Żeromski, Stefan

ŻEROMSKI, STEFAN. - Polish writer, b. at Strawczyn near Kielce on 1 Nov. 1864, d. at Warsaw on 20 Nov. 1925.

He had a difficult youth and was imprisoned for political reasons. The publication of the novel Ceneri freed him from hardship. He traveled in the Riviera and in Corsica, and stayed for a long time in Paris. His first works: Opowiadanie ("Tales"); Rozdrobia nas kruki, sorony ("The crows and the rooks will tear us apart"); Aryman mici sig ("Ahriman takes his revenge") and other tales were published under the pseudonym of Mauricy Zych. In the novel Sisyfouse pracy ("The Labors of Sisyphus"), largely autobiographical, there is the account of Polish resistance to the denationalization of the schools; in Ludzie bezdomni ("The Homeless") social motifs prevail. A group of novels and dramas is inspired by the vicissitudes of Poland: Popioly ("Ashes"); Wierna rzeka ("Faithful River"); Sulkowski, Turon (the name of a carnival bogey). Among them all the masterpiece is the novel Ceneri, a true epic of Poland in the Napoleonic era, admirable for its portrayal of characters, for its sense of nature, for the ardor that pervades it and raises it to the level of the Tolstoyan War and Peace, to which it is inferior in artistic balance, but which it rivals through the passion with which the author lives the historical events.

In the somewhat stagnant atmosphere of the last positivism, Z.'s work brought a pure breath of new life, embodying the sorrow of his homeland, a reflection of universal sorrow. Profoundly pessimistic, he nevertheless saw the value of life in man's struggle for the collectivity or against it and against hostile nature.

Marina Bersano Begey