Żeromski was brought up in the patriotic and Romantic tradition. He wrote in contact with the still vibrant positivist thought, during the domination of the Young Poland movement, and after Poland's liberation when new intellectual and artistic trends were emerging. He did not identify with any formation, creating a 'separate' literature. However, he drew on various traditions. Romanticism is the source of his ideal of the independence struggle and his concept of the lonely hero. From positivism, he took the call for working at the foundation, among the people, and the myth of social solidarity as well as literary realism with a powerful dose of naturalism, often drastic. His psychological analyses of characters torn between violent emotions, and his descriptions of nature as it harmonizes with their state of mind, are very Young Poland. After Poland's liberation he joined in the stormy dispute with new literary trends over the shape of Poland and the social role of literature.
He started writing in secondary school. At university, he worked with Głos, a periodical which had pro-social and pro-popular leanings at the time. He published correspondences and short stories. In 1895 he published the volumes Opowiadania / Short Stories and Rozdziobią Nas Kruki, Wrony… / Ravens and Crows Will Rend Us. Both books received a lively reaction from readers and critics. From then on, almost every subsequent work was a major literary event. The problems covered by his output were outlined in the first books, the dominating themes being the independence struggle, the ignorance of the people and social wrongs, the moral dilemmas of heroes fighting for justice. In his first volumes, readers appreciated his social and moral sensitivity devoid of positivist didacticism as well as the psychological subtlety with which he sketched his characters.
In Opowiadania / Short Stories, two stories in particular stand out. In Doktor Piotr / Doctor Piotr, the writer draws the distinctive characters with a few bold lines. They are Dominik Cedzyna, a nobleman deprived of his estate who has just one true love in his life – his son; Bijakowski the engineer, a railway constructor who comes from a poor urban family, who has a successful career and makes good money; the owner of a run-down estate, from whom the engineer first buys a hill containing valuable clay and rock and then his entire manor farm; Cedzyna's son Piotr, a chemist educated abroad who faces a serious dilemma, but ultimately gives up his job in England because he misses his father and his homeland. The drama unfolds when Piotr discovers that the money for his studies came from savings his father made by reducing farm labourers' wages.
The hero of Siłaczka / Strongwoman is a physician, Piotr Obarecki, an idealist who moves to the provinces to work among the people. A few years later, his ideals and his strength are gone, replaced with sybaritism, egotism, and small-town boredom. His old sensitivity returns for a moment when he is called to the deathbed of a rural teacher and recognizes her as the great love of his student days. The state does not last long, however.
The title short story of the second volume is about the fall of the January Uprising. The commander of the last insurgent unit, who is transporting weapons, has a sense of inevitable and tragic defeat. He is killed in a skirmish with the Muscovites. A poor peasant appears, and sees the corpse's belongings and the bodies of his horses as a gift from heaven. The conscious tragedy of the insurgent and the unconscious tragedy of the peasant for whose future the insurgent fought, illustrate the tragedy of a society bearing the consequences of centuries-long exploitation and ignorance of the people.The conflict between the gentry and the people returns, in a kind of reversal, in the story O Żołnierzu Tułaczu / The Soldier-Vagabond, the most important work in the volume Utwory Powieściowe / Novellas (1898). Żeromski published it after the novel Promień / The Beam describing the stagnation of a provincial town. In the first part of the story, he reports on a military operation of the French republican army as it forces its way across the Alps to attack the Austrian forces. This army includes Polish peasants, among them Matus Pulut, a valued soldier and good comrade. In the second part, Pulut returns to his home village, owned by the nobleman Opadzki, whereas an escaped serf (and a possible source of social ferment) – he is sentenced to death by a hastily formed court of the squire's factotums.
In 1897 Żeromski published the novel Syzyfowe Prace / Labours of Sisyphus, largely based on his own life. This novel, with a compact structure and story line, is popular among readers to this day. The writer describes the childhood and maturing of a nobleman's son, Marcin Borowicz, in the Russian education system. His education begins at a country school in Owczary where the stupid and cowardly teacher's method of educating children is through mindless swotting, destroying any signs of intelligence. At the secondary school in Kleryków (modelled after Kielce), primitive methods of coercive Russification are used next to more subtle means – 'seducing' the students by allowing them access to Russian cultural salons, or offering them the possibility of modern education thanks to Western literature translated into Russian. The protagonist matures intellectually and emotionally, succumbing to conflicting pressures. His patriotic feelings are awakened when a new student, expelled from Warsaw schools (for underground activity), helps his schoolmates discover Romantic Polish poetry just as they were almost won over to Russian culture. Russification in schools, though successful in the short term, ultimately turns out to be a labour of Sisyphus.
