Stuart Barnett: 1. Could you tell us about how you got into literature and theory?

Andrzej Warminski: How I “got into literature and theory”? There's something of a late '60s ring in that “into,” but I suppose that in my case it's appropriate enough, for the choices I made did indeed have a lot to do with the “lingo” of the '60s. And, indeed, with “lingo” as such, especially when it comes to my interest in something called “literature.” From an early age, and no doubt unbeknownst to me, I had a fascination with language – and “language” in the most direct, immediate, everyday sense, as in “Polish language” or “German language.” I was born in Gdańsk, Poland, some years after the war to parents who were “Poles” ethnically but who had themselves been born and brought up in a political entity called the “Free City of Danzig” – the old Hansastadt with a distinctive culture of its own and whose language was predominantly German (though a “Danziger” kind of German at that). Meaning that my parents grew up speaking both German and Polish and attending, alternately, German and Polish schools. This bilingualism had both certain advantages – it helped them and their families to survive the war and the German occupation – and disadvantages.