Antoni Libera

Antoni Libera (born 1949) is an author and translator. He has published seven translations of Shakespeare: Makbet (2002), Juliusz Cezar (2021), Antoniusz i Kleopatra (2021), Koriolan (2022), Tytus Andronikus (2022), Troilus i Kresyda (2023) and Tymon z Aten (2023).

He studied Polish at the University of Warsaw. In 1984 he completed a PhD on the works of Samuel Beckett. He has translated all Beckett’s dramatic works and lots of his essays, prose and poetry. His fascination with Beckett is the subject of Libera’s autobiographical essay Godot i jego cień (Godot and his Shadow, 2009). Libera’s novel Madame (1998) won multiple prizes. He has translated poetry by T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Paul Celan and C. P. Cavafy; and plays by Sophocles and Racine. He has been awarded the Silver and Gold Gloria Artis Medals (2010, 2017), the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2011) and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2015).

Because he translates for the stage, Libera strives for directness and clarity. These priorities require stylistic alterations, the reduction or the removal of some rhetorical devices, and the controlled use of enjambement and variations in prosody introduced by shifting caesuras. Libera brings the language up to date, exploits colloquialisms, and avoids extended metaphors and wordplay.

All his translations are introduced with a preface and feature footnotes from the translator. There is also a bibliography of earlier translations. The series partakes, therefore, in the spirit of the Shakespeare translations published by the State Publishing Institute (PIW). It also places Libera at the centre of the project as both the translator and the author of the editorial apparatus.

Libera’s varied oeuvre, as it continues to grow, ensures that all his projects receive recognition and attention, not least his series of Shakespeare translations. At the start of the twenty-first century, there were three different productions of his Makbet. As reviewers pointed out, Libera’s unadorned text accommodated their different conceptions. His translations of plays with Roman and Greek settings have yet to be staged, but his Juliusz Cezar was used for a radio play in two episodes made by the Polish Radio Theatre.