Mimmy needs the help of a hero for that; and he has craft enough to know that it is quite possible, and indeed much in the ordinary way of the world, for senile avarice and craft to set youth and bravery to work to win empire for it.He knows the pedigree of the child left on his hands, and nurses it to manhood with great care.
His pains are too well rewarded for his comfort.The boy Siegfried, having no god to instruct him in the art of unhappiness, inherits none of his father's ill luck, and all his father's hardihood.The fear against which Siegmund set his face like flint, and the woe which he wore down, are unknown to the son.The father was faithful and grateful: the son knows no law but his own humor; detests the ugly dwarf ho has nursed him;chafes furiously under his claims some return for his tender care; and is, in short, a totally unmoral person, a born anarchist, the ideal of Bakoonin, an anticipation of the "overman" of Nietzsche.He is enormously strong, full of life and fun, dangerous and destructive to what he dislikes, and affectionate to what he likes; so that it is fortunate that his likes and dislikes are sane and healthy.Altogether an inspiriting young forester, a son of the morning, in whom the heroic race has come out into the sunshine from the clouds of his grandfather's majestic entanglements with law, and the night of his father's tragic struggle with it.
The First ActMimmy'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 longago 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.
