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SUMMARY:Stefan Żeromski with Stephanie Kraft – Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature
UID:https://instytutpolski.pl/newyork/2026/04/28/stefan-zeromski-with-stephanie-kraft-encounters-with-polish-and-ukrainian-literature/
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DESCRIPTION:S6E5 and all video recordings are available on our YouTube.
Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature is a video series for
anyone interested in literature and the culture of books and reading. Each
month, host David A. Goldfarb will present a new topic in conversation with
an expert on that author or book or movement in Polish literature. More
about the Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature series and the
timeline.
Stefan Żeromski (1864-1925) was born in Kielce in the wake of the January
Insurrection against Russia to parents who died while he was young, so he
was brought up largely by family and did not have a great deal of support
as he set out to pursue education in veterinary medicine and a career as
first as a private tutor, then as an author of short stories, and
eventually as a novelist and playwright. This struggle proved to be an
education in itself, bringing him into contact with people of high and low
backgrounds as he developed a profound sense of empathy for others and
ability to understand the struggles of the poor, of manual laborers, of
victims of war including women, of animals exploited for their labor, and
of those who were subject to environmental catastrophe brought on by
industry. He was criticized for sentimentality, or “żeromszczyzna,” by
some, but has been more widely loved as “the conscience of Polish
literature,” as Czesław Miłosz calls him in his History of Polish
Literature.
In this episode we focus on his novel The Homeless about a young physician
who believes he must choose between love for his fiancée and duty to the
poor as an advocate for public health. It is no coincidence that our guest
began translating this novel during the early years of the COVID pandemic.
We discuss the author’s representation of laborers, his portrayal of
women, his focus on the environment, his use of humor, and his narrative
techniques. Stephanie Kraft also tells us about the unusual path by which
she became a translator of Polish literature as someone without Polish
family background.
Stefan Żeromski in English translation:
Stefan Żeromski. Ashes. Tr. Helen Stankiewicz Zand. 2 vols. New York:
Knopf, 1928. 
Stefan Żeromski. The Coming Spring. Tr. Bill Johnston. New York: CEU
Press, 2007. 
Stefan Żeromski. The Faithful River. Tr. Bill Johnston. Evanston, Ill.:
Northwestern University Press, 1999. 
Stefan Żeromski. The Homeless. Tr. Stephanie Kraft. Intro. by Boris
Dralyuk and Stephanie Croft. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004. 
Stephanie Kraft holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of
Rochester (New York) with a specialty in the nineteenth-century novel. She
was a journalist from 1974 to 2014, and in 1988 traveled to Poland on a
study tour, afterward visiting the country each year for thirty-one years.
In 1997, with help from Professor Robert Rothstein of the University of
Massachusetts—Amherst, she began translating short Polish fiction and
published stories in the translation journal Metamorphoses. Between 1999
and 2004 she translated The Emancipated Women by Bolesław Prus, which she
self-published. Between 2005 and 2008, she translated Wojciech
Żukrowski’s Stone Tablets, a controversial communist-era novel that was
sympathetic to the Hungarian revolution (Paul Dry Books, 2016). Later she
and Dr. Anna Gąsienica-Byrcyn  co-translated Marta by Eliza Orzeszkowa
(Ohio University Press, 2018). In the early 2020s, during the covid
pandemic, she translated a classic Polish novel concerned with the issue of
public health, The Homeless, by Stefan Żeromski (Paul Dry Books, 
2023).  In 2018 she received the Amicus Poloniae award from the Polish
American Historical Association for contributions by a non-Polish person
to the understanding of Polish culture.  
David A. Goldfarb, Host & ProducerBartek Remisko, Curator and Executive
ProducerNatalia Iyudin, Produce
Image:Stefan Żeromski, photo credit © public domainStephanie Kraft,
photo courtesy © of Stephanie Kraft
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