Sehnsucht
Sehnsucht (pronounced [ˈzeːnzʊxt]) is a German noun translated as "longing", "yearning", or "craving",[1] or in a wider sense a type of "intensely missing". However, Sehnsucht is difficult to translate adequately and describes a deep emotional state. Its meaning is somewhat similar to the Portuguese word, saudade, or the Romanian word dor. The stage director and author Georg Tabori called Sehnsucht one of those quasi-mystical terms in German for which there is no satisfactory corresponding term in another language. Sehnsucht is a compound word, originating from an ardent longing or yearning (das Sehnen) and addiction (die Sucht). However, these words do not adequately encapsulate the full meaning of their resulting compound, even when considered together.[2]
Sehnsucht took on a particular significance in the work of author C. S. Lewis. Lewis described Sehnsucht as the "inconsolable longing" in the human heart for "we know not what." In the afterword to the third edition of The Pilgrim's Regress he provided examples of what sparked this desire in him particularly:
That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.[3]
Sehnsucht is sometimes felt as a longing for a far-off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify. Furthermore there is something in the experience which suggests this far-off country is very familiar and indicative of what we might otherwise call "home". In this sense it is a type of nostalgia, in the original sense of that word. At other times it may seem as a longing for a someone or even a something. But the majority of people who experience it are not conscious of what or who the longed for object may be, and the longing is of such profundity and intensity that the subject may immediately be only aware of the emotion itself and not cognizant that there is a something longed for. The experience is one of such significance that ordinary reality may pale in comparison, as in Walt Whitman's closing lines to "Song of the Universal":
Is it a dream?
Nay but the lack of it the dream,
And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream
And all the world a dream.
Because of the the concept of Sehnsucht being so important in the writings of C. S. Lewis, the Arizona C. S. Lewis Society titled their annual journal Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Notes
- ^ "LEO Results for "sehnsucht"". http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=en&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed§Hdr=on&spellToler=on&chinese=both&pinyin=diacritic&search=sehnsucht&relink=on.
- ^ "When Sehnsucht (desire) leads you up the garden path". http://www.ejpd.admin.ch/ejpd/en/home/dokumentation/red/archiv/reden_christoph_blocher/2006/2006-07-10.html.
- ^ "Calvin College - Faith - Resources". http://www.calvin.edu/admin/provost/faith/cs_lewis.htm.
- Sources
- Bruner, Kurt; Ware, Jim (2005), Finding God in the Land of Narnia, Tyndale House, ISBN 0-8423-8104-X
[edit] External links
- C. S. Lewis on Joy, Sehnsucht, Longing and True Myth
- Joy and Sehnsucht
- Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal
