| Saudade |
Website Links For Saudade |
Information AboutSaudade |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT SAUDADE | |
| emotion | |
| portuguese language | |
| translation | |
| psychology | |
| language comparison | |
|
For instance, the sentence "Eu sinto muitas saudades tuas" (I feel so much "saudade" of you) directly translates into "I miss you so much". "Eu sinto muito a tua falta" also has the same meaning in English ("falta" and "saudades" both are translated for missing), but it is different in Portuguese. It also relates to feelings of melancholy and fond memories of days gone-by, lost love and a rush of sadness coupled with a paradoxical joy. Saudade is generally considered one of the Hardest Words To Translate . It originated from the Latin word ''solitate'' (loneliness, solitude), but with a different meaning. Loneliness in Portuguese is ''solidão'', also with the same word origin. Few other languages in the world have a word with such meaning, making Saudade a distinct mark of Portuguese culture. 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 . 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 of Nostalgia as a feeling one has for a loved one that has died and saudade as a feeling one has for a loved one that has disappeared. Nostalgia is located in the past and is somewhat conformist while saudades is very present, anguishing, anxious and extends to the future. 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. 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 wistful longing for completeness or wholeness and the yearning for presence (as opposed to absence), that is to say, a strong desire to ''matar saudades'' (literally, ''to kill the saudade''). In the latter half of the 20th century Saudade has become 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 . 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 Etienne Daho and Chris Rea also produced a song by the same name. 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 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 we start to feel our heart crushing. The pain and these mixed feelings are named Saudade. It is also used to refer to the feeling of being far from people you do love, e.g., your sister, your father, your grandparents, your friends; it can be applied to places you miss, pets you miss, things you used to do in your childhood, in the past... VARIATIONS Banzo In Brazil ian Portuguese, the word banzo is also similar to saudades but it refers to the morbid saudades felt by a black slave towards his culture. In common use, banzo means saudade from one own's culture and homeland, as opposed to a loved one, a family member, a moment in time, etc. The Houaiss Portuguese dictionary defines banzo as "the psychological process caused by the removal from culture that put black slaves from Africa, transported to distant lands, into an initial state of arousal followed by impulses of rage and destruction and then a deep nostalgia that induced apathy, starving and, quite often, madness or death." Although the dictionary expands the definition to a psychological process, the cause is clearly saudades from one's culture. Banzo is used in a manner that is a little different from how you would use an emotion word. You might say that you feel banzo, but more often people say that they have banzo, that they are banzo or that they are feeling the banzo. When you feel banzo, it is almost like an external emotion that comes to you as an outside spiritual entity that embodies you. The word is probably from an Africa n origin by its sound and certainly not of Latin origin. The use of the emotion as a spirit that lands on you might have come along with this etymological origin. It seems that due to historical coincidences Brazil has two words for this specific emotion of longing and missing: saudades and banzo. Semantically, banzo is more specific than Saudades. So that if you feel banzo you also feel saudades but not vice versa. Morriña Saudade is also associated with Galicia (''morriña''), an autonomous community in northern Spain whose language ( Galician , or ''Galego'') is related to Portuguese and whose culture is influenced by Spain, Portugal and also the Celtic countries. In northern Portugal, ''morrinha'' (written differently, but pronounced alike) is a regional word to describe sprinkles - ''morrinhar'' (to sprinkle), most common Portuguese word elsewhere is ''chuvisco'' and ''chuviscar''. ''Morrinha'' is also used in this region for referring to sick animals, and occasionally to sick or sad people, often with irony. It's 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 . Kaiho Interestingly, Finnish Language has a word whose meaning translates 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. 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''. Use in Goa, India In Margao, Goa, India, a suburb has the street name 'Rua de Saudades'. It was aptly named because that very street has the Christian cemetery, the Hindu 'smashant' or crematorium and the Muslim 'quabrastan' or cemetery. Most people living in the city of Margao that pass by this street would agree that the name of the street could not be any other, as they often think of fond memories of a friend, loved one or relative whose remains went past that road. Goa was a Portuguese colony until 1961, hence the Portuguese influences. EXTERNAL LINKS |
|
|