Saudade (singular) or
saudades
(plural) (pronounced in
European
Portuguese, or in
Brazilian
Portuguese, in Galician and in
Cape Verdean Creole) is a
Portuguese and
Galician word for a feeling of nostalgic
longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which is
lost. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge
that the object of longing might really never return.
For its use in Brazilian Portuguese Saudade could be better
translated as longing or nostalgia.
Saudade has been described as a "vague and constant desire for
something that does not and probably cannot exist ... a turning
towards the past or towards the future". A stronger form of saudade
may be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are
unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone
missing. It may also be translated as a deep longing or yearning
for something which does not exist or is unattainable.
Saudade was once described as "the love that remains" or "the love
that stays" after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of
feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought
excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and
makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like
something or someone that should be there in a particular moment is
missing, and the individual feels this absence.In Portuguese,
'Tenho Saudades Tuas', translated as 'I have
Saudades of
you' means 'I miss you'.
History
Origins
The word
saudade was used in the
Cancioneiro da Ajuda (13th-century),
Cancioneiro da Vaticana and
by poets of the time of by King
Denis
of Portugal.Some specialists say the word may have originated
during the
Great
Portuguese Discoveries, giving meaning to the sadness felt
about those who departed on journeys to unknown seas and
disappeared in
shipwrecks, died in battle,
or simply never returned. Those who stayed behind—mostly women and
children—suffered deeply in their absence; However, the Portuguese
discoveries only started in 1415 and once the word has been found
earlier this does not constitutes a very good explanation. The
Reconquista is a plausible explanation
also.
The state of mind has subsequently become a "Portuguese way of
life": a constant feeling of absence, the sadness of something
that's missing, wishful longing for completeness or wholeness and
the yearning for the return of that now gone, a desire for presence
as opposed to absence—as it is said in Portuguese, a strong desire
to "
matar as saudades" (lit.
to kill the
saudades).
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
Western Europe. Besides the implications
derived from an emigratory trend from the motherland, historically
speaking saudade is the term associated with the decline of
Portugal's role in world politics and trade. During the so-called
'Golden Age', synonymous with the era of discoveries, Portugal
undeniably rose to the status of a world power, and its monarchy
was one of the richest in Europe at the time. But with the rise of
competition from other European nations, the country went both
colonially and economically into a prolonged period of decay. This
period of decline and resignation from the world's cultural stage
marked the rise of saudade, aptly described by a sentence of its
national anthem - 'Levantai hoje de novo o esplendor de Portugal'
(Let us once again lift up the splendour of Portugal).
Elements
Saudade is quite similar to
nostalgia, a
word that also exists in Portuguese.
In the book
In Portugal of 1912, A. F. G Bell
writes:
A stronger form of saudade may be felt towards people and things
whose whereabouts are unknown, such as old ways and sayings; a lost
lover who is sadly missed; a faraway place where one was raised;
loved ones who have died; feelings and stimuli one used to have;
and the faded, yet golden memories of 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.
Although the word is Portuguese in origin, 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 think of a person who
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. It can also be
felt for
unrequited love in that the
person misses something he or she never really had, but for which
might hope, regardless of the possible futility of said hope.
In music
As with all emotions, saudade has been an inspiration for many
songs and compositions.
"Sodade" ("saudade" in Cape Verdean Creole) is the title of the
Cape
Verde
Morna singer Cesária Évora's most famous song;
French singer Étienne Daho 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."
The usage of
saudade as a theme in Portuguese music goes
back to the 16th century,
the golden age of
Portugal. Saudade, as well as love suffering, is a common theme
in many
villancicos and
cantigas composed by Portuguese authors; for
example: "Lágrimas de Saudade" (
tears of saudade), which
is an anonymous work from the
Cancioneiro de Paris.
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.
Spanish singer
Julio Iglesias, whose
father is a
Galician, speaks of
saudade in his song
Un Canto a Galicia (which
roughly translates as
a song/chant for Galicia). In the
song, he passionately uses the phrase to describe a deep and sad
longing for his motherland, Galicia.
