“The eternal feminine draws us on high”

“The eternal feminine draws us on high” is the English rendering of the closing words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, Part Two, where the phrase gives the feminine a culminating, upward force. Its significance here is inseparable from its place at the work’s ending: womanhood becomes the image through which the drama’s final movement toward elevation is expressed.

Source and Wording

The expression translates Goethe’s German lines, “das Ewig-Weibliche | Zieht uns hinan”—“Eternal Womanhood | Draws us on high.” The English wording preserves the original’s essential movement: the eternal feminine is not simply presented as an object of contemplation, but as the force that draws “us” upward.

Function and Significance

The phrase condenses its meaning into an image of ascent. Its placement among the last words of Faust, Part Two lends it the quality of a final summation, linking the feminine with the drama’s upward-reaching close. The evidence establishes this literary and verbal significance, without specifying a particular character or episode as its referent.