Hiraeth: an emotional state associated with nostalgia

Hiraeth defines an emotional state similar to nostalgia. It is a Welsh term that many compare with the beautiful Portuguese word saudade. However, this noun traces a deeper and more complex sentimental canvas because it also integrates longing for things that never happened and that we wish would happen. It’s missing places, people we met and had to leave behind…

Let’s think about that for a moment. Let’s get in touch with the sensation of being nostalgic for our land, for a home or for a moment from the past… Concrete, physical and real absences hurt us, but Lost dreams also disturb, what could never be. People are made of frustrated projects and desires that are never satisfied.

According to the Welsh, this word is untranslatable. It cannot be expressed in words, only the heart knows it, because it’s like a tug, like a wound that never completely closes…

Hiraeth, an emotional state of great depth

Each language frames its way of feeling and understanding the world. This explains why certain languages ​​have words that are almost untranslatable in ours.

For example, in Japan they have their ichigo ichie to define the beauty of unrepeatable moments. And in Denmark they have their term pyt, which reminds us that we must let go of what cannot be changed.

Hiraeth is a Welsh term formed by “hir-“ which means ‘long’ and “-aeth”, which can be translated as ‘pain or sorrow’. In this way, to translate this interesting word one must resort to the culture of Wales itself, because this is how everything makes sense and the significance of this complex emotion is understood.

Cultural repression, emigration and constant longing

A study was conducted at Ohio University that showed that nostalgia fulfilled a value in human behavior because it offers us coping mechanisms. Feeling nostalgia implies longing for the past, but at the same time accepting yesterday to face the present. Somehow, the hiraeth Welsh also integrates that purpose.

The first time this word appeared was in a set of Welsh verses titled Hen Penillion. In it, the poet lamented the “cruel hiraeth“, of that mixture of longing, sadness and rage that gripped him. This work was written in a context in which the Welsh people found themselves repressed by the British people. They were branded as rude and ignorant and were forced to eliminate their language from schools.

Welsh was silenced and many people then began to emigrate. From a distance and far from Welsh landsthey looked back to remember their home and in turn all the lost dreams. That accumulation of feelings is hiraeth.

Hiraethpieces of a past that are identity

Hiraeth It does not integrate into its roots a cluster of emotions of negative valence. It is not pain, it is not an unbearable anguish… In reality, It is an emotional state in which the acceptance of what will no longer be possible is combinedwith the assumption that this pain defines part of who we are.

The human being is also all his lost dreams and his taken away realities. Each of us harbors a past of disappointments, truncated goals and lost desires. Each of those brushstrokes from yesterday forms the portrait of who we are today and that creates a mixture of contradictory sensations… And that contradiction is also the hiraeth.

The hope of recovering part of what we left behind

Nostalgia is made of longing, it is that rearview mirror in which we frequently look to evoke moments from yesterday. Now, for the Welsh, hiraeth includes one more feeling: the desire to return to the roots knowing that, although nothing will be the same as before, we can still recover part of what we left behind.

As we have indicated, this word arose in part from many people who, for social and economic reasons, were forced to leave Welsh lands for a time. The poets integrated into the term hiraeth the joy of return, for that moment when they could finally return to their homes and their country of origin.

Thus, and despite being able to make contact once again with the entire world of which one is a part due to one’s roots, one always experiences a disturbing sensation. We love our home, but we know that not everything is the same as before.

Hiraeth It’s a bittersweet feeling.: sadness combined with acceptance and nostalgia also covered with hope… Because, despite everything experienced, lost and left behind, one does not stop looking at the horizon, trusting in the future.

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