Solace and saudade

[Celerity]

In the face of an inscrutable, indifferent universe, Pessoa suggests we cultivate a certain longing for the elusive horizon

https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-find-a-strange-solace-in-the-indifference-of-the-universe



An elusive point sits on the horizon. A deep yearning stirs within to move closer to this point, perhaps in search of the unknown, perhaps in search of questions without answers. It is a yearning that will never be fulfilled. It is a point never reached. This yearning is the all-too-human inclination for our lives to somehow be different than they are, and for the universe not to be indifferent to our cares and concerns. In her essay ‘The Blue of Distance’ (2005), the US author Rebecca Solnit associates this point never-reached with the colour blue. She writes:



When combined with the longing for something absent, for something that simply can’t be, this is saudade, a Portuguese expression for a state akin to melancholic longing. A complex emotion where a melancholic grey seeps into the distant blue. Lacking any easy English translation, saudade seems to be an emotion that can be expressed only through poetry or other evocations of its melancholic longing. Whereas nostalgia is a longing for something that once existed, a person or place or experience that lives in our memory, saudade encompasses a longing for something that never was, something not attainable. Within the yearning, a sense of incompleteness exists, a feeling of loss for something we never actually had. We want, for example, to connect to the divine, to the universe, in a personal and meaningful way.



We long to find meaning in our existence and our experiences – and the meaning we tend to attach to the confusion and loss we feel when this fails to happen is of some sort of providential punishment or karmic backlash. No matter how we attempt to make sense of what we experience, the indifference lingers, an unsettling realisation that nothing, ultimately, matters. We long for the things we do and say to make a difference, for the universe to respond to our call in a way that is just and kind. But it simply can’t. How can we still find solace living in such a world, where indifference is all there is, to reach a place where our yearning has not disappeared but yet has, in some way, been transformed? In her essay ‘“Saudade” and “Soledad”: Fernando Pessoa and Antonio Machado on Nostalgia and Loneliness’ (2007), the Lusophone scholar Estela Vieira provides a possible solution. She writes:



Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) lived what was in many ways an astonishingly modern, transcultural and translingual life. He was born in Lisbon, the point of departure for Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India as commemorated by Pessoa’s forebear, the poet Luís de Camões. Pessoa grew up in Anglophone Durban in South Africa, acquiring a life-long love for English poetry and language. Returning to Lisbon in 1905, which he would never again leave, Pessoa set himself the goal to travel throughout an infinitude of inner landscapes, to be an explorer of inner worlds. He published very little during his lifetime but left behind a renowned trunk containing a treasure trove of scraps, on which were written some of the greatest literary works of the 20th century, mainly in Portuguese but also substantially in English and French. Pessoa wrote poems under a variety of heteronyms, the ‘virtual subjects’ of his imagination; and also, importantly, a novel, or rather the anti-novel, The Book of Disquiet (1982), whose protagonist, Bernardo Soares, ruminates in detail on the meaning of being.

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[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. I don't need for it to have any great meaning, I'm perfectly happy to have just have had

the incredible luck to have been born, and lived, in this hostile universe, for the time I was granted.

Also ... I'll contribute this

[Celerity]

2. 💙 Love and Rockets

[Hugh_Lebowski]

3. I admit to never having heard this ... though I know 7th dream thru ESM like the back of my hand

And I also quite love a lot of Daniel Ash - Coming Down CD as well ...

I clicked through to YT (cause that always sounds better than a DU window) and have it pumping. My lady and I are enjoying, with a cooling beverage in the AZ heat

[Celerity]

4. The Lift LP (1998) is massively underrated. Have you heard the new comp from this year?

My Dark Twin