Are There Emotions Unique to Certain Cultures?
Michael Amoruso discusses the Portuguese concept of saudade, which describes the intense experience of “the presence of absence” and longing for something or someone irretrievably lost, and reflects on the different forms this feeling can take and why, in some way, it is familiar to all of us.
“I pray for friends I’ve lost, for family members who have passed away, like my uncle,” Bruno tells me. We were speaking in the nave of the Church of Santa Cruz dos Enforcados, a small Catholic chapel in downtown São Paulo. Built near the city’s former gallows, it’s a place where people regularly come to pray for the dead. “When I’m here, I feel good,” he says. “I even feel that those on the other side feel good too.” Bruno told me there’s something special about this place that gives him a certain “feeling.” “The fact that you remember, commemorate someone who treated you well, brings you even more saudade,” Bruno explains.
For Portuguese speakers, saudade is a key word for describing emotions. Somewhat similar to nostalgia or longing, the term has no direct equivalent in English. As Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil sings in the song “Toda Saudade” (“All the Saudade”), it is the presence of the absence “of a person or a place—basically, something.” You can feel saudades (the singular and plural forms are interchangeable here) for people or places, as well as for sounds, smells, and food. You can even feel saudades for saudade itself. That’s because, as a well-known Portuguese proverb says, “it’s good to have saudades” (é bom ter saudades). There is a certain pleasure in this feeling. Along with the pain, the sting of saudade also brings a reminder of past happiness.
In 1912, Portuguese poet Teixeira de Pascoaes defined saudade as “a longing for a beloved thing, made painful by its absence.” It’s an intense feeling, often said to be experienced in the heart. The language of saudade strikes a chord. Portuguese speakers complain of “dying of saudades” (morrendo de saudades) or wanting to “kill saudades” (matar saudades) by fulfilling a desire. Despite the hyperbole, the mortal poetics of the word show how emotional bonds give human life meaning.
The Origins and Cultural Significance of Saudade
By tradition, saudade is associated with the feelings of distance and loss experienced by the families of seafaring men during the Portuguese Age of Discovery. While this folk history conveys the poetic ambiguity of the term, its etymology is unclear. The archaic form “soidade” appears in 13th-century troubadour poetry about the sadness of separated lovers. Most researchers believe this form comes from the Latin “solitate” (solitude) and may have later been influenced by the Portuguese word “saudar” (to greet), before taking its modern form. However, some scholars suggest alternative origins, including a theory linking saudade to the Arabic word “sawda,” which can mean a dark or melancholic mood. This is an important discussion: saudade is an essential part of Portuguese self-understanding, and the question of its origin is tied to deeper issues of Portuguese ethnicity and identity.
In the early 20th century, the literary movement “Saudosismo” played a defining role in turning saudade into a marker of Portuguese identity. Saudosismo was founded two years after the Republican Revolution of 1910, which ended centuries of monarchy, and promised cultural renewal in uncertain times. In his article “The Making of Saudade” (2000), Portuguese anthropologist João Leal writes that the saudosistas sought to restore the “lost greatness” of Portuguese cultural life, “replacing foreign influences, which they saw as responsible for the country’s decline after the Age of Discovery, with a cult of ‘Portuguese things’ reflecting the true ‘Portuguese soul.’” By declaring saudade the authentic expression of the “Lusitanian spirit,” the movement placed this emotion at the center of its cultural cult.
Portuguese speakers often boast that saudade is untranslatable. This claim goes back centuries—King Duarte I of Portugal, who reigned from 1433 to 1438, noted the uniqueness of saudade as early as the 15th century—but its modern popularity is owed to the saudosistas. In the movement’s manifesto, Pascoaes repeated the claim that the term cannot be translated and emphasized that “the Portuguese are the only people who feel saudade.” Linking this feeling to Portuguese ethnogenesis, he believed that the sublime blend of passion and pain characteristic of saudade reflected the “perfect synthesis” of Aryan and Semitic blood. Although contemporaries pointed out close equivalents in other languages, Pascoaes’s nationalist fascination with saudade appealed to a cultural elite searching for its own path.
Are Some Emotions Truly Culture-Specific?
Are emotions like saudade unique to certain cultures, or do people everywhere experience the same range of emotions, but recognize and emphasize them differently depending on the emotional concepts their culture provides? Psychologists Yu Niiya, Phoebe Ellsworth, and Susumu Yamaguchi suggest that “emotion words in speech can act as magnets for emotional experience, drawing vague feelings” toward familiar concepts. This may also mean that words for emotions, like “nostalgia” or “saudade,” acquire different emotional shades in different places and historical periods.
Brazilian intellectuals often distinguish their own saudade from the Portuguese version. In 1940, Brazilian writer Oswaldo Orico described Brazilian saudade as “more happy than sad, more imagination than pain… not weeping, but singing saudade.” Orico’s idea of a happy saudade reflected the lively, optimistic concept of brasilidade (“Brazilianness”), which emerged during the first Getúlio Vargas regime (1930–1945). But saudade can also express criticism or protest. In a 2017 study of saudade in Brazilian cinema, University of Missouri cultural scholar Jack Draper writes that mid-20th-century directors like Humberto Mauro used saudade for rural folk life as a way to interpret the dominance of development ideas and rural-to-urban migration. In today’s polarized political climate, some conservatives openly express saudades for the Brazilian military dictatorship, which they see as an antidote to widespread corruption, violence, and economic problems.
But can you really feel saudades for a dictatorship, an empire, or any other form of government? Is this word so valuable, influential, and widespread that it can be easily used for political purposes? Perhaps both are true. Looking at its devotees, like Bruno in the Church of Santa Cruz, one thing is clear: saudade is always a pleasure and a luxury. This feeling, being the very experience of loss, somehow manages to give back. It becomes a revelation: when we are caught in saudade, we realize what is most important to us, what makes us who we are.