Saudade

I have "found" a Portuguese word that seems to encompass a feeling I've felt but haven't been able to put into words.
To oversimplify it:

Image via Wikipedia

Saudade: feeling caused by missing someone or something.

Kind of like "añoro", "hechar de menos" or even "morriña" (although the latter word most often applies to saudade when associated with a longing for the motherland, and its an even more obscure word than Saudade)

Maybe like "Nostalgia" but it differs in that Saudade does not always carry negative connotations. It rather applies to the unnatural state of being separated from that which shares our same essence.

"Saudade is, therefore, one of the deepest human feelings, and the greatness of its power is exactly that it transcends itself, creating other feelings, which, by their turn, stimulate men. And that’s certainly one of the difficulties of translating or even grasping the philosophical significance of saudade: saudade becomes greater and deeper while illuminating other feelings, but it also becomes more difficult to understand it. If this is not enough, we can quote Marânus for a last time:


Eu não sou a alegria, mas apenas
A trágica matéria que a produz.
Na grande escuridão, sou facho a arder
E não avisto minha própria luz!

I am not happiness, but only
The tragic substance that produces it.
In the great darkness, I am a burning flambeau
And I don’t see my own light.
(Pascoaes, 1920, p.216)"

http://www.proz.com/translation-articles/articles/1399/1/Aesthetics-of-Saudade


Saudade.

I feel it daily. It has become part of my composition. Without melancholy or over sentimentalism.
It just is. And I just feel it.
For my brothers, my father, The Christmas winds and a time of innocence.

I can't define it, but I know it. Just as I know, but cannot describe, the intensity of the color red.

Saudade.