What is “Saudade”?

“Saudade” is a untranslatable Portuguese term that refers to the melancholic longing or yearning. A recurring theme in Portuguese and Brazilian literature, “saudade”refers to a sense of loneliness and incompleteness.

The Portuguese scholar Aubrey Bell attempts to distill this complex concept in his 1912 book “In Portugal”:

“Saudade is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present. – Aubrey Bell