Mimmy's smithy is a cave, in which he hides from the light like the
eyeless fish of the American caverns. Before the curtain rises the music
already tells us that we are groping in darkness. When it does rise
Mimmy is in difficulties. He is trying to make a sword for his nursling,
who is now big enough to take the field against Fafnir. Mimmy can make
mischievous swords; but it is not with dwarf made weapons that heroic
man will hew the way of his own will through religions and governments
and plutocracies and all the other devices of the kingdom of the fears
of the unheroic. As fast as Mimmy makes swords, Siegfried Bakoonin
smashes them, and then takes the poor old swordsmith by the scruff of
the neck and chastises him wrathfully. The particular day on which the
curtain rises begins with one of these trying domestic incidents.
Mimmy has just done his best with a new sword of surpassing excellence.
Siegfried returns home in rare spirits with a wild bear, to the extreme
terror of the wretched dwarf. When the bear is dismissed, the new sword
is produced. It is promptly smashed, as usual, with, also, the usual
effects on the temper of Siegfried, who is quite boundless in his
criticisms of the smith's boasted skill, and declares that he would
smash the sword's maker too if he were not too disgusting to be handled.
Mimmy falls back on his stock defence: a string of maudlin reminders of
the care with which he has nursed the little boy into manhood. Siegfried
replies candidly that the strangest thing about all this care is that
instead of making him grateful, it inspires him with a lively desire to
wring the dwarf's neck. Only, he admits that he always comes back to his
Mimmy, though he loathes him more than any living thing in the forest.
On this admission the dwarf attempts to build a theory of filial
instinct. He explains that he is Siegfried's father, and that this is
why Siegfried cannot do without him. But Siegfried has learned from his
forest companions, the birds and foxes and wolves, that mothers as well
as fathers go to the making of children. Mimmy, on the desperate ground
that man is neither bird nor fox, declares that he is Siegfried's father
and mother both. He is promptly denounced as a filthy liar, because
the birds and foxes are exactly like their parents, whereas Siegfried,
having often watched his own image in the water, can testify that he
is no more like Mimmy than a toad is like a trout. Then, to place the
conversation on a plane of entire frankness, he throttles Mimmy until he
is speechless. When the dwarf recovers, he is so daunted that he tells
Siegfried the truth about his birth, and for testimony thereof produces
the pieces of the sword that broke upon Wotan's spear. Siegfried
instantly orders him to repair the sword on pain of an unmerciful
thrashing, and rushes off into the forest, rejoicing in the discovery
that he is no kin of Mimmy's, and need have no more to do with him when
the sword is mended.
Poor Mimmy is now in a worse plight than ever; for he has long ago found
that the sword utterly defies his skill: the steel will yield neither
to his hammer nor to his furnace. Just then there walks into his cave a
Wanderer, in a blue mantle, spear in hand, with one eye concealed by the
brim of his wide hat. Mimmy, not by nature hospitable, tries to drive
him away; but the Wanderer announces himself as a wise man, who can tell
his host, in emergency, what it most concerns him to know. Mimmy, taking
this offer in high dudgeon, because it implies that his visitor's wits
are better than his own, offers to tell the wise one something that HE
does not know: to wit, the way to the door. The imperturbable Wanderer's
reply is to sit down and challenge the dwarf to a trial of wit. He
wagers his head against Mimmy's that he will answer any three questions
the dwarf can put to him.
Now here were Mimmy's opportunity, had he only the wit to ask what he
wants to know, instead of pretending to know everything already. It
is above all things needful to him at this moment to find out how that
sword can be mended; and there has just dropped in upon him in his need
the one person who can tell him. In such circumstances a wise man would
hasten to show to his visitor his three deepest ignorances, and ask him
to dispel them. The dwarf, being a crafty fool, desiring only to detect
ignorance in his guest, asks him for information on the three points on
which he is proudest of being thoroughly well instructed himself. His
three questions are, Who dwell under the earth? Who dwell on the earth?
and Who dwell in the cloudy heights above? The Wanderer, in reply, tells
him of the dwarfs and of Alberic; of the earth, and the giants Fasolt
and Fafnir; of the gods and of Wotan: himself, as Mimmy now recognizes
with awe.
