An old saying asserts that the English take their pleasures sadly; by contrast, Poles often leaven the abundant tragedies of their lives with irony and even wit. This attractive sensibility survives translation, which makes it a pity that more fine Polish literature has not yet been translated into English. Efforts to redress this lack should be applauded, even flawed ones like “Polish Writers on Writing” (Trinity University Press, 263 pages, $60). Alissa Valles, who most recently translated and edited the collected poems of Zbigniew Herbert for Ecco Press, has provided limpid translations of almost all the texts in the present book. She also “helped select the pieces,” as admitted in the acknowledgments. Yet oddly, Ms. Valles is given no co-author credit for a book whose qualities are largely due to her skills. Instead, a sole editor is listed, the poet Adam Zagajewski.

“Polish Writers on Writing” — despite its too general title, since only modern writers are included — contains many gems, including Ms. Valles’s translations of the brilliant essayist Jerzy Stempowski (1894–1969), whose work has long been available in French and German translations but not in English. Ms. Valles also translates some jottings by the immensely endearing writer and painter Józef Czapski (1896–1993), whose life was buffeted by historical tragedies, like the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish officers ordered by the Soviets, which Czapski investigated after barely escaping the carnage. Imprisoned in a Soviet camp, Czapski lectured on Proust from memory to his fellow prisoners of war. These lectures survive in the form of notes by Czapski’s listeners, which have been published in French, but again, not in English.

Perhaps the most valuable of all the newly translated texts here are by Zbigniew Herbert (1924–98). They include some revealing letters to a cherished mentor and an abridged interview from 1986 conducted by Renata Gorczynski, whose intuitive, perceptive questions draw out the essence of the immensely cultured Herbert’s artistic motivations. Likewise, an interview with the elusive, gifted contemporary poet Ryszard Krynicki (b. 1943) makes us regret that this writer — one of Poland’s best — remains so little known in English-speaking countries.

The same cannot be said of the editor of “Polish Writers on Writing,” Mr. Zagajewski, who has just been hired by the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago after teaching at the University of Houston since 1988. Houston’s mayor, Bill White, recently proclaimed “Adam Zagajewski Day” in the city with a decree stating with unintended irony, “although he writes in Polish…” (the “although” is very funny). Amid the honors, someone should point out that Mr. Zagajewski also writes in broken English.

Stempowski, to cite one example, was a “great erudite,” according to Mr. Zagajewski, as well as an “erudite who seems to have read the entire Western literature in original languages.” Unlike French, in which “un erudit” is a noun, in English “erudite” is an adjective. Czapski, we are told, “traveled through the twentieth century in many disguises.” Mr. Zagajewski must mean “guises,” since I did not see any costumes, wigs, or masks anywhere when I visited Czapski’s home in the Paris suburb of Maisons-Lafitte.

In his introductions, the editor informs us misleadingly that Witold Gombrowicz (1904–69) was a “Polish Genet, Sartre, and Céline” who, as an exile in Argentina, enjoyed “few ties with the local literati.” Some pages later this statement is contradicted by the information that in Argentina, Gombrowicz founded a “small literary sect that worshipped” him. Readers in search of helpful notes explaining unfamiliar details will find this book unfriendly in the extreme. In an excerpt from his diary, Gombrowicz offers a quotation attributed to “Boy.” There is no note to explain that he is referring to Tadeusz Boy-Zelenski (1874–1941), cherished by Polish readers as a translator of masses of French literature, from Molière to Proust. In one of Stempowski’s essays, the French maxim “du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas” (“The sublime is a step away from the ridiculous”) is translated, but without any mention — useful for an English-language reader — that the statement was reportedly made by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Other oddities and omissions in this volume include the absence of anything by the noted writers Julian Tuwim (1894–1953), Anna Swir (1909–84), Constantin Jelenski (1922–87), Urszula Koziol/ (b. 1931), or Wojciech Karpinski (b. 1943). Yet there is room for the gaseous, tediously pious prose of Anna Kamienska (1920–86). For connoisseurship and genuinely helpful explanations of Polish literature, the gold standard remains Czes/ law Milosz / ‘s “History of Polish Literature,” as well as Milosz / ‘s anthology “Postwar Polish Poetry,” both available from University of California Press. Despite Ms. Valles’s fine work, too much of “Polish Writers on Writing” is just plain sloppy.

Mr. Ivry last wrote for these pages on Sergey Prokofiev.