“Saudade”: the legendary Portuguese word and its unique meaning
I can’t remember where exactly I was when I saw one of my favorite paintings for the first time. Don’t know if it was inside of a classroom, escaping some crazy history classes, or during an excursion. But I can remember the times when I was there, inside of an historical building — São Paulo’s State Pinacoteca, one of my favorite places in my hometown — stuck in front of a huge border and admiring the picture from Brazilian painter Almeida Júnior (that illustrates this text). The image of a woman crying while reading a letter speaks by itself. But it gets more and more deep and complex while followed by it’s title: “Saudade”.
Before getting deeper to the meaning of this word, I would like to do a paralel between the painter and his creature. José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior ( 8 May 1850, Itu — 13 November 1899, Piracicaba) was one of the first Realism painters in Brazil, and is well known between art enthusiasts for his portraits of bucolic sceneries, like nature in the countryside and typical day-to-day life of common people. His identity as a painter was also sustained by his personal life, since many women he painted had traces and characteristics of his lover — a case that ended up on his murderer when the lady’s husband discovered about the affair. All of that passion had a certain result on the audience, since his personality on painting had the gift of awaking the feeling of idendity on the public. Because, to be as realistic as the painting, we all already cried somehow by reading a letter of someone we love, seeing a picture, an object, being caught suddenly by a strong memory and so on.
Now, let’s go back to “saudade” — the word in Portuguese and the feeling itself. Althought some Portuguese speakers would defend that this is a unique word for the language and, by consequence, impossible to translate, some linguists and researchers would totally disagree by showing examples of equivalent words in Latin languages. If English resumes it all by missing (“I miss you, I miss someone, I miss something”), languages like Spanish brings that missing part, with a little bit of solitude, by using therms like soledad. In German, that goes even deeper — and it’s important to use an example of a fantastic German teacher and researcher about that particular word in Portuguese…
Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos (15 March 1851, Berlin — 18 November 1925, Porto) dedicated her career to make a paralel between the Portuguese and German culture and languages, making researches, teaching and writing. She contested the argument of “saudade” having no translation by giving examples of how this literal sentiment is present in German words like “Sehnsucht” or “Heimweh”. But she didn’t ignore, and went deeper, on the context where the Portuguese word was conceived. And this takes us for the navigators, the poetry of ancient Portuguese times with “cantigas de amor e amigo” (from love and friendship). Suffering can be about pleasure: contrary of spanish writers and poets, the portuguese ones were not dramatic by existence, but had the capacity of converting melancholy in lyricism.
And so it is: translating “saudade” is difficult because the word was born with the loneliness of those captains and mariners on board ships, saying goodbye for the seas in Portugal and the board line that would become a view of what nowadays is called Tejo River. “Saudade” was about seeing the lands of the country escaping in front of the eyes and, by consequence, during the years, was more and more associated with the feeling of some part was missing when being alone. The lyrical melancholy also contaminated the Brazilian Portuguese: we can use “saudade” to describe a very painful feeling when losing someone or something we love, but we can also feel the “saudade boa” (good saudade) when it’s painful and a pleasure by remembering some missing part in a good way — by pushing good memories of old times that came to an end.
I can see Portuguese people associating the “saudade” with the smell of some places in Lisbon, the castles of such markable history, and the blue tones of the sky mixed with the typical food coming from those amazing restaurants. Brazilian people find that “saudade” by the endless vision of the sea, the beautiful mountains of the countryside, the smell of cake and so many homemade and comfort food of grandmothers and even the coffee surrounding the atmosphere. You can’t translate it properly because, in Portugal or Brazil, it’s about the memory that people have as some aspects of national identity, but also by the solitude and beautiful melancholy that comes with that sentiment.
Right now, hearing such different accents, I understand how fascinated the German teacher Carolina Michaëlis (the first woman to teach in a portuguese university — Universidade de Coimbra) by mixing some cultures and going deeper with the meaning of a language that was not her mother tongue. Maybe soon I will find some German aspects to go deeper and deeper, caught by how fascinating languages can be. But now, as much as the painter of Almeida Júnior, which I was describing earlier on this text, I find myself crying by reading, seeing pictures and remembering my past. And will, for sure, cry when my time in beautiful black forests come to an end.
“Saudade” is on everything. Everyone can feel it. And the impact of that sentiment is as strong as the way that this unique word sounds on the mouth when it’s spoken. It hurts, but it’s beautiful — a beauty difficult to describe.