Siegfried

Sieglinda, when she flies into the forest with the hero's son
unborn in her womb, and the broken pieces of his sword in her
hand, finds shelter in the smithy of a dwarf, where she brings
forth her child and dies. This dwarf is no other than Mimmy, the
brother of Alberic, the same who made for him the magic helmet.
His aim in life is to gain possession of the helmet, the ring,
and the treasure, and through them to obtain that Plutonic
mastery of the world under the beginnings of which he himself
writhed during Alberic's brief reign. Mimmy is a blinking,
shambling, ancient creature, too weak and timid to dream of
taking arms himself to despoil Fafnir, who still, transformed to
a monstrous serpent, broods on the gold in a hole in the rocks.
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 who has nursed him;
chafes furiously under his claims for 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 Act

Mimmy'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