Mîms Klage / The Complaint of Mim the Dwarf

[Huinesoron]

I seem to be making a digital hoard of hard-to-find Tolkien texts. I have Songs for the Philologist, Concerning... 'The Hoard', and even The Boorman Script. I'm still hoping for a copy of the Zimmerman script treatment, but until that surfaces I have something, well, actually Tolkien...ish.

"The Complaint of Mîm the Dwarf" is a blended poem and prose piece by Tolkien which has never been published. The Estate has made it clear (post by Urulókë) that they will not publish it at all. But what has been published, way back in 1987, is a translation into German by Hans J. Schütz:

Mîms Klage

A scan from the 1987 book. 26 lines of poetry, and three pages of prose. Even my limited German tells me that it's very much a stream-of-consciousness - look at that section after the first paragraph break, where Mim speaks:

Tink-tink-tink, tink-tonk, tonk-tonk, tink!
No time to eat, no time to drink, tonk-tink!
Tink-tonk, no time, tonk-tink, no time [to waste]!
No time to sleep! No night and no day, just [haste]!
Only silver and gold, hammered and [formed and shaped]
and small, hard stones, [glittering] and cold
Tink-tink, green and gold, tink-tink, blue and white
Under my hands [quietly sprout and grow]
long [leaves] and flowers, and red eyes [glowing]
of [beasts] and birds between [branches and blossoms].

(Translation mine; [square brackets] are words I had to look up. I've not bothered to try and keep the rhyme or rhythm at this time.)

Without translating the full piece it's hard to know when it takes place: Mim is described in the poem as 200 years old, but we don't have any other ages for him. Dwarves were typically born 100 years after their fathers, so even if this poem is set right before Mim's death he could still have the two adult or near-adult sons we see in the books. It takes place "Under a mountain, in an [impassable] land", which sounds like Amon Rudh, but poetically could be the ruins of Nargothrond.

There's a rhyming translation of the poem in video here, along with some snippets of the prose. I will probably keep poking at the whole thing in my rough way, unless someone happens to come along who actually speaks German.

(It's very tempting to imagine this as Mim working his curse into the hoard of Nargothrond, and thus link it directly to Concerning... 'The Hoard', but without translation I don't know how viable that is.)

EDIT: My full, low-quality back-translation into English (as created in this thread) is here.

hS

[Huinesoron]

Taking a break from work-translating to do some fun-translating instead, I took a stab at the rest of the poem:

Originally Posted by The Complaint of Mim the Dwarf, Part 1

Under a mountain, in an impassable land
lay a deep hole, all filled with sand.
One evening Mim stood before his house
His back was bent, and his beard was grey.
Long paths he had wandered, homeless and cold
the petty-dwarf Mim, two hundred years old.
All he had made, the work of his hands,
of stylus and chisel, of labour unending,
stolen by fiends; only his life and some few pieces
of his crafts were left to him, and a long blade
in a sheath under tattered mantle, venom-smeared.
His clouded eyes had squinted, still reddened from smoke
when amid thorns and bracken he had found
his passage at last amidst the flames.
And thus came he here, choking and sickened.
Mim spat in the sand, and so began to speak:

Tink-tink-tink, tink-tonk, tonk-tonk, tink!
No time to eat, no time to drink, tonk-tink!
Tink-tonk, no time, tonk-tink, no time to waste!
No time to sleep! No night and no day, just haste!
Only silver and gold, hammered and formed and shaped
and small, hard stones, glittering and cold
Tink-tink, green and gold, tink-tink, blue and white
Under my hands quietly sprout and grow
long leaves and flowers, and red eyes glowing
of beasts and birds between branches and blossoms.

I think this has to be just after Mim's betrayal of Turin; the CoH version reads:

Now the Orcs, finding the issue of the secret stair, left the summit and entered Bar-en-Danwedh, which they defiled and ravaged. They did not find Mim, lurking in his caves, and when they had departed from Amon Rudh Mim appeared on the summit, and going to where Beleg lay prostrate and unmoving he gloated over him while he sharpened a knife.

The fiends/monsters who stole Mim's stuff are the Orcs; the pit of sand is the caves he hid in; and we even have a mention of the knife. Or perhaps the scene is a little later, after Androg drives him off "shrieking in fear... to the brink of the cliff and... down a steep and difficult goat's path that was known to him". That would certainly offer more opportunity for smithying than while he was waiting to go and stab Beleg, and the vague summaries I've seen of the prose section say that Mim thinks about his inability to forgive, which would link to having just gone after Beleg.

I'm sure the answers, at least by implication, lie in the prose, but I'm not getting into that right now.

hS

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I wonder why the Estate is so opposed to its publication? It's a rather odd position to take on an original JRRT poem.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

I wonder why the Estate is so opposed to its publication? It's a rather odd position to take on an original JRRT poem.

