Vera Călin (born Vera Clejan; 17 February 1921,

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

- December 2013,

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

) was a Romanian-born American literary critic, literary historian, essayist and translator.

Biography

Born into a Jewish family (her father, Herman Clejan, an architect, was the one who designed the Lafayette Galleries in Bucharest, present-day Victoria Department Store), Vera Călin was forced due to the

antisemitic Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

laws to go to Jewish schools. She graduated from the Department of Letters and Philosophy of the

University of Bucharest The University of Bucharest (UB) () is a public university, public research university in Bucharest, Romania. It was founded in its current form on by a decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to convert the former Princely Academy of Bucharest, P ...

in 1946. She made her literary debut in the summer of 1944 in the daily "Ecoul". Aftere

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, she worked for a while as a copy editor for the publishing house "Editura de stat pentru literatură și artă" (ESPLA). At the University of Bucharest, she taught in the beginning English language courses, and later courses in

world The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that Existence, exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk ...

and

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

, becoming a full professor in 1970. Between 1977 and 1978 she was a visiting professor at a university in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. According to literary critic Mircea Martin, Vera Călin belongs to the group of members of the illegal Communist Party or its sympathizers (during World War II) who have tried not only to "relink with the internal traditions, but also with the European tradition and the whole world, both in the literary field and in the realm of ideas." She was married to a physician, with whom she had two sons. After the husband's death in 1975, she emigrated to the US to her younger son in 1976. She died in Los Angeles, California, in December 2013.

Selected works

Books

* ''Furtuna în cancelarie'', a play, 1956 (with

Silvian Iosifescu Silvian Iosifescu (21 January 1917 - May 2006) was a literary critic, educator, translator and Romanian literature professor at the Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest. He was head of literary theory at the university. Iosifescu was born t ...

) * ''Pornind de la clasici'', 1957 * ''Byron'', Ed. de stat, 1961 * ''Curentele literare și evocarea istorică'', Editura pentru literatură, București, 1963 * ''Metamorfozele măștilor comice'', Editura pentru literatură, București, 1966 * ''Alegoria și esențele'', Editura pentru literatură universală, București, 1969 (translation from German "Auferstellung der Allegorie", Vienna, 1975) * ''Romantismul'', Editura Univers, București, 1970 * ''Omisiunea elocventă'', Editura enciclopedică română, București, 1973 * ''Prea târziu: Însemnări californiene'', Editura Univers, București, 1997 * ''Post-scriptum. Însemnări 1997-2002'', Inst. Cultural Român, București, 2004

Translations

* ''Cui îi bate ceasul'', (

For Whom the Bell Tolls ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned ...

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...

) (în Viitorul, 1944?) * ''Călătoriile lui Gulliver'', (

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', originally titled ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'', is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clerg ...

), 1947 * ''Hamlet'', ESPLA (with Maria Banuș) * ''Jude Neștiutul'', (

Jude the Obscure ''Jude the Obscure'' is a novel by Thomas Hardy which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895 (though the title page says 1896). The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he i ...

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...

), Ed. Paralela 45, 2002

References

Sources

* ''Vera Călin- o emigrație'', Supplement to Observatorul cultural, 25 May 2006 * Al. Mirodan, ''Dicționar neconvențional al scriitorilor evrei de limb română'', Minimum, 1986
Encyclopaedia Judaica

External links

Obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Calin, Vera 1921 births 2013 deaths Romanian literary critics Romanian women literary critics Romanian essayists Romanian women essayists Romanian translators Romanian literary historians Academic staff of the University of Bucharest American people of Romanian-Jewish descent 20th-century translators 20th-century American essayists Romanian emigrants to the United States