Saudade, A Deep Emotional State
Saudade is to feel the emptiness generated by the distance existing with the loved one, this inner burning that never goes out. .. The deep breath that revives the memory of our lands or the melancholy resulting from knowing that something or someone will not come back.
Saudade is the presence of a lack. The desire for something or someone whose tenderness we remember but know will be difficult to experience again. A deep emotional state that mixes sadness with other feelings, leaving the bittersweet feeling that it won’t happen again, but that we keep hoping for.
Saudade, a strong word
No French word allows to encompass at the same time the feeling coming from a joyful memory causing also suffering. Portuguese culture has achieved this, expressing it through the pretty term saudade . A mysterious word loaded with meaning that many philologists and linguists have studied to determine its origin without ever finding an agreement. It is for this reason that it is so difficult to agree on its meaning.
Unable to materialize, this word encompasses a sum of emotions and sensations that come back from past memories. An essence that Manuel Melo, Portuguese writer, describes as “ bem que se padece y mal que se disfruta ” (a good inflicted and a evil we enjoy).
On the other hand, from a philosophical point of view, Ramón Piñero describes this term as the state of mind emanating from a feeling of loneliness. So that the various forms of loneliness result from the different modes of saudades: those that we enjoy in a context (objective) and those that we experience in intimacy (subjective).
Other explanations link it with these attempts to reconnect with this basic security through the death instinct, as explained by Doctor Novoa Santos, or with the emotional awakening that the place of origin provokes. We can see that there is a wide range of meanings tending to a psychological state.
Beyond nostalgia
Although saudade is identified with nostalgia or melancholy, the vapors of its essence pass through the walls of this definition. It is not only a question of feeling a lack, but of going beyond this feeling to realize the importance that certain people or moments have had in our life. Knowing that nothing will be the same as it once was.
As we have seen previously, this term refers to the breaking of the wave on the beach of our consciousness. An eddy of the sea whose absence is felt by flooding our inner world. It is the moment when we think of his eyes with which we will not exchange glances again, of that skin that we will never touch again or of the smell of the place where we grew up, the garden of our childhood, while we are witnessing the timid but constant fall of the sun on the horizon. Saudade is the meeting point between the joy of remembering and the pain resulting from its absence.
This is very well understood by the romantics. Indeed, as the writer and actor Miguel Falabella says, the saudade that hurts the most is the one that emanates from a person for whom love is always present. The one that corresponds to the emptiness resulting from knowing that it will be impossible to be reunited again, while accepting it as part of destiny, remembering the joy of having been together even as we let us feel the breath of sadness on the back of our necks. A beautiful and painful way of loving …
Soften the bittersweet feeling of memory
The saudade is painful but also involves joy through one of its facets because when we perceive it, we transcend what we feel. We move on to remember the joy and feel the sadness knowing that it will be impossible to regain the feelings of happiness that we had experienced.
It is like learning to appreciate the bittersweet character of memory. The one putting into action opposing poles but which find a certain balance and sometimes manage to console us …
Ultimately, saudade means feeling life through every pore of our skin and learning to value everything around us. Every moment, every detail, every person can awaken this emotional state that keeps us between joy and sadness.
And you… when do you catch up with the saudades?
