Wojciech Karpinski

Wojciech Karpiński was a Polish writer, historian of ideas and literary critic. He graduated from the University of Warsaw in 1966 with a degree in Romance languages and literatures and in 1967 became a lecturer. In the 1960s he started collaboration with the Kultura émigré monthly, and in 1970 began to write essays for it under various pen names to avoid persecution by Poland's Communist regime. He also met and befriended many prominent Polish émigré writers, such as Aleksander Wat, Konstanty A. Jeleński, Józef Czapski, Witold Gombrowicz, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Jerzy Stempowski and Czesław Miłosz. He embarked on promoting and interpreting their writings. In the late 1960s he joined the Polish democratic opposition. He obtained his doctorate in 1970, and the same year was expelled from the university because his brother Jakub Karpiński had been sentenced by a court of the People's Republic of Poland in the political trial of the so-called Tatra climbers. He then worked for the Polish Academy of Sciences and became an editor of Poland's most important literary monthly, Twórczość. In 1975 he signed the Letter of the 59 protesting changes in Poland's constitution intended to subject Poland fully to the USSR. He then joined Zdzisław Najder in creating the Alliance for Polish Independence—Polish democratic opposition underground think tank. Since 1975 he collaborated with the Polish Section of Radio Free Europe. In 1979, together with Marcin Król, he founded the independent journal Res Publica. Karpiński joined the Solidarity trade union in 1980. In 1981 he travelled to the United States on a Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs grant. When martial law was proclaimed in Poland on 13 December 1981, his name was on an official list of interned ‘extremist activists of Solidarity and other illegal organizations’ published by the government daily Trybuna Ludu. He stayed in the US and taught at Yale University and the University of Texas at Austin. In 1982 he settled in France, where he worked as a researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. He also taught at New York University. He was a member of the editorial board of Zeszyty Literackie. He wrote several books and essays on intellectual history and literature, such as Książki zbójeckie (Outlaw Books), Niepokój o Europę (Anxiety about Europe), and Wiek kłamstw (The Age of Lies). He died in Paris on 18 August 2020.