Natalia Negru (December 5, 1882 – September 2, 1962) was a
Romanian poet and prose writer. Although her literary contributions were relatively minor, she is noted for being at the center of a
love triangle
A love triangle or eternal triangle is a scenario or circumstance, usually depicted as a rivalry, in which two people are pursuing or involved in a romantic relationship with one person, or in which one person in a romantic relationship with so ...
involving her first husband,
Ștefan Octavian Iosif, and her second,
Dimitrie Anghel. The men were close friends, but Anghel seduced her, she divorced Iosif, who died of his grief, and then Anghel shot himself during a quarrel with her, dying of the wound two weeks later. Two years after Anghel's death, her daughter with Iosif was killed by a German bomb during
World War I. She lived for four and a half decades after these turbulent events, in relatively uneventful fashion.
Biography
Early life and first marriage
Born in
Buciumeni,
Tecuci County
Tecuci County was a county (Romanian language, Romanian: ''județ'') in the Kingdom of Romania, in the historical region Moldavia. The county seat was Tecuci.
The county was located in the central-eastern part of Greater Romania, in the south of ...
, her parents were Avram Negru, a teacher, and his wife Elena (''née'' Dumitrescu).
Negru attended primary school in
Galați
Galați (, , ; also known by other alternative names) is the capital city of Galați County in the historical region of Western Moldavia, in eastern Romania. Galați is a port town on the Danube River. It has been the only port for the most par ...
, where her father worked, and high school in
Bucharest. She enrolled in the literature and philosophy faculty of the
University of Bucharest in 1901, graduating in 1907. Fond of reading in the
University Foundation Library, she met its caretaker, the published poet
Ștefan Octavian Iosif, in 1903. A grateful Iosif asked her for poems, one of which he published in a prominent position in ''
Sămănătorul''. In order to attract his attention, she presented an essay about one of his poems to her class.
The couple married in July 1904; the three-day wedding took place at
Tecucel on the outskirts of
Tecuci, where her father had built her a house and granted her ten hectares of vineyards. Guests included
Nicolae Iorga and
Mihail Sadoveanu, who wrote accounts of the festivities.
Their daughter Corina was born a year later.
Dimitrie Anghel, Iosif's closest friend and a collaborator on poems, visited the family home almost daily and fell in love with Natalia.
Iosif broke with Anghel in spring 1910, and became alienated from his wife that summer.
[ Bogdan Nistor]
"'Femeia fatală': Natalia Negru a stat la originea morții a doi importanți scriitori români"
''Adevărul
''Adevărul'' (; meaning "The Truth", formerly spelled ''Adevĕrul'') is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in Iași, in 1871, and reestablished in 1888, in Bucharest, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published dur ...
'', February 8, 2013 Anghel eventually convinced her to move in with him,
and she sued for divorce in November. She won the case the following June because two letters from Iosif proved he had left their home. In December, after suing but before the divorce was granted, she traveled to
Paris for health reasons and later invited Iosif to spend a month together, presumably seeking a reconciliation. He declined, and Anghel went instead.
Devastated by the betrayal of the woman he idolized and who was the inspiration behind most of his later work, as well as of his best friend, Iosif died of a stroke in June 1913.
Second marriage
Negru and Anghel married in November 1911; the union created hostility around them, especially in the literary circles that valued Iosif's poetry and his delicate temperament. The ostracizing atmosphere worsened after his death. Meanwhile, the marriage was deteriorating, with the temperamental and jealous Anghel locking up his wife for days at a time.
The couple had frequent scenes involving screams, explosive emotions and sudden reconciliations; on at least one occasion, Anghel broke down a door and embraced his wife's feet in tears.
