Saudade

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Saudade (pron. IPA [sɐu'ðað(ɨ)] in European Portuguese and Galician, and [sau'dadʒi] or [sau'daði] in Brazilian Portuguese) is a Portuguese word for a feeling of longing for something that one is fond of, which is gone, but might return in a distant future. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.

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[edit] Expanded definition

Saudade is generally considered one of the hardest words to translate. It originated from the Latin word solitatem (loneliness, solitude), but developed a different meaning. Loneliness in Portuguese is solidão (a semi-learned word), from Latin solitudo. Few other languages in the world have a word with such meaning, making saudade a distinct mark of Portuguese culture. It has been said that this, more than anything else, represents what it is to be Portuguese.

In his book In Portugal of 1912, A.F.G Bell writes:
"The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness."

Saudade is different from nostalgia (the English word, that is). In nostalgia, one has a mixed happy and sad feeling, a memory of happiness but a sadness for its impossible return and sole existence in the past. Saudade is like nostalgia but with the hope that what is being longed for might return, even if that return is unlikely or so distant in the future to be almost of no consequence to the present. One might make a strong analogy with nostalgia as a feeling one has for a loved one who has died and saudade as a feeling one has for a loved one who has disappeared or is simply currently absent. Nostalgia is located in the past and is somewhat conformist while saudade is very present, anguishing, anxious and extends into the future. In Portuguese, the same word nostalgia has quite a different meaning.

For instance, the phrase "Tenho saudades tuas" ("I feel 'saudade' for you") directly translates into "I miss you". "Eu sinto a tua falta" also has the same meaning in English ("falta" and "saudade" both are translated for missing), but it is different in Portuguese. The first sentence is never told to anyone personally, but the second can be. The first sentence would be said by a person whose lover has been abroad for sometime, it would be said over the phone or written in a letter. The second sentence would be said by someone who has divorced, or whose partner is not usually at home, and would be said personally.

Some say that the ultimate form of saudade is one felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown in regards to any of the following things or circumstances:

  • Old ways and sayings
  • A lost lover
  • A far away place where one was raised
  • Loved ones who have passed away
  • Feelings and stimuli one used to have but has tired of
  • One's youth

Although it relates to feelings of melancholy and fond memories of things/people/days gone by, it can be a rush of sadness coupled with a paradoxical joy derived from acceptance of fate and the hope of recovering or substituting what is lost by something that will either fill in the void or provide consolation.

[edit] Historical origins

Some specialists say that this word has come to life during the Great Portuguese Discoveries, giving meaning to the sadness felt by those who departed in journeys to the unknown seas and disappeared on shipwrecks, died in battle, or simply never returned. Those who stayed behind—mostly women and children—deeply suffered with their absence, and such state has almost become a "Portuguese way of life": the constant feeling of absence, the sadness of something that's missing, the wishful longing for completeness or wholeness and the yearning for presence (as opposed to absence), that is to say, a strong desire to matar as saudades (literally, to kill the saudades).

The same feeling is also found in Brazil, the destination of immigrants who never saw their homelands again. The feeling was so much ingrained into the Brazilian mind that virtually every immigrant settled there learned this notion and incorporated it (even people from radically different mindsets, like Germans and Japanese, soon understood it). Another permanent source of saudades for the Brazilians is the hugeness of the country itself, which in the past caused most people to feel alone almost everywhere.

In the latter half of the 20th century, saudade became associated with the feeling of longing for one's homeland, as hundreds of thousands of Portuguese-speaking people left in search of better futures in North America and Northern Europe.

[edit] Saudade and music

As with all emotions, saudade has been an inspiration for many songs and compositions. "Saudade" is the title of the Cape Verde Morna singer Cesária Évora's most famous song; French singer Étienne Daho and Chris Rea also produced a song of the same name.

The Good Son, a 1990 album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was heavily informed by Cave's mental state at the time, which he has described as saudade. He told journalist Chris Bohn that "when I explained to someone that what I wanted to write about was the memory of things that I thought were lost for me, I was told that the Portuguese word for this feeling was "saudade". It's not nostalgia but something sadder."

