mărgărita Miller Verghy continued to her cultural activity during the interwar. Her contributions include the travel guide La Roumanie en images ("Romania in Pictures", Paris, 1919), which was marketed to a French and international audience, with the hope of improving awareness of Greater Romania.^[18] Around 1922, she was manager of a small Bucharest theater (owned by the Maison d'Art club), noted for hosting the experimental productions of writer-director Benjamin Fondane.^[19]

In 1925, Miller Verghy joined feminist militant Adela Xenopol in creating Societatea Scriitoarelor Române ("The Romanian Women Writers' Society"), a professional organization which reacted against perceived sexism within the dominant Romanian Writers' Society (SSR), and of which she became vice president.^[12] She also began contributing to its tribune, Revista Scriitoarei ("The Woman Writer's Review"), joining a writing staff which also included cultural figures Xenopol, Constanţa Hodoş, Aida Vrioni,^[12][20] Ana Conta-Kernbach, Sofia Nădejde, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu and Sadoveanu-Evan.^[20] Initially an explicitly all-female venue, the magazine came to terms with the SSR and male authors in 1928, when it changed its name to Revista Scriitoarelor şi Scriitorilor Români ("The Women and Men Writers' Review").^[12] That same year, Societatea Scriitoarelor Române voted to dissolve itself.^[12] Miller Verghy continued to build relationships with literary figures, among them female novelist Lucia Demetrius, with whom she became close friends.^[21] Between 1934 and 1936, she worked on translating from the English the Queen Marie's complete autobiography, My Life.^[22]

Mărgărita Miller Verghy collected her novellas into volume, published in 1935 as Umbre pe ecran ("Shadows on the Screen"). The work drew praise from Romania modernist doyen, Eugen Lovinescu: "at least one of them, 'So That I May Die', is admirable."^[23] The same year, she and fellow female writer Ecaterina Săndulescu published Evoluţia scrisului feminin în România ("The Evolution of Feminine Writing in Romania"),^[1][24] which was prefaced by the same Lovinescu.^[24] Romanian linguist and critic Sanda Golopenţia calls it "one of the most important references for any study devoted to literature written by Romanian women."^[9] According to researcher Elena Zaharia-Filipaş, Evoluţia scrisului feminin... contains "exceptional" detail on the object of its study, "and many times constitutes a unique source".^[25] While she commends the volume for being "rare, useful and of an antiquated charm", Bianca Burţa-Cernat disagrees with Zaharia-Filipaş on its exact importance, noting that Miller Verghy and Săndulescu failed to include mentions of several women writers of the period.^[25]

In 1946, shortly after the end of World War II, Mărgărita Miller Verghy returned to the literary scene, despite being afflicted with blindness and suffering from age-related illnesses.^[11] It was then that she published her best-known work of fiction, Prinţesa în crinolină ("The Princess in Crinoline"), which was also a breakthrough in popular fiction and the local detective novel.^[11] A self-defined "sensational mystery" carrying the dedication "to a friend forever hostile to detective novels", it introduced a style which was to influence a new generation of women writers.^[11] The book recounts the investigation of amateur detectives Diomed and Florin, who, together with their female colleague Clelia (disguised as a male bricklayer), expose the killer of Moldavian-born Princess Ralü Muzuridi.^[11] The plot sees them traveling to the Northern Moldavian churches and the Transylvanian city of Braşov, attending high society parties, and meeting with the fictionalized version of English-born journalist Gordon Seymour.^[11]

