Salomo Friedlaender, a notable German-Jewish philosopher, poet, and satirist, explores profound themes through his diverse works. His writings reflect a unique blend of philosophical inquiry and sharp wit, often addressing the complexities of identity, culture, and the human experience. Through his literary contributions, he challenges societal norms and provokes thought, making his work relevant in discussions about Jewish identity and existentialism. Friedlaender's legacy is marked by his ability to intertwine deep philosophical concepts with accessible language and humor.
Mynona's self-styled "grotesques" inhabit an uncertain ground between fairy tale, fetishism and philosophy, satirizing everything from nationalism to philanthropy First published in German in 1916, Black-White-Redcollects six bizarre tales by the "laughing philosopher" Salomo Friedlaender, who wrote his literary work under the pseudonym Mynona (the reversed German word for "anonymous"). In this collection, we encounter a tongue-in-cheek showdown between Goethe and Newton, whose theories of color clash in the form of a nationalistic flag; another story presents the inventor of the tactilestylus setting out to capture the residual sound waves of Goethe speaking in his study through a mechanical recreation of his vocal apparatus, with its amplification set to infinite. In "The Magic Egg," one of Mynona's most emblematic and curious tales, a man encounters an enormous bisecting mechanical egg in the middle of the desert that houses a mummy and a possible pathway to utopia on Earth. Mynona, aka Salomo Friedlaender (1871-1946), was a perfectly functioning split personality: a serious philosopher by day (author of Friedrich Nietzsche: An Intellectual Biographyand Kant for Kids) and a literary absurdist by night, who composed black humored tales he called "grotesques." He inhabited the margins of German Expressionism and Dada, and his friends and fans included Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin and Karl Kraus.
Originally published in 1921, The Unruly Bridal Bed brings together ten indefinable tales that include "Tobias and the Prune," "Plant Paternity," "The Dissolute Nose," "Fried Sphinx Meat" and "The Great Gold-Plated Flea." Under his literary pseudonym Mynona (a palindrome for the German "Anonym," or "Anonymous"), Salomo Friedlaender here displays his unique brand of philosophical slapstick that blends fairytale technology with proto-metafiction and at times unsettling meditations on fornicating plants, aristocratic eugenics, spiritual and physical hermaphroditism, and our excremental sun. With its companion volume of grotesques, My Papa and the Maid of Orléans, this collection offers a perfect introduction to the great German humorist's work.
Mynona's other 1921 collection of grotesques is no less provocative and just as indefinable in nature--even close to a century after its original publication. These twelve off-kilter parabolic tales include items such as "The Chamber Pot as Lifesaver," "The Art of Self-Embalming," "The Maiden as Toothpowder," "Your Panties Are Beautiful!" and "The Amorous Corpse." E.T.A. Hoffmann meets Immanuel Kant through the unlikeliest of looking glasses as Mynona spins out quasi-mystical meetings between cosmic entities and drawing-room romantics: a starry-eyed Buster Keaton skirting along the philosophical and literary borders of topics such as cuckoldry, necrophilia, schizophrenia, the end of history and the love lives of objects. With its companion volume of grotesques, The Unruly Bridal Bed, these twelve tales poke more holes in the material world and further demonstrate Mynona's predilection for the philosophical pratfall.
"The Creator tells the tale of Gumprecht Weiss, an intellectual who has withdrawn from a life of libertinage to pursue his solitary philosophical ruminations. At first dreaming and then actually encountering an enticing young woman named Elvira, Weiss discovers that she has escaped the clutches of her uncle, the Baron, who has been using her as a guinea pig in his metaphysical experiments. But the Baron catches up with them and persuades Gumprecht and Elvira to come to his laboratory, to engage in an experiment to bridge the divide between waking consciousness and dream by entering a mirror engineered to bend and blend realities. Mynona's philosophical fable was described by the legendary German publisher Kurt Wolff as "a station farther on the imaginative train of thought of Hoffmann, Villiers, Poe, etc.," when it appeared in 1920, with illustrations by Alfred Kubin (included here). With this first English-language edition, Wakefield Press introduces the work of a great forgotten German fabulist." --Provided by publisher