It's a very strange position to take. My only thoughts are either that Urulókë overstated things in order to shut down potential trouble on TCG (perhaps the actual position was more of a "there are no current plans to publish"), or that it's tied up by way of its source - I seem to recall the Estate don't want any of Tolkien's other private letters published, for example, so if it came from one of those (like Concerning... 'The Hoard') they might have blocked it on those grounds.

I've taken a stab at the first prose paragraph, and hoooo boy, Mim is crazy:

Originally Posted by The Complaint of Mim the Dwarf, Part 2

All these things that my eyes beheld, while they were yet clear, and I was young and the world was kind. Why have I bound myself to them, to craft them out of my memories! They sprouted in my heart and writhed under my hands, bending and (twining) themselves into strange and beautiful forms - always growing and changing, and rooted ever in the memories of the world and in my love for her. Then one day I stopped awhile and raised my head, and my hands rested on the stony workbench. I saw my craft. It grew out of Mim, yet it was Mim no more, and he marvelled thereat. Jewels I beheld, radiant in the light of my small forge-fire, and now they lay in my brown hand, old now, yet still slender and crafty. And I thought to myself: Mim was very clever. Mim had worked very hard. Mim had a fire in him, hotter than the forge. But Mim has poured almost everything into these things. They are a piece of Mim, for without them there is little left of him.

Definite shades of Feanor here.

hS

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by The Complain of Mim the Dwarf, Part 3

So I devised a proper way of hoarding them, like goods in a storehouse, that wise memory may find them again. For everywhere they lay on the floor, or piled in the corners, and some hung on pegs on the walls - like the pages of an ancient book of dwarven tales, which time has faded and the winds have ravaged.

Clap-clip-clatter! Crack-tap, tom-tom-tap! Tack-tack! Timber and bones! No time to lose. The work begins. Think, speak, carve, gouge, file, nail. No time to rest. Thus I craft my great coffer, filled with compartments and secret drawers. Dragon-guardians glower from the lid, twining and spiraling up from their grasping claws. Ancient dwarves with axes flank its mighty clasp. Clap-clapp, tack-tack! Hammer and nails, tink-tonk, the key was forged and bound by magic. Yes! The great lid fell closed, and my weary eyes too. Long did I sleep, head upon my treasure-chest, my hoard of memories and bygone years.

Okay, so the open question is still when all this is taking place. The poem seems to be post-Turin: Mim flees the wreck of Amon Rudh, takes refuge in a sandy hole and starts muttering about making jewellery. Then he drops into prose, and says that he saw many beautiful things in his youth, and set himself to craft them. He made many beautiful things, but realised he had put so much of himself into them that there was little left. Then he made a great dragon-crowned chest to store them in, that he might not lose himself.

But is that what he's doing now, after his flight? Or is he muttering to himself about what he did before, and what has been taken from him?

hS

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by The Complaint of Mim, the Dwarf, Part 4

Did I sleep long? I know not how much time passed. The forge-fire was cold, but choking smoke alarmed me. Men came and robbed everything that I owned: the ore that I long had delved from the rock, the piled gems; and they bore my chest away. Like a rat they smoked me out too, and with mocking song set me to run like a wild beast, through the burning thorns and heather about my deep home. They laughed as I kicked the hot ashes, and the wind snatches away my curses. My reddened eyes could find no path; and all I could save was a sack of hand-tools and, in its black sheath under my tattered mantle, my secret knife with poisoned runes on its blade. Oft have I sharpened it, spitting on the cutting edge until it shone under the cruel stars in dark and dreary places.

So they took from Mim all his memories and all the joyful leaps and bounds of his mind, making of them gems for their sword hilts, rings for greedy fingers [and moons and stars] and artless ornaments for the breasts of proud ladies. They traded them for petty kingdoms and false friendships; they lusted for them; they killed for them and blackened the gold with the blood of their kin. There is a fire in the memories of old dwarves, and a power goes out from their slender hands that drives Men to madness, though they know it not.

That answers that - we've circled back to Mim in his sandpit with his dagger, mourning the loss of his treasures, so all the foregoing was a flashback. The mention of curses and madness sounds a lot like his actions in Nargothrond, but I think every version has him die by Hurin's hand there, and anyway the treasures of the Noldor weren't made by him from ore and mined jewels. So the most plausible reading is that the "Menschen" are actually Orcs on Amon Rudh.

One line has me so baffled that I've bracketed it: the German reads "Ringe für gierige Finger und Monde und Sterne und kunstlosen Schmuch fur die Buste hochmutiger Weiber." I'm comfortable with the translation, and without "und Monde und Sterne" it makes perfect sense (gems for swords, rings for fingers and brooches for women). But what does "and moons and stars" mean here? Are they more jewels for the women? Is this a German idiom?

In any case, there's one (long) paragraph to go, in which we not only have the phrase "kleine Zwerg" - "petty-dwarf" - but the only conclusive link to the Legendarium: "eine Blute mit Tau darauf, so wie er einst glanzte am Tarn Aeluin". A flower with dew on it, as once shone beside Tarn Aeluin.

hS