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.)

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

[Estelyn Telcontar]

German-American bilingual here, reading this with interest, though alas, with little time for thought and contemplation right now. Thanks, Huinesoron, for sharing this with us! I will try to answer as much as possible as soon as possible...

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.

[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

[Findegil]

I have ordered the Book and read that text myself. Easy for a native German. Having some experience with the Schütz translations, I have many doubts if by retranslating we would find anything even near to the original. Schütz was not very good at rhyme. It is clear, that in the 26 lines of poetry he took many liberties and nonetheless would not even try to take up rhythm, flow or even kind of rhymes used in the original. As an example, the word 'sand' in the second line cries out 'none Tolkien!' to me. I wouldn't be surprised if reading the original we would not find the information that the cave did have a sand flour. But as that is only my personal impression, please take it only as warning.

So what can we say about Mim? He first began to craft in Dorthonion, by Tarn Aeluin; ...

That is not so clear. The text says that he always worked from memory. Therefore this only assures that he had been in Dorthonion in his youth and that what he saw there inspired him deeply. And from the context we as well can say that these were days of peace in Dorthonion, so well before the Dagor Bargolach.

... for a long period he devoted himself to making naturalistic crafts out of his memories ...

I don't agree fully to 'naturalistic'. Mîm himself makes in the later text a very clear distinction between the things that inspired his craft and the artefacts that he produced. He says that he still can memories the artefacts he made but no longer the things that inspired them and I at least think this is part of his issue of remaking anything.

About Mîm's life as given in NoME: Taking aside the 400 years for a moment, I would rather say the story lines work very well together: Young Mîm wanders around in the peaceful Beleriand before Finrod founded Nargothrond. As he visits Dorthonion where Finrod's brothers ruled at this time, the two might have meet there. Finrod planning to build Nargothrond would than naturally ask a Dwarf he did know before hand for help. For how that relationship was than poisoned there are a lot of candidates:
- Finrod, seeing how big a task it was, asking the Dwarves from the Ered Luin as well for help and since these dismissed the Petty-Dwarves that might be enough.
- Maybe Mîm was only early involved in the planning and when it became clear that Finrods plans were made for the enlargement of the halls of Nulukkhizdīn, driving the Petty-Dwarves out of their old home the relation shifted.
- Or he came late and assumed that they had found the halls of Nulukkhizdīn deserted, and only when he found out that they had driven out the Petty-Dwarves by force he tried to take revenge upon Finrod.

The 400+ years are an issue, but not a big one:
- On the one hand we know that at least on first generation Dwarf was very long lasting: Durin I., the Deathless. He died 'before the end of the Elder-days', which means from the context during the First Age of the sun, having outlifed all the long years of the Stars since the awakening of the Dwarves. So it might be that Tolkien saw a decline in longevity for the Dwarves and planed much longer time for the earlier generations to which Mîm might have belonged.
- If we assume that Mîm was of the line of the 7 chieftains, than we are told that in these lines from time to time Dwarves were born that were so similar to the chieftains of old that they got the same name. So for example Mîm II. could have been the helper of Finrod and Mîm III. would then be the host of Tuirn later to be killed in Nargothrond.

At this point we might consider anew when Mîm does utter this ‘Klage’: I find it rather forced to connect the plundering of Bar-en-Danwedh by the Orcs to the story as told in Mîm's Klage. In CoH Mîm is not sleeping on his chest of treasures and the attack of the Orcs is not a surprise for him. Thus if the Mîm of Mîm's Klage and Mîm from CoH are one and the same person, I would assume that the Mîm from CoH is a somewhat recovered version from the earlier Mîm of Mîm's Klage: In CoH he is described as poor, old, isolated and bitter against the world outside that has wronged him and his folk in many ways. When caught by Androg Mîm did even bit him, like Mîm reports of himself in his 'Klage'. As well CoH reports that the Men shot arrows at Mîm and his sons. And we learn in CoH that Mîm from time to time works in his smithy, all by himself, as we would expect from a person haunted by a back story like told in the 'Klage'. So my best guess is, that what we have in ‘Mîm’s Klage’ is a report of one of Túrin’s men of what he heard when at one day Mîm came out of his smithy (for a time, because the ‘Tink-tonk, tonk-tink! No time to think!’ suggest that he is going back to work) during a fruitless try in his craft. And the friendship that Mîm develops to Túrin might be the response to his ‘It was not always so, and it is not good that it is so now.’ from the ‘Klage’.

One last point: 'Complaint' does not sound fully right as translation of german 'Klage' in this context. I would rather take 'Lament'. ('Dirge' would fit from the sense as well, but does not sound a bit like Tolkien for me.)

Respectfully
Findegil

[Val Balmer]

I recently wrote an article in Italian on Mim's Klage.

My goal was to (try to) build both an internal and external chronlogy for this text, based on the clues given in the text.


Here's the english version of it: https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?c...lmu8eeT5VJGiUX

Of course there's a lot of speculation and I know several other possibilities are plausible but...Let me know what you think about it.

[gondowe]

I would like to give my opinion regarding Mîn in relation to all the information we have about him.

Regarding whether they are all the same Mîm, from the point of view of the information we have and making the verosimility relevant, I do not think that Tolkien would have thought of a different Mîm on each case. And in the case of a Petty Dwarf, a Dwarf of more than 500 years It would not seem plausible to me.

A possible historical line that I propose would be (please correct me if I forget something):

-An indefinite time after Nargothrond is complete in FA102, Mîm becomes the young leader of the Petty Dwarves and later attempts to assassinate Finrod (say in FA250).
-He is expelled and goes to Dorthonion.
-When the Beörians are given Ladros in FA410 he has to leave and goes to Amon Rûdh (who he already knew).

So, when Mîm die in 502 (been very old and possibly near to his natural end) would be more or less 300-350 years old.

Of course this line would be a mythical adaptation to be able to make a plausible composition of his story.

In relation to the moment of the Klage, I agree with Findegil that a possible one would be after stablised the friendship between Túrin and him.

Greetings