“Melancholia is an ignored saudade.” – Aracy de Carvalho

In almost every language and culture there are some words, expressions and terms that are hard to translate into other languages. It gets close with an adaptation, but it is never 100% accurate. Terms often get lost in translation because a word is not simply a word, it has to do with so many things, such as history, feelings and memories.

With the Portuguese language it is not any different. Our language has many expressions that we wish we could simply express their meaning in English, but is just untranslatable. Today we will talk about one of the hardest Portuguese words to translate: saudade.

According to the Michaelis Brazilian Portuguese dictionary, saudade can be defined as:

“1- a nostalgic and soft nostalgia of distant people and things; 2- Nostalgia; 3- Remembrance, memories and regards; 4- a yearning for past things”. (translated freely)

This word refers to a melancholic longing or yearning. This term often appears in Brazilian and Portuguese literature explaining an evocation of a sense of bleakness, incompleteness, solitude and loneliness. Writers have described it as “the love that remains after someone is not longer present”, “the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again”. It is common to say that it brings sadness and happiness altogether, one feel sad for missing and happy for having experienced the feeling.

The expression we use in Brazil to express saudade of someone is “tenho saudades de você”, it is translated in English as “I miss you”, but we must say that it carries such a deeper and much stronger tone. Another expression with this word that we use is “Que saudade!” which is a general feeling of longing of something.

Although saudade and nostalgia might be similar words, they are not the same. Both are a mixed feeling of sadness and happiness, but in nostalgia one feels sad for an impossible return, when in saudade there is a hope that what is being missed might return, even though it is unlikely or inaccessible.

Our literature is very rich and it reflects our multi-dimensional nature. Undoubtebly, it is an essential and indispensable part of Brazil. That being said, to facilitate the understanding of this potential and poetic word, we translated 10 fragments of Brazilian writers explaining the word in their collected works:

“Saudade is one of the most urgent feelings that exists.” – Clarice Linspector

“But that is saudades; it is to elapse and elapse again and again old memories.” – Machado de Assis

“Saudade is the memory of the heart.” – Neto Coelho

“Saudade needs distance to grow.” – Pedro Bloch

“Saudade is a little bit of this incertitude of separation.” – José Américo de Almeida

“Melancholia is a ignored saudade.” – Aracy de Carvalho

“Forever is a long time. Time does not stops! Only saudades makes things stuck in the past.” – Mario Quintana

“Saudades: the presence of the absents.” – Olavo Bilac

“We also have saudades of what did not exist, and it hurts a lot” – Carlos Drummond de Andradade

“If by the force of the distance you’re absence. By the force existent in saudade, you will return.” – Padre Fábio de Melo

We are sure that if you decide to come to Brazil, after you come back to our country you will feel saudade of the experiences you had here!