“...Draws us upward”. Topos in the final lines of Goethe’s “Faust”

Abstract

In the final lines of “Faust” the attention of researchers was primarily attracted by the image of the Eternal Feminine (Das Ewig-Weibliche) that has given rise to a lot of interpretations. However, from the point of view of “Toposforschung” as a philological method developed by Ernst Robert Curtius, the very last line (“Draws us upward” – “Zieht uns hinan”) is no less important: it places the image of the Eternal Feminine in the historical sequence of variations of a topos which expresses the idea of a certain spiritual power that draws man upward. Various concepts can act as such a power: hope (John Chrysostom), wisdom (Hugo of Saint-Victor), right reasoning (anonymous medieval poem), eternity (Walter of Châtillon), anagogical sense in the system of polysemous interpretation of the Bible (Absalon of Springiersbach), Virgin Mary (Hildegard of Bingen), Jesus Christ (Anselm of Canterbury, Georgette de Montenay), poetry (Giovanni Boccaccio). Goethe updates the topos inserting in its scheme a new image of the Eternal Feminine. While the nominative part of the topos (designation of the force acting on man) was continually changing, the predicative part (designation of the action itself) remained unchanged: in all the analyzed examples, as in Goethe’s Faust, there is the verb “to draw” (Latin “trahere”, French “tirer”, German “ziehen”) which shows that the spiritual principle has material power.