Leituras pela madrugada - Saudade: the untranslatable word for the presence of absence

Saudade: the untranslatable word for the presence of absence

Michael Amoruso

Writing in 1912, the Portuguese poet Teixeira de Pascoaes defined saudadeas ‘desire for the beloved thing, made painful by its absence’. It is an acute feeling, often described as occurring in the heart. The language of saudade is evocative. Portuguese speakers complain of ‘dying of saudades’ (morrendo de saudades), or wanting to ‘kill saudades’ (matar saudades) by fulfilling desire. Though hyperbolic, the word’s morbid poetics throw light on how affective ties make for a meaningful human life....
...
Are there culturally specific emotions? At issue is whether the emotions signified by words such as saudade are unique to particular cultures, or instead whether humans everywhere can experience the same range of emotions but recognise and emphasise those emotions differently based on the cultural availability of certain emotion concepts. The psychologists Yu Niiya, Phoebe Ellsworth and Susumu Yamaguchi suggest that ‘emotions named by a language may act as magnets for emotional experience, attracting undefined feelings’ toward well-known concepts. This would also mean that emotion words such as nostalgia or saudade take on different affective shadings in different places and historical periods.

Brazilian intellectuals have often distinguished their saudade from that of the Portuguese. In 1940, the Brazilian writer Osvaldo Orico described Brazilian saudade as ‘more happy than sad, more imagination than pain … a saudadethat does not cry, but sings’.