page_title: Smaranda Gheorghiu
section_title: Literary career
hierarchical_section_title: Smaranda Gheorghiu / Literary career
caption_attribution_description: English: Caricature in Furnica, the Romanian satirical magazine, showing art collector Ioan "Iancu" Kalinderu welcoming novelist and socialite Maica Smara in his incipient Bucharest museum of art. Both of them were favorite figures of ridicule in Furnica, owing to their snobbery; here, Kalinderu is shown displaying canvasses by Costin Petrescu (the caricature of Kalinderu and Smara's patron King Carol I, in the background) and Arthur Verona. In the original caption Smara asks to see pictori flamanzi ("Flemish painters"), and Kalinderu answers that all those on display are pictori flămânzi ("starving painters").
context_page_description: Smaranda Gheorghiu was a Romanian poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, educator, feminist and traveler. She wrote under a number of pseudonyms and is perhaps best known under the moniker Maica Smara, which was given to her by Veronica Micle.
  An early Romanian feminist, she wrote both fiction and non-fiction works with a feminist slant in which she argued against the prevailing views of the time, which held women to be intellectually inferior to men. Smara traveled extensively and recorded her experiences in several volume of travel literature. For her work as a teacher and her efforts to reform the education system, she is sometimes given the sobriquet ”Educator of the People”.
context_section_description: Her literary debut came in 1881, when she began publishing poetry in Alexandru Macedonski's Literatorul magazine. Much of her early output consisted of pedagogical writings and children's literature. She also starts to publish more serious poetry and essays in literary magazines and periodicals such as Convorbiri literare, Fântâna Blanduziei, Adevărul, Revista literară, Generația viitoare, Românul, Tribuna and Universul.
  In 1888 she publishes her first book, a volume of poetry called Din pana suferinței (Suffering's Pen). Her next volume is one of short stories, Novele (1890). In 1892, shortly after the death of her friend, Veronica Micle, she wrote a monograph of Micle, in which she outline her contributions to the Romantic poetry of Romania. A talk on Micle's legacy held at the Romanian Athenaeum on 13 December 1891 also gives her the distinction of being the first woman to hold a lecture in this prestigious institution.
  In 1893, Smaranda Gheorghiu issued her very own literary journal, Altițe și Bibiliuri (Lace and Frills), through which she called for a reform of the education system, which she saw as outdated. Throughout the 1890s her works become more politically charged. In 1896 she holds two lectures on feminism, among the first of their kind in Romania. These are Feciorii și fiicele noastre (Our Sons and Daughters) and Inteligența femeii (Women's Intelligence), both later published as volumes. Around the turn of the century, Maica Smara begins publishing travel literature, based on her tours of Europe. Between 1904 and 1906 she publishes several plays covering subjects as diverse as incest, legal male responsibility for fathered children, the Union of the Romanian principalities, or working class life. Her first novel, Fata tatii, (Daddy's Girl) was published in 1912 and deals with feminist issues.
  She continues to write until towards the end of her life, with the last work published during her lifetime being Cântă Dorna (Dorna is Singing), an epic poem in two acts that appeared in 1939.
  Despite her multifaceted literary output, her most recognizable work today probably consists of the lyrics “Vine vine primăvara / Se așterne-n toată țara / Floricele pe câmpii / Hai să le-adunăm copii” that make up the so-called ”Cântecul școlarului”, a well known children's song about the arrival of spring.
caption: Caricature in Furnica showing art collector Ioan Kalinderu welcoming Maica Smara in his incipient Bucharest museum of art. 1910.
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