Mîms Klage / The Complaint of Mim the Dwarf

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by The Complaint of Mim, the Dwarf, Part 5

But now I am old and bitter, and in my refuge in the wild mountains I must begin the work anew, seeking to catch the echoes of my memories before they are lost forever. Ah! my work is still good; yet it is haunted now. Their freshness is gone; a veil lies between me and the things I have seen and wrought, as if they were lights and shapes scattered in a mist of tears. I can glimpse still what I once created, but not that which I once saw. I am dangerous they say, full of hate and malice, old Mim, the petty-dwarf. If you touch me, I will bite with blackened teeth or stab you in the dark, and none can heal the wound from my knife. None dare to come near me; but shoot arrows at me from a distance if I dare to show my face to the Sun. It was not always so, and it is not good that it is so now. The course of the world is become crooked and precarious, deceit goes about, things creep up out of dark places, and under my fingers grows fear instead of joy. If I could but forgive, it might still be possible to shape a leaf, a flower with dew upon it, as it once shone beside Tarn Aeluin, when I was young and felt for the first time the cleverness of my fingers. But Mim cannot forgive. The embers still smoulder in his heart. Tink-tonk, tonk-tink! No time to think!

The retranslation is complete; I've put the whole thing in a document just to have it together.

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

edit: I would say the line you bracketed is simply a list - "rings (for greedy fingers) and moons and stars and artless ornaments (for the breasts of proud ladies)". Moons and stars are popular designs for jewelry even nowadays, and Elves, should they have been the recipients, would have appreciated them even more than other races.

I suppose that works. I was thrown by the fact that the other jewellery (gems, rings, ornaments) is described straightforwardly and negatively, and then suddenly we have what seems to be a positive description in the middle. In the consolidated version I've tweaked the commas but am happy to accept your point.

So what can we say about Mim? He first began to craft in Dorthonion, by Tarn Aeluin; for a long period he devoted himself to making naturalistic crafts out of his memories; he secured them in a great chest decorated with dragons. Someone (monsters or people) came and stole everything, leaving him with only a few tools and his poisoned dagger, and burning him out; he retreated to a deep hole and stewed. He then tried to remake his treasures, but found his memories faded, and his craft weakened by his inability to forgive.

Interestingly, Mim's own view of himself is wildly at odds with everyone else's, and with his behaviour in this very poem. He wants to believe that he was a pure artist until right before the events of the poem - but he carries a poisoned dagger, and fills his treasures with magic that drives men mad. He was never as nice as he likes to think he was.

(I should note that NoME 3.VII - The Founding of Nargothrond (1969) gives a different account of Mim's early years - it has him as the chieftain of the Petty Dwarves of Narog, helping Finrod build Nargothrond and then attempting to murder him. It's not clear how this fits in with his youth by Tarn Aeluin in the poem, or with his known death 400 years after Nargothrond was finished - that would make him very old indeed for a dwarf! Perhaps the chieftain was his grandfather?)

hS