Mindaugas Kvietkauskas born is a literary scholar, writer and translator. Kvietkauskas acquired Ph. His main areas of research are multinational literary modernism and urban culture in Lithuania and East Central Europe. He is an author of two academic monographs, a collection of poetry and a recent book of literary essays Uosto fuga The Port Fugue.
Through his activities he builds intercultural bridges: he has translated from Yiddish, Polish, and English, has undertaken study visits at the universities of Krakow, Oxford, and Leipzig. At present he is the director of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore and teaches at Vilnius University. At the Vilnius International Book Fair, the book was awarded a prize in the category of book art.
The hustle of the book fair has calmed down and I am asking Mindaugas Kvietkauskas some questions about the content and the circle of issues of this collection, about the present state of Lithuanian literature and culture, and about current problems in the field of humanities.
A number of essays from Uosto fuga were published earlier. Some of them appeared between and , attracted considerable interest, and sparked discussions in the public space. What prompted you to put them in a book and what principle lies behind the ordering of the essays? Did you want to emphasize the multiplicity of voices and the polyphony of different con texts when choosing the title of the collection?
Indeed, the idea of the book was slowly taking shape while writing essayist texts for cultural media for which I worked for a number of years. From to , that is, for almost ten years, I was the editor for criticism at the Metai literary magazine, and later, too, I collaborated with the main media of our culture — the press, the radio, and various websites.
