Mynona's 100 Bonbons

Miekal And, a poetry and culture hero of mine for years, has graciously provided me with a copy of Mynona's (Salomo Friedlaender's) 100 Bonbons (1918) which I started translating today. So I thought I wd inaugurate a new thing here on JBWwESF by including a serialized translation of this cantankerously messianic expressionist (or grotesque) Sonnet cycle.. Here is the opening epigram by Paul Scheerbart which, like some of Mynona's other work takes off from a single line, or association from another work, and then, the first 'bonbon'..

“Rhyming and Swinewhining!

To me it’s all the same!

Old cats are not stupid.

But to those sub-humans,

I give a daily roasting, for you

make the world so odious.

To me it’s all the same!

People, be free!

-Paul Scheerbart

I.

Old bottles aren’t meant for new wine,

Like the dense poet Whitman;

The soul always creates its new rhythms,

Whose days’ sonnets are just swine.

Therefore today I am also me, only 
I am reassured on that account, as 
when I slipped I also wanted it, not 
only for the ride, but to reject all degrees 
in the Sonnet form: No!

I hop like the muscles dictate, mine

Won’t be forced into alien form,

And I feel completely free in mine - mine!

Fooey devil, in each sonnet I smear,

I will be in my own lungs themselves

and never breathe Petrarchan.