Breves observações sobre a noção de saudade: símbolo cultural e paradoxo = Brief observations on the notion of saudade: cultural symbol and paradox

This paper seeks to problematize certain aspects of the notion of saudade, a peculiar Lusophone word known for being a “cultural symbol” of the Brazilian-Portuguese subjectivity, yet intricate to translate. The main purpose is to shed light on aspects the theme unfolds and point out the hypothesis of a supposed contradiction, a paradox of the term saudade, a word that must be understood as a feeling containing in its core pairs such as pleasure-pain, joy-sorrow, happiness-sadness, good-bad. To do so, this paper does not make use of established theses previously put forward, lines of interpretation, literary schools or specific scholars. Nor will it attain to the debates over it in philology and linguistics, anthropology, sociology or history. Instead, this article aims at highlighting certain nuances of such diversified notion at first, to then show in what measure saudade could signify a conceptual paradox through the attributions and characteristics typically associated with it, such as the desire of returning to a “happy” past, together with the nostalgic pain, melancholy and sorrow brought by the impossibility to do so. For the latter, we resort to passages of popular Brazilian songs and poems.

本研究旨在对saudade（saudade）概念的若干维度展开问题化探讨。该词是独具特色的葡语词汇，被视作巴西-葡萄牙主体性的"文化符号"，却极难实现精准转译。本研究的核心旨趣在于阐明该主题所铺展的多重面向，并提出一项假说：saudade这一概念实则蕴含一处矛盾——即其作为一种情感内核，本身裹挟着愉悦与痛苦、喜悦与哀伤、幸福与悲伤、美好与丑恶这类二元对立的张力。为达成这一目标，本研究既不沿用此前已提出的既定论点、阐释路径、文学流派或特定学者的研究视角，也不涉足语文学、语言学、人类学、社会学与历史学领域中围绕该词展开的相关辩论。与之相反，本文首先旨在凸显这一多元概念的若干细微内涵，随后结合saudade通常被赋予的属性与特征——譬如对"美好过往"的回溯欲求，以及因无法重返过往而催生的怀旧之痛、忧郁与哀伤——阐释saudade在何种程度上可被视为一种概念性悖论。针对后者，本文将援引巴西流行歌曲与诗歌中的段落作为佐证。