Sonety with delivery to Ireland

On 19 September a reissue of the now classic bilingual edition of William Shakespeare's Sonety will reach bookshops, in the congenial translation by Stanisław Barańczak. The translator has provided the book with an insightful introduction and notes, and, reflecting on what makes Shakespeare's poems unique, he asks: what makes them masterpieces? What is it that continues to delight and inspire readers after four hundred years? Why have Sting, Stanisław Soyka, Rufus Wainwright, the artists of the Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret, film and theatre directors, and creators both well known and lesser known drawn, and continue to draw, so liberally on Shakespeare's brilliant lines? Stanisław Barańczak wrote in his introduction to the Sonety: (…) reading Sonnet 116, we feel that we are taking part in the formulation of a truth which at once confirms our intuitions and raises them to a higher level of discovery that would otherwise be beyond our reach, a truth which reaches deep inside us and at the same time gives us entry to its own depths. The English poet's sonnets offer an answer: poems are written so that we may believe in a love that overcomes time and death. That is Shakespeare.
And what is Barańczak like? Jan Błoński answers: "Stanisław Barańczak's talent as a translator takes one's breath away: there has probably never been anything like it, or rather anyone like him, not only in the history of our poetry."