The poet J.W. Goethe once wrote, “The eternal feminine draws us on.” Building on the concept of the timeless nature of womanhood, author Gertrud von le Fort gives us a beautiful meditation in her book, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine. In a new introduction to the 1934 classic, Alice von Hildebrand comments that le Fort “outlines admirably the mystery of femininity … a highly cultivated woman, she wove her insights with artistic and literary references that are so enriching because they are not the fruits of abstraction but of meditation upon personal, lived experiences.”
Here are a handful of Gertrud von le Fort’s thought-provoking, deeply inspired words on motherhood, paired with famous depictions of maternity …
And today we celebrate...