A philosophical fable from a great forgotten German fabulist
Billed by its author--the pseudonymous Mynona (German for "anonymous"
backward)--as "the most profound magical experiment since Nostradamus,"
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withdrawn from a life of libertinage to pursue his solitary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.
Mentioned in his day in the same breath as Kafka, Mynona, aka Salomo
Friedlaender (1871-1946), was a perfectly functioning split personality:
a serious philosopher by day (author of Friedrich Nietzsche: An
Intellectual Biography and Kant for Children) and a literary
absurdist by night, who composed black humored tales he called
Grostesken. His friends and fans included Martin Buber, Walter
Benjamin and Karl Kraus.