Fado is a Portuguese music style, generally sung by a single person (the fadista) along with a Portuguese guitar. The most popular themes of fado are saudade, nostalgia, jealousy, and short stories of the typical city quarters. Fado, and Saudade are two key and intertwined ideas in Portuguese culture. The word fado comes from Latin fatum meaning "fate" or "destiny". Fado is a musical cultural expression and recognition of this unassailable determinism which compels the resigned yearning of saudade, a bittersweet, existential yearning and hopefulness towards something over which one has no control.

The term is prominent in Brazilian popular music, including the first bossa nova song, "Chega de Saudade" (No more saudade), written by Tom Jobim. Due to the difficulties of translating the word saudade, the song is often translated to English as No more Blues.

Saudade is also the title of two flute solos by the band Shpongle.

The singer Amália Rodrigues typified themes of saudade.

[edit] Saudade and love

Although named by the Portuguese, saudade is a universal feeling related to love. It occurs when two people are in love, but apart from each other. Saudade occurs when we are thinking of a person whom we love and we are happy about having that feeling while we are thinking of that person, but he/she is out of reach, making us sad and crushing our hearts. The pain and these mixed feelings are named saudade. It is also used to refer to the feeling of being far from people one does love, e.g., one's sister, father, grandparents, friends; it can be applied to places or pets one misses, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past. What sets saudade apart is that it can be directed to anything that is personal and moving.

[edit] Variations

[edit] Morriña

Saudade is also associated with Galicia, an autonomous community in northern Spain whose language (Galician, or Galego) is related to Portuguese and whose culture is influenced by Spain, Portugal, and the Celtic countries. In this region, it is known as morriña. In northern Portugal, morrinha (written differently, but pronounced alike) is a regional word to describe sprinkles, while morrinhar means "to sprinkle." (The most common Portuguese equivalents are chuvisco and chuviscar, respectively.) Morrinha is also used in this region for referring to sick animals, and occasionally to sick or sad people, often with irony. It is also used in some Brazilian regional dialects for the smell of wet or sick animals.

Morriña was a term often used by emigrant Galicians (especially in the Americas) when talking about the Galician motherland they had left behind. Although saudade is also a Galician word, the meaning of longing for something that might return is generally associated with morriña. The word is still used even by Galicians living in other parts of Spain.

[edit] Kaiho

Interestingly, the Finnish language has a word whose meaning corresponds almost exactly with saudade: kaiho. Kaiho means a state of involuntary solitude in which the subject feels incompleteness and yearns for something unattainable or extremely difficult and tedious to attain. Ironically, the sentiment of kaiho is central to the Finnish tango, in stark contrast to the Argentine tango, which is predominantly sensuous.

There is a religious context for kaiho in Finland as well; a sect of "herännäiset" or "körttiläiset" more familiarly, has central to their faith a kaiho towards Sion, a unity of faith, and a connection with God, permeating their central book, Siionin Virret ("Hymns of Sion").

However, saudade does not involve tediousness. Rather, the feeling of saudade accentuates itself: the more one thinks about the loved person or object, the more one feels saudade. The feeling can even be creative, as one strives to fill in what is missing with something else or to recover it altogether.

[edit] Use in Goa, India

Goa, India, which was a Portuguese colony until 1961, still retains Portuguese influences. A suburb of Margão, Goa's largest city, has a street named "Rua de Saudades." It was aptly named because that very street has the Christian cemetery, the Hindu smashant (crematorium) and the Muslim quabrastan (cemetery). Most people living in the city of Margão who pass by this street would agree that the name of the street could not be any other, as they often think fond memories of a friend, loved one, or relative whose remains went past that road.

[edit] Italian translation

Saudade can be translated as malinconia romantica, in which one feels an interior satisfaction because it is impossible to find something, but one never stops thinking that one is searching for it. It is an incompleteness that one unconsciously wants to never completely resolve.

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[edit] External links

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