Next, it is Mimmy's turn to face three questions. What is that race,
dearest to Wotan, against which Wotan has nevertheless done his worst?
Mimmy can answer that: he knows the Volsungs, the race of heroes born
of Wotan's infidelities to Fricka, and can tell the Wanderer the whole
story of the twins and their son Siegfried. Wotan compliments him on his
knowledge, and asks further with what sword Siegfried will slay Fafnir?
Mimmy can answer that too: he has the whole history of the sword at his
fingers' ends. Wotan hails him as the knowingest of the knowing, and
then hurls at him the question he should himself have asked: Who
will mend the sword? Mimmy, his head forfeited, confesses with
loud lamentations that he cannot answer. The Wanderer reads him an
appropriate little lecture on the folly of being too clever to ask what
he wants to know, and informs him that a smith to whom fear is unknown
will mend Nothung. To this smith he leaves the forfeited head of his
host, and wanders off into the forest. Then Mimmy's nerves give way
completely. He shakes like a man in delirium tremens, and has a horrible
nightmare, in the supreme convulsion of which Siegfried, returning from
the forest, presently finds him.
A curious and amusing conversation follows. Siegfried himself does not
know fear, and is impatient to acquire it as an accomplishment. Mimmy
is all fear: the world for him is a phantasmagoria of terrors. It is not
that he is afraid of being eaten by bears in the forest, or of burning
his fingers in the forge fire. A lively objection to being destroyed
or maimed does not make a man a coward: on the contrary, it is the
beginning of a brave man's wisdom. But in Mimmy, fear is not the effect
of danger: it is natural quality of him which no security can allay.
He is like many a poor newspaper editor, who dares not print the truth,
however simple, even when it is obvious to himself and all his readers.
Not that anything unpleasant would happen to him if he did--not, indeed
that he could fail to become a distinguished and influential leader
of opinion by fearlessly pursuing such a course, but solely because
he lives in a world of imaginary terrors, rooted in a modest and
gentlemanly mistrust of his own strength and worth, and consequently of
the value of his opinion. Just so is Mimmy afraid of anything that can
do him any good, especially of the light and the fresh air. He is also
convinced that anybody who is not sufficiently steeped in fear to be
constantly on his guard, must perish immediately on his first sally
into the world. To preserve Siegfried for the enterprise to which he has
destined him he makes a grotesque attempt to teach him fear. He appeals
to his experience of the terrors of the forest, of its dark places, of
its threatening noises its stealthy ambushes, its sinister flickering
lights its heart-tightening ecstasies of dread.
All this has no other effect than to fill Siegfried with wonder and
curiosity; for the forest is a place of delight for him. He is as eager
to experience Mimmy's terrors as a schoolboy to feel what an electric
shock is like. Then Mimmy has the happy idea of describing Fafnir to him
as a likely person to give him an exemplary fright. Siegfried jumps at
the idea, and, since Mimmy cannot mend the sword for him, proposes to
set to work then and there to mend it for himself. Mimmy shakes his
head, and bids him see now how his youthful laziness and frowardness
have found him out--how he would not learn the smith's craft from
Professor Mimmy, and therefore does not know how even to begin mending
the sword. Siegfried Bakoonin's retort is simple and crushing. He points
out that the net result of Mimmy's academic skill is that he can neither
make a decent sword himself nor even set one to rights when it is
damaged. Reckless of the remonstrances of the scandalized professor, he
seizes a file, and in a few moments utterly destroys the fragments of
the sword by rasping them into a heap of steel filings. Then he puts
the filings into a crucible; buries it in the coals; and sets to at the
bellows with the shouting exultation of the anarchist who destroys only
to clear the ground for creation. When the steel is melted he runs it
into a mould; and lo! a sword-blade in the rough. Mimmy, amazed at the
success of this violation of all the rules of his craft, hails Siegfried
as the mightiest of smiths, professing himself barely worthy to be his
cook and scullion; and forthwith proceeds to poison some soup for him so
that he may murder him safely when Fafnir is slain. Meanwhile Siegfried
forges and tempers and hammers and rivets, uproariously singing the
while as nonsensically as the Rhine maidens themselves. Finally he
assails the anvil on which Mimmy's swords have been shattered, and
cleaves it with a mighty stroke of the newly forged Nothung.