Coming back to the text and it interpretation: I am not sure that the scene in the begining with:
Quote:
All that he had made, the work of his hand,
with burin and chisel, with hassle without end,
the fiends had robbed from him, a few tools only, beside his life,
of his handicraft were left to him and a long knife
venomed in a sheath under his tattered cloak.
His clouded Eyes blinked, still reddened from the smoke;
since, stemmed with thorn and heather, they had,
at last, his passages cruelly on fire set,
and thus came he out, sickened and choked.
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And the later passage with:
Quote:
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The forge-fire was cold, but choking smoke roused me. Men came and robbed all that I possessed: the ore, that a long time ago I had dug out of the rock, the small piles of gems; and they bore my chest away. They smoked me out like a rat, and in mocking mercy they made me run like a wild beast, through burning thorns and heather around my deep home. They laughed as I kicked the hot ash, and the wind snatches away my curses. My reddened eyes could find no path; and all I could save, was a sack of small tools and underneath an old, tattered cloak in a black sheath my secret knife with the poisoned runes on its blade. Often have I sharpened it, spitting on the edge until it shone under the cruel stars in the dark and dreary places.
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describe the same event. Even so they very similar in the description, I think it does not fit together, for the follwoing reason:
- If we see Mīm at the bining coming out of his hole after he was robbed of his chest, where is then the 'run over burning thorns and heather'?
- in the first secne the enemies are "Unholde"/'fiends' while in the later scene they are "Menschen"/'Men'.
- If it would be the same plundering, that would make 2 additional shifts in perspective necessary in the text (one is of course given, when after describing his coming forth Mīm starts to speak): One from Mīm recounting his live back to life action of him trying and failing to re-create part of his work, and the men shunning and hunting him. And another one when he recounts that it had not been so in the past and so on.
Thinks become much easier when we assume that we have 2 diffrent robberies: One done in the past by Men that stole his chest. This is recounted only by Mīm in his speech. And a second that just has happend done by 'fiends' out of which he comes right at the biginning of the text.
In that way we would only have in intorduction of the scene and Mīm by a narator voice and than for all the rest Mīm recapitulating his life and actual situation.
Respectfully
Findegil