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 devices of the kingdom of the fears of the
unheroic. As fast as Mimmy makes swords, Siegfried Bakoonin
smashes them, and then takes the poor old swordsmith by the
scruff of the neck and chastises him wrathfully. The particular
day on which the curtain rises begins with one of these trying
domestic incidents. Mimmy has just done his best with a new sword
of surpassing excellence. Siegfried returns home in rare spirits
with a wild bear, to the extreme terror of the wretched dwarf.