The novel Ludzie Bezdomni / Homeless People was published in 1899 and caused an uproar. Stanisław Brzozowski hailed it as 'a book and a great deed. It left a mark on the lives of the generation of the time', was Jan Wiktor's summary of opinions that the novel shaped the views and life choices of young people. It was seen as a breakthrough work by such writers as Adam Grzymała-Siedlecki, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, Stefania Sempołowska, Maria Dąbrowska, Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna... Żeromski proposed a completely new type of novel: fragmentary, stylistically complex, with variable narrative (including journal, letter, lecture, ideological debate). Beside realistic fragments, there appear pathos, irony, symbolism, lyricism, expressionist and naturalistic images. This poetics dominated Żeromski's subsequent output. The action begins in Paris, moving to Warsaw, then the spa of Cisy, and to Sosnowiec. There are episodes set in Switzerland and an estate near Kielce, and echoes from an exile in Siberia. The main character is Tomasz Judym, a physician who comes from a poor Warsaw family; in fact his family still live in poverty (including his brother Wiktor, an activist of the worker movement who has to flee to Switzerland to avoid persecution). After time spent in Paris, Judym tries – unsuccessfully – to develop a practice in Warsaw, then moves to a spa where the rich come for treatment and a good time. Judym fights for the right to treat the poor in decent conditions. He runs a hospital for the poor, fights for the draining of the ponds which are ruining the spa's climate and poisoning the peasants' water, gives a lecture on the sanitation conditions in which the poor live and on how these can be improved. Ignored, he comes into conflict with the 'doctors to the rich', though he is sometimes seduced by the charms of their comfortable and elegant lives. After moving to Silesia, he learns about new areas of deprivation and exploitation, and decides to devote his life to overcoming them. A separate theme of the novel is the love between Judym and Joasia Podborska, a poor teacher who is prepared to work shoulder to shoulder with him to improve the lives of the wronged. However, Judym is terrified at the idyllic thought of a modest little house with plants and net curtains: he is afraid this will blunt his sensitivity and determination. He gives up personal happiness (this motif reappears in other novels, to mention Uroda Życia / The Charm of Life). Critics noted the psychologically weak justification of the necessity for such a choice, but appreciated the moral message: the absolute imperative to fight against evil, a heroic humanism.
Working on his great historical novel Popioły / Ashes (1904) Żeromski wanted to present:
In the Napoleonic age the old Polish world was largely reborn into a very different society: into a living and creative organism which, under foreign rule, started to live its own intensive life and accumulate spiritual strength for a whole century to come.
Writing it, he used source materials he had found in the Rapperswil library. Beside fictional characters, historical figures were also featured (Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince Józef Poniatowski, General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski) as well as lots of supporting characters from different social classes. The three main characters are the 'eyes' through which we observe different fragments of history: Dąbrowski's Legions and the Italian campaign are centred around the story of Prince Gintułt, Krzysztof Cedro takes part in the Spanish expedition, and Rafał Olbromski is a participant in the war of 1809. Popioły / Ashes is a huge panorama of episodes presenting Polish society, its diverse attitudes and views. It contains a great apotheosis of the independence struggle and republican ideals, but also draws a picture of the horrendous evil that war involves. The novel is stylistically complex: it includes extensive descriptions of nature, detailed historical information, meticulously portrayed battle scenes, philosophical discourse. It also features some boldly erotic scenes.
Popioły / Ashes was devised as the beginning of a huge historical epic. Its continuation was Iskry / Sparks which took the characters into the time of the November Uprising. This novel was confiscated and destroyed, however (apart from the fragment Wszystko i Nic / Everything and Nothing). Characters from Popioły / Ashes appeared in subsequent works. In Wierna Rzeka / The Faithful River (1912), set during the January Uprising in the manor house of Niezdoły, where an impoverished noblewoman is harbouring an insurgent called Józef Odrowąż, emissaries of the National Government appear carrying secret documents. One of them is Hubert Olbromski, Rafał's son, who is running from the Russians and ultimately entrusts the national deposit to the faithful river of the novel's title. The plot of the play Turoń (1923) is set in 1846 at the Cedro family manor, where both Olbromskis arrive in anticipation of a national uprising. The manor is attacked by rebel peasants led by Jakub Szela, who kills Rafał Olbromski and Krzysztof Cedro.
