Da Gretchen a Faustina. L’Eterno Femminino rivoluzionario in “Faust e la Città” di A.V. Lunačarskij

This article adopts a comparative and historical-semantic approach to examine the transformation of Gretchen into the character of Faustina in Anatolij Lunačarskij’s Faust i Gorod (Faust and the City, 1918). Faustina reworks Goethe’s concept of the Eternal Feminine (“Das Ewig-Weibliche / zieht uns hinan”) within a secularized and revolutionary framework. Unlike Gretchen, she is not Faust’s lover but his daughter, a shift that profoundly reshapes the symbolic and ideological function of the feminine Égure. By joining the revolutionary Gabriel and supporting the democratic cause, Faustina triggers an emotional and political crisis that leads Faust to abandon autocratic power and move toward a collective socialist vision. The article argues that Lunačarskij transforms the Eternal Feminine from a metaphysical principle of salvation into a historical and political force operating within social reality.