Name Vera Calin | Role Essayist | |
Vera Călin (born Vera Clejan; 17 February 1921, Bucharest, Romania - December 2013, Los Angeles) was a Romanian-born American literary critic, literary historian, essayist and translator.
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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 anti-semitic 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". Aftere World War II, 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 and comparative literature, becoming a full professor in 1970.
Between 1977 and 1978 she was a visiting professor at a university in Jerusalem, Israel.
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 USA to her younger son in 1976.
She died in Los Angeles, California, in December 2013.