saudade

 

Saudade (singular) or Saudades (plural) (pron. IPA [sɐu'dad(ɨ)] in European Portuguese, [saw'ðaðe] in Galician, and [sau'dadʒi] or [sau'dadi] in Brazilian Portuguese) is a Portuguese and Galician 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.

Expanded definition

Saudade has no direct English translation; its translation is dependent on context. It originates 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.

”

^[1]

Saudade is different than 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.

Historical origins

The word saudade was used in the Cancioneiro da Ajuda ( XIII century), Cancioneiro da Vaticana and by poets of the time of by King Denis of Portugal. ^[2] 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; 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).

The same feeling is also found in Brazil, the destination of immigrants and African slaves 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 vastness 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 Western Europe.

Besides the implications derived from an emigratory trend from the motherland, saudade is historically speaking the term meant to describe the decline of Portugal's role in world politics and power. During the so called 'Golden Age', synonymous with the Era of discoveries, Portugal had undeniably risen to the status of a world power, its monarchy one of the richest in Europe at the time.

Since then, 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 that was once known to Portugal).

Saudade and 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.

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 is also the title of two flute solos by the band Shpongle (Parts I & II).

The singer Amália Rodrigues typified themes of saudade.

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 wistful song 'Saudade' that evokes it quite well with its sound (and it is also appropriately the last track) on their album Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven.

A jazz fusion trio consisting of John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette, and Larry Goldings released an album dedicated to drumming legend 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.

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.

Variations

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, for example of sheep dropsy^[3], 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 used by Galicians speaking Spanish has spread and became common in all Spain and even accepted by the Academia^[3].

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.

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.

Use in Cape Verde

In Cape Verdean Creole there is the word sodade or sodadi, originated in the Portuguese "saudade" and exactly with the same meaning.

Translations and similar words in other languages

Finnish Translation

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.

Italian translation

Saudade can be translated in Italian 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.

Spanish translation

Saudade can be translated in Spanish as extrañar, in which one feels a missing part of himself and it never be totally fulled by that thing you can't have or get back.

Dor - Romanian

In the Romanian language there is the word "dor" that bears the same meaning as "saudade". It can also stand for "love" or "desire" having a derivation in the noun "dorinta" and the verb "dori" both of them being translated usually by "wish" and "to wish". However the word "dor" has a complex meaning and it covers the meanings range of "saudade".

Greek translation

The Greek word that comes the closest 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".

Turkish translation

In Turkish, the feeling of saudade can be translated as hüzün.

See Also

• Sehnsucht
• Mono no aware

References

• (Portuguese) LOURENÇO, Eduardo. (1999) Mitologia da saudade (Seguido de Portugal como destino). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras . ISBN 85-7164-922-7

1. ^ 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.
2. ^ Saudade em português e galego. Basto, Cláudio. Revista Lusitana, Vol XVII,Livraria Clássica Editora, Lisboa 1914
3. ^ ^{a b}

External links

• A Saudades page for Portuguese-Sephardic history and culture
• Aesthetics of Saudade - Essay comprising the major theories and explaining the doubts surrounding the translation of saudade

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