Vera Călin


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

Biography

Born into a Jewish family, Vera Călin was forced due to the antisemitic laws to go to Jewish schools. She graduated from the Department of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Bucharest in 1946.
She made her literary debut in the summer of 1944 in the daily "Ecoul". After World War II, she worked for a while as a copy editor for the publishing house "Editura de stat pentru literatură și artă".
At the University of Bucharest, she taught in the beginning English language courses, and later courses in world and comparative literature, becoming a full professor in 1970.
Between 1977 and 1978 she was a visiting professor at a university in Jerusalem.
According to literary critic Mircea Martin, Vera Călin belongs to the group of members of the illegal Communist Party or its sympathizers 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 Pornind de la clasici, 1957Byron, Ed. de stat, 1961Curentele literare și evocarea istorică, Editura pentru literatură, București, 1963Metamorfozele măștilor comice, Editura pentru literatură, București, 1966Alegoria și esențele, Editura pentru literatură universală, București, 1969 Romantismul, Editura Univers, București, 1970Omisiunea elocventă, Editura enciclopedică română, București, 1973Prea târziu: Însemnări californiene, Editura Univers, București, 1997Post-scriptum. Însemnări 1997-2002, Inst. Cultural Român, București, 2004

Translations

Cui îi bate ceasul, Călătoriile lui Gulliver,, 1947Hamlet, ESPLA Jude Neștiutul,, Ed. Paralela 45, 2002