«It has always disturbed me that a lifetime is objectively measured in decades, years, months. I think that this standard is completely unsuitable […]. There are very intense periods that are full of experiences and there are others that are pretty dull.» Vilém Flusser

I was born in Zug (central Switzerland) in 1954. When I was nine, I moved to the southern part of the country where I lived until 1974. I attended the Ginnasio (1966-1971) and the Liceo (1971-74) in Lugano (Premio Maraini 1974). In 1974, I moved back to Zürich where I studied, first History, and then English and German Literature at the University of Zürich (1974-1980) and at Aston University in Birmingham (1976-77). During this year, I worked as a language teacher in a Grammar School in Lichfield (Staffordshire, England). My “Lizentiat” (Streams and Canals: The Relation of Body and Text in H. P. Lovecraft’s Writing, University of Zürich 1980) was dedicated to the relationship of body and text in the work of the American writer H.P. Lovecraft who was not as well know then as he is today. As the main subject of my exams I chose the English Gothic novel and the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann (what Tzvetan Todorov called littérature fantastique). My Ph.D. thesis (Riten der Randzonen. Hubert Fichtes Untersuchungen zur Tradition des Abartigen, University of Zürich 1984) was on the work of the German Writer Hubert Fichte. It was the first German Ph.D. on this writer. My doctoral advisor was Prof. Peter von Matt.

After that I worked as “Aussenlektor” for the Benziger Verlag in Zürich (English, American and Italian literature), language teacher (Italian and German 1985-87) and social worker (people out of work and refugees, 1988-89). I also worked for the Red Cross in Zürich (1990-91) and the Swiss Disaster Relief Unit (SKH) for whom I travelled to Amman (Jordania) at the time of the Gulf War (October 1990) and to Bulgaria (January 1991).

In the fall of 1991, I moved back to Lugano and started teaching German in the local Liceo (Grammar School) (1991-2013). In 1993, I got married.

In 1996, I began working for the Faculty of Communication Sciences (and later for the Faculty of Economics) in the newly opened Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano, first as a lecturer of English (1996-1997) and then as a lecturer of German as a foreign language (1997-2022). From 1999 to 2002, I was assistant professor of the Swiss writer Adolf Muschg in a course on German Literature and Culture, which I took over in 2003 in the role of an Adjunct professor (2003-2022). In these years, I have been teaching courses abroad: a seminar on translation at UERJI (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro), in 2001; a seminar on the work of Vilém Flusser at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, in 2003; a seminar on translation as metaphor at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester (UK), in 2013; and a master course on multilingual literature at HSG (University of St. Gallen) in 2013 and 2015. I was also visiting professor at UFMG (Humanities Letters and Arts, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) in Belo Horizonte in 2012.

Since 2017, I have been living and writing between Lugano and Vienna.

In 2022, I retired.

I speak fluently German (but also Swiss German because of my origin), Italian (and the Italian dialect spoken in the area of Lugano), French and English. I have advanced knowledge in Portuguese, Spanish and Haitian Creole (because of my wife), as well as basic knowledge in Russian, and know some Turkish whose study I unfortunately did not pursue long enough.

My main areas of interest are metaphor theory, translation and multilingualism in philosophy and literature, the metaphorics and history of body and landscape, the philosophical and cultural relevance of clouds and winds, and the work of Vilém Flusser and Michel Serres.