is directed to the Mothers by Mephistopheles, but here, as occasionally elsewhere in the Second Part, the mask of Mephistopheles drops and we see the face of Goethe himself. To insist on the rôle of Negation, which explains the forms assumed by Mephistopheles in the Carnival Masquerade, the Classical Walpurgis-Night, and the Helena, would lead to great confusion. There is, however, a partial return to dramatic truth in the expression of Faust, that he hopes to find his All in the Nothing of Mephistopheles.
45. Here, take this key!
The symbols of the Key and the Tripod have also given rise to much speculation. Their meaning, of course, is entirely dependent upon that which may be attributed to the Mothers, since the key is to guide Faust to the latter, and then enable him to gain possession of the tripod, the incense-smoke of which will shape itself into the ideals of Human Beauty. Schnetger and Kreyssig agree that the tripod is a symbol of the profoundest wisdom, and the former attaches to it the idea of “intuition.” What we call the intuition of Genius, however, is the highest and purest form of wisdom, and Goethe, therefore, may have intended to typify that wondrous, unerring instinct, which from the “airy nothing” of the incense-ssmoke can evoke the immortal Beautiful. Schnetger considers the key to be a “glowing sense of the charms of the material form.” With others, it is a symbol of intense, passionate Desire. If Goethe had specially in view the creation of ideals of Beauty by the Grecian mind, still other meanings would be suggested. We must seek in Nature for the keys to the myths of Greece, which, them- selves, were designed to be keys to Nature.
What Mr. Ruskin says of the works of Homer: “They were not conceived didactically, but they are didactic in their essence, as all good art is”—is equally true of this and other episodes of the Second Part of Faust. We find traces of that truth which reaches the poet by a deeper intuition, having the involuntary nature, yet also the distinctness, of a dream; and which always contains more than its utterer can
