Sonnets

Are Shakespeare's sonnets the most beautiful collection of poems in existence? They are the most striking in their formulation - all sonnets contain lines that ring like a bell, that stick in the memory like a proverb, while the other verses never fall by the wayside, are never clichéd or redundant. They are rich in content - the subject matter, love, jealousy and temporality, may be conventional, each sonnet surprises with a new angle. And the whole is much more than the sum of its parts - the triangular relationship between two men and a woman has a clear emotional development in which all the nuances of 'the love called friendship' are discussed. For many readers the answer to the question is yes; no wonder that the Sonnets are by far the most frequently translated poems in world literature. W. van Elden's translation is therefore far from the only one in Dutch, not even the most recent, but it is certainly one of the most beautiful. The reader can easily convince himself of this, because the English version is next to it.