Polish Slavist and translator of Swedish poetry. From 1974 worked at the Institute for Polish Literature and Culture at the Silesian University of Katowice. Activist in the Solidarity movement. After the imposition of martial law, imprisoned and afterwards prevented from returning to his university post. From 1983 worked in Sweden, most recently as professor for Polish language and literature at Stockholm University.
The word ‘solidarity’ combines the double sense of independence and mutuality, writes Polish literary scholar Leonard Neuger. The Solidarity movement in Poland was the political manifestation of this paradoxical semantic.
