The Meaning of Brazilian Portuguese word "Saudade"

Saudade 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 the distant future. It often carries a fatalistic tone implying a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.

In 2004, 'saudade' was considered, according to an English researcher,nthe seventh hardest expression in the world to translate. Also, in 2007 the word was determined by a German investigation[3] to be the sixth most beautiful word in the world.

Concept

In his book In Portugal (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.[4]

'Saudade' is often translated into English as nostalgia, but it is a more intense feeling. In an interview about his 1990 album The Good Son, Nick Cave characterized in this way the feeling that stressed his new work:

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.

Nostalgia implies mixed feelings, 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.

For instance, the phrases "Tenho saudades tuas" (literally, "I have 'saudade' for you") and "Eu sinto a tua falta" ("I feel your absence") would each be translated into English as "I miss you" — both "falta" and "saudade" being translated as "missing." However, these two statements carry very different sentiments in Portuguese. The first sentence is never told to anyone personally, but the second can be. The first 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 would be said by someone who has divorced, or whose partner is not usually at home, and would be said personally.

One of the best descriptions of the word 'saudade' was made by Chico Buarque de Hollanda on his song Pedaço de mim, when he says. "saudade é arrumar o quarto do filho que já morreu." which roughly translates to "saudade is to tidy the bedroom of a son who has already died."

They made us believe

They made us believe that real love, the one that’s strong, only happens once, more likely before your 30ths.

They never told us that love is not something that you can put in motion, neither has time schedule.

They made us believe that each one of us is the half of an orange, and that life only makes sense when u find that other half.

They did not tell us that we were born as whole, and that no-one in our lives deserve to carry on his back such responsibility of completing what is missing on us: we grow through life by ourselves. If we have a good company it’s just more pleasant.

They made us believe in a formula “two in one”: two people sharing the same line of thinking, same ideas, and that it is what works.

It’s never been told that it has another name: invalidation, that only two individuals with their own personality is how you can have a healthy relationship. It has been made to believe that marriage is an obliged institution and that fantasies out of hour should be repressed.

They made us believe that the thin and beautiful are the ones who is more loved, that the ones that have little sex are boring, and the ones that has a lot of it are not trustful, and that will always have a old shoes to a crooked foot; what they forgot to tell us is that there are more crooked minds than feet.

They made us believe that there’s one way formula to be happy, the same one to everybody, and the ones that escape from that are condemned to be delinquents.

We have never been told that those formulas go wrong, they get people frustrated, they are alienating, and that we can try other alternatives.

Oh! Also they did not tell us that no one will tell those things to us. Each and everyone of us will have to learn by ourselves.

And, when we get to the point that you are in love with yourself first, that’s when you can fall in love with somebody.

- John Lennon

Anton Chekhov on the 8 Qualities of Cultured People

MOSCOW, 1886.

… You have often complained to me that people “don’t understand you”! Goethe and Newton did not complain of that…. Only Christ complained of it, but He was speaking of His doctrine and not of Himself…. People understand you perfectly well. And if you do not understand yourself, it is not their fault.

I assure you as a brother and as a friend I understand you and feel for you with all my heart. I know your good qualities as I know my five fingers; I value and deeply respect them. If you like, to prove that I understand you, I can enumerate those qualities. I think you are kind to the point of softness, magnanimous, unselfish, ready to share your last farthing; you have no envy nor hatred; you are simple-hearted, you pity men and beasts; you are trustful, without spite or guile, and do not remember evil…. You have a gift from above such as other people have not: you have talent. This talent places you above millions of men, for on earth only one out of two millions is an artist. Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.

You have only one failing, and the falseness of your position, and your unhappiness and your catarrh of the bowels are all due to it. That is your utter lack of culture. Forgive me, please, but veritas magis amicitiae…. You see, life has its conditions. In order to feel comfortable among educated people, to be at home and happy with them, one must be cultured to a certain extent. Talent has brought you into such a circle, you belong to it, but … you are drawn away from it, and you vacillate between cultured people and the lodgers vis-a-vis.

Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions:

1.They respect human personality, and therefore they are always kind, gentle, polite, and ready to give in to others. They do not make a row because of a hammer or a lost piece of india-rubber; if they live with anyone they do not regard it as a favour and, going away, they do not say “nobody can live with you.” They forgive noise and cold and dried-up meat and witticisms and the presence of strangers in their homes.

2.They have sympathy not for beggars and cats alone. Their heart aches for what the eye does not see….
They sit up at night in order to help P…., to pay for brothers at the University, and to buy clothes for their mother.

3.They respect the property of others, and therefor pay their debts.

4.They are sincere, and dread lying like fire. They don’t lie even in small things. A lie is insulting to the listener and puts him in a lower position in the eyes of the speaker. They do not pose, they behave in the street as they do at home, they do not show off before their humbler comrades. They are not given to babbling and forcing their uninvited confidences on others. Out of respect for other people’s ears they more often keep silent than talk.

5.They do not disparage themselves to rouse compassion. They do not play on the strings of other people’s hearts so that they may sigh and make much of them. They do not say “I am misunderstood,” or “I have become second-rate,” because all this is striving after cheap effect, is vulgar, stale, false….

6.They have no shallow vanity. They do not care for such false diamonds as knowing celebrities, shaking hands with the drunken P., [Translator's Note: Probably Palmin, a minor poet.] listening to the raptures of a stray spectator in a picture show, being renowned in the taverns…. If they do a pennyworth they do not strut about as though they had done a hundred roubles’ worth, and do not brag of having the entry where others are not admitted…. The truly talented always keep in obscurity among the crowd, as far as possible from advertisement…. Even Krylov has said that an empty barrel echoes more loudly than a full one.

7.If they have a talent they respect it. They sacrifice to it rest, women, wine, vanity…. They are proud of their talent…. Besides, they are fastidious.

8.They develop the aesthetic feeling in themselves. They cannot go to sleep in their clothes, see cracks full of bugs on the walls, breathe bad air, walk on a floor that has been spat upon, cook their meals over an oil stove. They seek as far as possible to restrain and ennoble the sexual instinct…. What they want in a woman is not a bed-fellow … They do not ask for the cleverness which shows itself in continual lying. They want especially, if they are artists, freshness, elegance, humanity, the capacity for motherhood…. They do not swill vodka at all hours of the day and night, do not sniff at cupboards, for they are not pigs and know they are not. They drink only when they are free, on occasion…. For they want mens sana in corpore sano [a healthy mind in a healthy body].
And so on. This is what cultured people are like. In order to be cultured and not to stand below the level of your surroundings it is not enough to have read “The Pickwick Papers” and learnt a monologue from “Faust.” …

What is needed is constant work, day and night, constant reading, study, will…. Every hour is precious for it…. Come to us, smash the vodka bottle, lie down and read…. Turgenev, if you like, whom you have not read.

You must drop your vanity, you are not a child … you will soon be thirty.

It is time!

I expect you…. We all expect you.

Chekhov and  family

Does anybody know where is it?