Saudade: The joy of...sadness?
"A pleasure you suffer"
Did you catch the eclipse this week? I loved seeing all the photos from those lucky enough to be in the path of totality. All the eclipse hoopla got me thinking about The Overview Effect, a term that describes the feeling astronauts experience when they see Earth from space. They say it’s this incredible sense of awe and interconnectedness that happens when you view your home planet suspended in the vastness of space. No borders or boundaries, just a fragile blue marble hanging out in the darkness. Most of us will never experience the overview effect, but watching celestial bodies in the sky gives us a little taste of it, don't you think?
Saudade (Portuguese)
Do you have a favorite sad song?
I’m drawn to If You Could Read My Mind by the late Gordon Lightfoot. There's a haunting beauty to it, especially in this particular performance. I have a vivid memory of watching this clip in my twenties: hunched over my desk, eating leftovers, and looping this video on my laptop. For a solid half hour, I luxuriated in its melancholy, feeling something I couldn’t quite describe. But other sad songs have induced this same feeling: Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly, Gilbert O’Sullivan’s Alone Again, Joni Mitchell’s California. It’s not just that these songs are sad. Their sadness is…alluring. Almost pleasurable.
The Portuguese/Galician word “saudade” (pronounced sow-dodge) might be the best word for this feeling. Manuel de Mello, a 17th-century Portuguese writer, described saudade as “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.”
The journalist Jasmine Garsd elaborates on this feeling: “The concept has many definitions, including a melancholy nostalgia for something that perhaps has not even happened. It often carries an assurance that this thing you feel nostalgic for will never happen again.”
In the realm of music, fado is a Portuguese genre that embodies saudade. One Portuguese blogger writes:
“It’s easy to find a fado song whose lyrics explicitly reference saudade or imply the concept. Even the rhythm and tones of many fado songs convey the emotions of saudade. In my opinion, listening to fado is probably the best way to understand saudade.”
Saudade seems to be a delicate balance between pleasure and sadness, a bittersweet happiness. Even the term "bittersweet" doesn't quite capture the depth of saudade. Yet I think it’s something we’ve all experienced.
So what’s on your saudade playlist?
From the archives
How to Be Creative When Your Ancestors Are Watching (Electric Literature): “Ah, a writer. So you don’t like making money?” my uncle asked when I revealed my aspirations to him.
Share-worthy
I liked Laia Garcia-Furtado’s take on The Joy of Sad Girl Music. “The kind of person who loves Sad Girl music knows that a constant awareness of these feelings—“I miss the comfort in being sad,” as honorary Sad Girl Kurt Cobain once sang—means forging an unbreakable connection with everything around her.”
I shared my daily parenting routine for Lindsey Stanberry’s Division of Labor series.
This quick interview clip of Andrew Garfield talking about his late mother and creating art that sews up our wounds. “I hope this grief stays with me because it’s all the unexpressed love.”
-Kristin
Sprachgeful
I lived in Brazil long ago, and saudade was one of the early additions to my vocabulary- and I was only 13. That’s how deeply the sentiment saturates the culture. Bossa nova is the most saudade-soaked music I know. Lovely writing, thank you!