The Paragyuan guitarist
Agustin
Barrios wrote several pieces invoking the feeling of saudade
including
Choro de Saudade and
Preludio Saudade.
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. In 1919, on
returning from two years in Brazil, the French composer
Darius Milhaud composed a suite,
Saudades
Do Brasil, which exemplified the concept of saudade. Saudade
(part ii) is also the title of a second flute solo by the band
Shpongle, the first one being flute fruit.
The singer
Amália Rodrigues
typified themes of saudade in some of her songs. J-Rock band
Porno Graffitti has a song titled
"サウダージ”, "Saudaaji" transliterated ("Saudade"). The alternative
rock band
Love And Rockets
has a song 'Saudade' on their album
Seventh Dream of Teenage
Heaven.
The contemporary Irish folk-rock band
The
Pogues, have recorded ballads that describe the feeling of
saudade shared by many Irish that migrated to America, a good
example being "Thousands are Sailing" from the album
If I Should Fall from Grace
with God
A jazz fusion trio consisting of John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette,
and Larry Goldings released an album dedicated to drummer Tony
Williams, called "Saudades." Dance music artist Peter Corvaia
released a progressive house track entitled "Saudade" on HeadRush
Music, a sub-label of
Toes
in the Sand Recordings. New York City post-rock band
Mice Parade released an album entitled
Obrigado Saudade in 2004.
Chris Rea also recorded a song entitled Saudade as
a tribute to
Ayrton Senna the Brazilian
three-times Formula One world champion killed on the track.There is
an ambient/noise/shoegazing band from Portland, OR named Saudade.
The rock band
Extreme has a
Portuguese guitarist
Nuno
Bettencourt; the influence of his heritage can be seen in the
band's album titled
Saudades de
Rock. During recording, the mission statement was to bring back
musicality to the medium. "Nancy Spain", a song by
Barney Rush, made famous by an adaptation by
Christy Moore is another example of
the use of saudade in contemporary Irish music, the chorus of which
is:
"No matter where I wander I'm still haunted by your
name
The portrait of your beauty stays the same
Standing by the ocean wondering where you've gone
If you'll return again
Where is the ring I gave to Nancy Spain?"
Variations
Saudade is
also associated with Galicia
, where it is
used similarly to the word morriña (longingness).
Yet, morriña often implies a deeper stage of saudade, a "saudade so
strong it can even kill", as the Galician saying goes. Morriña was
a term often used by emigrant Galicians 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. A literary example showing the undestanding of
the difference and the use of both words is the song
Un canto a
Galicia by
Julio Iglesias. The
word used by Galicians speaking Spanish has spread and became
common in all Spain and even accepted by the
Academia.
In northern Portugal,
morrinha 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, for example of sheep
dropsy, 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.
In Goa
, India
, which was a
Portuguese colony until 1961, some Portuguese influences are still
retained. 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
smarshant (cremation ground) 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.
The word 'saudade' takes on a slightly different form in
Portuguese-speaking Goan families for whom it implies the
once-cherished but never-to-return days of glory of Goa as a prized
possession of Portugal, a notion since then made redundant by the
irrevocable cultural changes that occurred with the end of the
Portuguese regime in these parts. In
Cape Verdean Creole there is the word
sodade or
sodadi, originated in the Portuguese
"saudade" and exactly with the same meaning.
Similar words in other languages
There are other words in other languages which have a similar
meaning. Saudade relates to the
Italian malinconia, 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. Saudade relates to the
French regret, in which one feels a
hard sentiment, meaning hardful, but in nostalgic sense. Saudade
relates to the
Spanish
extrañar, in which one feels a missing part of oneself,
which can never be completely filled by the thing you can't have or
get back. The word can also be translated by the Spanish expression
"echar de menos", which would be roughly an equivalent to the
Portuguese one "ter saudades", missing something or someone.The
Greek word that comes close to translating saudade is νοσταλγία
(
nostalgia). Nostalgia also appears in the Portuguese
language as in the many of other languages with a Indo-European
origin, bearing the same meaning of the Greek word "νοσταλγία".