One day in autumn 1914, a key fell out of his pocket, and she accused him of using it for romantic encounters in a hotel room. He convinced her it was for office use, but tension remained between the two. Several days later, while visiting her parents, she renewed the attack and announced she was going home. Anghel threatened to shoot her if she did not calm down; his wife believed he was joking, and continued toward the door. He pulled out his revolver and, intending to frighten her, fired toward a window. The bullet hit the metal frame of a bed and ricocheted, lightly wounding Negru. She fell to the ground; believing he had killed her, Anghel fired into his chest. The wound became infected and he died of
sepsis two weeks later. At the funeral, an unknown female reportedly shouted, "You miserable woman, who kill all the country's great people!"
For a long time afterwards, Negru faced public opprobrium that sometimes took hysterical turns.
George Călinescu viewed her as a ''
femme fatale
A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...
'' without blame of her own. Her third marriage, to theologian
Ioan Gheorghe Savin, appears to have been tranquil.
[ Alex. Cistelecan]
"Natalia, femeia-drog"
in ''Revista Limba Română'', Nr. 11–12/2009
Subsequent life and writings
In September 1916, shortly after Romania
entered World War I, her daughter was killed by shrapnel from a bomb dropped by a
Zeppelin.
[ Marius Mototolea]
"Povestea tragicului triunghi amoros din istoria literaturii române"
''Adevărul'', February 8, 2013 With the
Central Powers rapidly approaching Bucharest, she moved to Tecucel, living there exclusively from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s. After 1945, she moved seasonally between Tecucel and a town house in Tecuci, where she died in 1962.
The
Tecuci house, which dates to the end of the 19th century, is listed as a
historic monument by Romania's
Culture Ministry.
[Lista Monumentelor Istorice 2010: Județul Galați]
/ref>
She signed her early writings Natalia Iosif. Negru's work was published in ''Cumpăna'', ''Junimea literară'', ''Minerva literară ilustrată'' and ''Profiluri feminine'', where she wrote the literature column. She was a founding member of the Romanian Writers' Society. Her output includes poems collected in the book ''O primăvară'' (1909), a dramatic poem (''Legenda'', 1921), a dramatized legend (''Califul Barză'', 1921) and two autobiographical novels (''Mărturisiri'', 1913; ''Helianta'', 1921). The latter represented Negru's attempt to tell her side of the love triangle story, and may have been an attempt to exorcise a guilty conscience, or at least one held guilty by others. She published translations of Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales.
Andersen's fairy tales, consisti ...
, Gustave Aimard, André Theuriet, Nicholas Wiseman ('' Fabiola'') and Prosper Mérimée ('' Colomba'').[Aurel Sasu (ed.), ''Dicționarul biografic al literaturii române'', vol. II, p. 205. Pitești: Editura Paralela 45, 2004. ]
Critical opinion of Negru's poetry has tended to be negative. Eugen Lovinescu placed her "in the unoriginality competition of ''Sămănătorist'' poetesses", noting she "concocted little sentimental exuberances" out of typical and already stale ''Sămănătorist'' material. Constantin Ciopraga
Constantin is an Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Romanian male given name. It can also be a surname.
For a list of notable people called Constantin, see Constantine (name).
See also
* Constantine (name)
Constantine ( or ; Latin: ''Cōnstan ...
found the poems in ''O primăvară'' "saturated with idyllism.... easily confused with analogous productions of the period". Commenting on the same work, Alexandru Piru
Alexandru Piru (August 22, 1917 – November 6, 1993) was a Romanian literary critic and historian.
Born in Mărgineni, Bacău County,Alex. Ștefănescu"Al. Piru", in ''România Literară'', nr. 10/2002 his parents were Vasile, a notary, an ...
found that "one can remember nothing of her elegies here. A slightly more appreciative Victor Durnea finds "a certain lyrical, ingenuous sensibility" that can be "glimpsed.... in the recovery of certain childhood and adolescent memories". However, he finds her prose more redeeming. Alex. Cistelecan labels the poems "childish", speculating they may date to Negru's high school days.
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Negru, Natalia
1882 births
1962 deaths
People from Galați County
University of Bucharest alumni
Romanian translators
20th-century Romanian poets
20th-century Romanian novelists
20th-century translators
Romanian women poets
20th-century Romanian women writers