Friday, December 30, 2011

Saudade





There is no exactly translation to that Portuguese word,
but once you feel it (and we all have felt it too many times)
you don't need a translation, for it speaks deep inside your heart and soul.


The word saudade comes from de Latin solitatem, which means solitude. From that word came solidade, soidade e finally saudade.
That is the Portuguese word to describe sentiments like missing someone or something, yet not so simple as 'I miss you' or 'I miss my cat'.

Saudade is more than a pretty word, it is a feeling that can be strange, contradictory, bitter and sweet.
The bitter side is the one that hurts inside, a knot in the heart that makes us cry. Worse than solitude, where the hope to find or to re-encounter someone is possible. With saudade, the void inside can't be filled.

The sweet part is the inspiration; songs and poems inspired by saudade, to make one remember something that has been the source of smiles.

Like the cake that only a mother could bake. Useless to ask someone else to bake the same kind of cake, no other cake will taste quite the same as the mother used to bake. Her cake is part of a past, which will never come back.

Saudade is a complex word, in no other language a single word define it completely.


Saudade is among the 10 most untranslatable words.

Here few examples of saudade:


"Saudade is to tidy the room
of the missing child..."

"Saudade is like pain
felt on an amputated member"

excerpt from the song 'Pedaço de mim' 
by Chico Buarque - Brazilian song writer

"The house of sauade calls memory: it's a small cabin in the corner of a heart"
 Henrique M. Coelho Neto - Brazilian novels writer

"Saudade is a sentiment from the heart not from the reason"
Dom Duarte King of Portugal

Forever is a long time. Time doesn't stand still! Only saudade makes things stay still in time"
Mario Quintana - Brazilian poet and journalist

"The best cure for saudade is loss of memory"
Carlos Drummond de Andrade - Brazilian poet

If you want to read more about saudade...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade

1 comment:

howard said...

This is something i have learned from you, this emotion- Saudade. It sems a very Brazilian thing, and i agree I do not know of an equivalent in my American experience. I have felt it in so many precious things that have been lost to time and circumstances. To know something and then to be without it, when it seems impossible to have it again--yet to want and miss it. It not a mere sadness, it is a realization and an acceptance of the unacceptable. As I said, this is something i have learned from you--muito obrigado meu Bom.

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