Miller Verghy died in Bucharest, at the time the capital of Communist Romania, on the last day of 1953.^[6]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} (Romanian) Marian Petcu, "Jurnaliste şi publiciste uitate", in the University of Bucharest Faculty of Journalism's Revista Română de Jurnalism şi Comunicare, Nr. 2-3/2006
2. ^ (Romanian) Vlaicu Bârna, Evocări: Prin ani şi peste ani cu Ionel Teodoreanu, at the Memoria Digital Library; retrieved April 30, 2009
3. ^ ^{a b} Ion Vianu, Investigaţii mateine, Biblioteca Apostrof & Polirom, Cluj-Napoca & Iaşi, 2008, p.12, 62-63, 94. ISBN 978-973-9279-97-0; ISBN 978-973-46-1031-0
4. ^ (Romanian) Cătălin D. Constantin, " 'Să se ştie că în Anul 1883 au fost lipsă iarna' ", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 308, February 2006
5. ^ Nastasă, p.117
6. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} (Italian) "Miller-Verghy, Mărgărita", biographical note in Cronologia della letteratura rumena moderna (1780-1914) database, at the University of Florence's Department of Neo-Latin Languages and Literatures; retrieved April 30, 2009
7. ^ Bernard Camboulives, La Roumanie littéraire, Éditions Le Manuscrit, Paris, 2005, p.93. ISBN 2-7481-6120-3
8. ^ ^{a b} (Romanian) "Salon. Literatură", in Familia, Nr. 39/1901, p.465 (digitized by the Babeş-Bolyai University Transsylvanica Online Library)
9. ^ ^{a b c} Golopenţia, p.840
10. ^ (Romanian) Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică, "Cronica teatrală", in Luceafărul, Nr. 23/1910, p.564 (digitized by the Babeş-Bolyai University Transsylvanica Online Library)
11. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Golopenţia, p.839
12. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} (Romanian) Bianca Burţa-Cernat, "Ştiaţi că...", in Revista 22, Nr. 969, October 2008
13. ^ (Romanian) Simona Vasilache, "Contribuţii", in România Literară, Nr. 27/2008
14. ^ (Romanian) Simona Vasilache, "Poveste pentru Cella", in România Literară, Nr. 32/2006
15. ^ Nastasă, p.234
16. ^ ^{a b} (Romanian) Paul Cernat, "De la Barbu Cioculescu citire", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 319, May 2006
17. ^ Ion Vartic, "Sâmburele de cireaşă al celui din urmă senior", in Mateiu I. Caragiale, Sub pecetea tainei, Editura Echinox, Cluj-Napoca, 1994, p.122. ISBN 973-9114-27-X
18. ^ (Romanian) D. I. Cucu, "Cărţi şi reviste. Le Monde nouveau", in Gândirea, Nr. 9/1921, p.174 (digitized by the Babeş-Bolyai University Transsylvanica Online Library)
19. ^ Paul Cernat, Avangarda românească şi complexul periferiei: primul val, Cartea Românească, Bucharest, 2007, p.272. ISBN 978-973-23-1911-6
20. ^ ^{a b} Ştefania Mihăilescu, "Adela Xenopol", in Francisca de Haan, Krasimira Daskalova, Anna Loutfi (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms. Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries, Central European University Press, Budapest, 2006, p.614. ISBN 963-7326-39-1
21. ^ (Romanian) Bianca Burţa-Cernat, "Memoria ca datorie", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 307, February 2006
22. ^ (Romanian) Veronica Marinescu, "Piese celebre de partimoniu", in Curierul Naţional, November 26, 2005
23. ^ Eugen Lovinescu, Istoria literaturii române contemporane, Editura Minerva, Bucharest, 1989, p.231. ISBN 973-21-0159-8
24. ^ ^{a b} (Romanian) Florina Pîrjol, "Elena Zaharia-Filipaş, Studii de literatură feminină", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 274, June 2005
25. ^ ^{a b} (Romanian) Bianca Burţa, "Despre literatura femeilor, cu precauţie", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 286, September 2005

References

• Sanda Golopenţia, "Margareta Miller-Verghy", in Katharina M. Wilson (ed.), An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers, Volume Two: L-Z, Routledge, London, 1991, p.839-840. ISBN 0-8240-8547-7
• (Romanian) Lucian Nastasă, Intimitatea amfiteatrelor. Ipostaze din viaţa privată a universitarilor "literari" (1864-1948), Editura Limes, Cluj-Napoca, 2010. ISBN 978-973-726-469-5; e-book version at the Romanian Academy George Bariţ Institute of History

Persondata
Name	Miller Verghy, Margarita
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1865
Place of birth
Date of death	1953
Place of death