Small Town, Great Changes – Promień [The Ray] by Stefan Żeromski and Multidimensional Modernity

Abstract

This article analyses complex and ambiguous aspects of modernisation, depicted by Stefan Żeromski in his intriguing but rather obscure novel Promień [The Ray] (1898). The writer chooses a provincial town for his scenery – although based on Kielce, it is hidden with a fictional name – which experiences an industrial revolution in miniature. A railroad built in the area, old, solid shops and enterprises brought to death by the modern way of trade and a shockingly radical local newspaper ran by the novel’s protagonists are just a few most striking symptoms of that inevitable and unsettling process of change.