Saudade: What Emotion Does This Portuguese Word Describe?
Saudade is that empty feeling we get when the person we love is far away. It is that flame that burns within us and that will never go out… The warm breeze that evokes our memory of home in us. Or the melancholy feeling of knowing that something or someone is not coming back to us.
Saudade is the presence of absence. The longing for something or someone that we have fond memories of but also know that it will probably belong to the past. A deep emotion as a mix of sadness and affection. It gives us a bittersweet taste of something that will never come, even if we keep hoping.
Saudade, a powerful word
Not a word in Dutch conveys the exact feeling that comes from a beautiful memory that also hurts. But the Portuguese do have one. They express it with the beautiful word saudade. A mysterious, meaningful word.
Many philosophers and linguists have researched it and tried to find out where it comes from. But they cannot agree. In fact, it is very difficult to agree on exactly what it means.
Abstract and hard to put your finger on, this word encompasses a whole collection of emotions and feelings. It evokes something that is far away through feelings of the present. In essence, as Manuel de Mello, a Portuguese writer, describes it: “ bem que se padece i mal que se disfruta” (the good we suffer from and the bad we enjoy).
We can also look at it from a philosophical perspective. Ramón Piñero describes the term as a state of mind that comes from a feeling of loneliness. And so the different kinds of loneliness can evoke different kinds of saudade. There is one that we can find in our circumstances (objective) and one that we experience privately (subjective).
Other explanations link it to our attempts to return to a basic sense of security. By, for example, the ‘instinct of death,’ as the doctor Novoa Santos explains. Or through the emotional awakening that our hometown causes. The meaning of this word encompasses so much, but we can agree that it is a psychological state.
Beyond nostalgia
Sometimes people describe saudade as nostalgia. But the essence of this word goes far beyond the limits of nostalgia. This feeling is not just missing something. It goes further: to be aware of the importance that specific people and moments have had in our lives. Knowing that nothing in us will ever be the same again.
As we have said, this term hits us like a breaking wave on the beach of our consciousness. A stormy sea where absence takes on a sense of presence as it overflows our inner world.
That’s when we remember those eyes we’ll never see again. Or the skin we’ll never touch again. The smell of the place we grew up in, the backyard we played in as kids. All this while we watch the sun set slowly but surely away from home. Saudade is where the happiness of memory meets the sadness of absence.
Writers of the Romantic period understood this term all too well. Because, as the writer and actor Miguel Falabella said, the most painful saudade is the saudade that comes from someone we still love. The one we associate with emptiness because we know it’s impossible to be together again.
But we accept it as fate and when a sad breeze touches our face, we remember again how happy we were. A beautiful, but also painful way of loving..
Softening the bittersweet taste of memories
Saudade hurts. But another side of it is happiness. Because when we feel it, it goes beyond our feelings. We remember the happiness and the feeling of sadness. At the same time, we know all too well that we cannot get that happiness back.
It is learning to cherish the most bittersweet aspect of the memory. It’s paradoxical but it’s comforting.
Specifically , saudade means feeling life with every atom in your body. And learn to appreciate everything around us. Every moment, every detail, every person. What each of them can evoke in us this unique emotion somewhere between pain and happiness.
And what about you, when will saudade visit you?
