Maria Sułkowska’s translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

The paper presents the fi rst almost complete edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets in Polish which, appeared in 1913 and has since been forgotten. The translator, Maria Sułkowska, chose to appear under the pseudonym Mus. She omitted sonnets 134 and 135 as untranslatable puns, and wrote a preface in verse where she expounded her views on Shakespeare’s Sonnets and their translation. Her version is shown in the light of a highly critical 1914 review and in the context of the fi rst Polish monograph on Shakespeare’s poetry by Roman Dyboski (1914) who quoted Sułkowska’s translation throughout, although with a few alterations of his own. Even though some of the sonnets must be a challenge to the Polish reader because of the choice of obsolete vocabulary or syntax, the whole merits attention for consistency of the translator’s decisions as well as the attention to detail.