There is yet another word that, like 'saudade', has no immediate
translation in English: λαχτάρα (
lakhtara). This word
encompasses sadness, longing and hope, as 'saudade' does.
In
Albanian, a direct translation of
saudade is the word
mall, which encompasses feelings of
passionate longing, sadness, and at the same time an undefined
laughter from the same source. Other variations which give
different nuances to this word are:
pëmallim,
përmallje, etc.
The
Torlak dialect of
Serbian has the expression that corresponds
more closely to the Japanese and Greek examples below, but can be
compared to
saudade in a broader sense of longing for the
past. It is
жал за младос(т) /
žal za mlados(t)
i.e. "yearning for the bygone"; since the dialect has not been
standardised as a written language it has various forms.
The term
and the concept has been popularised in standard Serbian through
short prose and plays by Vranje
born
fin-de-siècle writer Borisav
Stanković.
One translation of "saudade" into Dutch is
weemoed; a
fuzzy form of nostalgia. In the Romanian language, the word
dor bears a close meaning to "saudade". It can also stand
for "love" or "desire" having a derivation in the noun
dorinţă and the verb
dori, both of them being
translated usually by "wish" and "to wish". However, although the
word
dor has a complex meaning, it still does not
encompass the full meaning of "saudade".
Dor is derived
from the Latin
dolus ("pain"), the same root as the
Portuguese word
dor, also meaning "pain". In Welsh,
Saudade is said to be the only exact equivalent of the
Welsh
hiraeth and the Cornish
hireth.
Esperanto borrows the word directly, changing the
spelling to accommodate
Esperanto grammar, as
saŭdado.
The
Finnish language has a word
whose meaning corresponds very closely 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.
In Korean,
keurium (그리움) is probably closest to
saudade. It reflects a yearning for anything that has left
a deep impression in the heart - a memory, a place, a person, etc.
In Japan,
saudade expresses a concept similar to the
Japanese word
natsukashii. Although commonly translated as
"dear, beloved, or sweet," in modern conversational Japanese
natsukashii can be used to express a longing for the past.
It connotes both happiness for the fondness of that memory and
goodness of that time, as well as sadness that it is no longer. It
is an adjective for which there is no quite fitting English
translation. It can also mean "sentimental," and is a wistful
emotion. The character used to write natsukashii can also be read
as futokoro 懐 [ふところ] and means "bosom," referring to the depth and
intensity of this emotion that can even be experienced as a
physical feeling or pang in one's chest~ a broken heart, or a heart
feeling moved.
In Armenian, "Saudade" is represented by "կարոտ" (karot) that
describes the deep feeling of missing of something or
somebody.
The Arabic synonym for Saudade is وجد (Wajd), a state of
transparent sadness caused by the memory of a loved one who is not
near, it's widely used in ancient Arabic poetry to describe the
state of the lover's heart as he or she remembers the long gone
love. It's a mixed emotion of sadness for the loss, and happiness
for having had loved that person. In Turkish, the feeling of
saudade is somewhat similar to hüzün .
In
Ithkuil, the root
x-ḑ is
equivalent to saudade.
See also
References
- LOURENÇO, Eduardo. (1999) Mitologia da saudade (Seguido de
Portugal como destino). São Paulo
: Companhia das Letras . ISBN
85-7164-922-7
- RIBEIRO, Bernardim (Torrao, ~1482 - Lisboa, ~1552). Livro
das Saudades.
- Bell, A.F. (1912) In Portugal. London and New York:
The Bodley Head. Quoted in Emmons, Shirlee and Wilbur Watkins Lewis
(2006) Researching the Song: A Lexicon. Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, p. 402.
- Saudade em português e galego. Basto, Cláudio. Revista
Lusitana, Vol XVII,Livraria Clássica Editora, Lisboa 1914
- morriña in the Spanish-language
Diccionario de la Real
Academia.
- Williams, Robert. Lexicon Cornu-britannicum. pg.217
- Aprenda algumas palavras e frases em esperanto -
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