A History of Emotions
An attempt to think and write about the history of emotions across time and place, with a few thoughts and images from a Scot in Exile thrown in.
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Tuesday 31 May 2016
Masters of Love Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity.
Friday 13 May 2016
The Glossary of Happiness
Quite possibly. Either way, there are some wonderful examples from elsewhere...
"It is a veritable catalogue of life’s many joys, featuring terms like utepils (Norwegian, “a beer that is enjoyed outside . . . particularly on the first hot day of the year”), mbuki-mvuki (Bantu, “to shed clothes to dance uninhibited”), tarab (Arabic, “musically induced ecstasy or enchantment”), and gigil (Tagalog, “the irresistible urge to pinch/squeeze someone because they are loved or cherished”).
In the course of compiling his lexicon, Lomas has noted several interesting patterns. A handful of Northern European languages, for instance, have terms that describe a sort of existential coziness. The words—koselig (Norwegian), mysa (Swedish), hygge (Danish), and gezellig (Dutch)—convey both physical and emotional comfort. “Does that relate to the fact that the climate is colder up there and you would value the sense of being warm and secure and cozy inside?” Lomas asked. “Perhaps you can start to link culture to geography to climate. In contrast, more Southern European cultures have some words about being outside and strolling around and savoring the atmosphere. And those words”—like the French flâner and the Greek volta—“might be more likely to emerge in those cultures.”
Tuesday 6 December 2011
An overdue picture of the old country...
Monday 10 October 2011
tv hugs
Wednesday 6 July 2011
Han 한
"The term han cannot simply be translated as "resentment" for every book, article or poem. The phrasing must match the usage—a tricky thing with all words, especially so with a term that has vastly complex meaning to Koreans.
Han is frequently translated as sorrow, spite, rancor, regret, resentment or grief, among many other attempts to explain a concept that has no English equivalent. (Dong-A 1982: 1975). Han is an inherent characteristic of the Korean character and as such finds expression, implied or explicit, in nearly every aspect of Korean life and culture.
Han is sorrow caused by heavy suffering, injustice or persecution, a dull lingering ache in the soul. It is a blend of lifelong sorrow and resentment, neither more powerful than the other. Han is imbued with resignation, bitter acceptance and a grim determination to wait until vengeance can at last be achieved.
Han is passive. It yearns for vengeance, but does not seek it. Han is held close to the heart, hoping and patient but never aggressive. It becomes part of the blood and breath of a person. There is a sense of lamentation and even of reproach toward the destiny that led to such misery. (Ahn 1987)."n
Banno goes on to cite a good example from Korean literature:
"The inevitability of fate frequently fuels han in the arts. Korean television and films are informed by han, as are older forms of tragedy, such as P'ansori performance songs and folk tales. For example, poetess Yi Ok Bong (?-1592) described how she had visited her lover so often in dreams that if her spirit were corporeal, the pebbles on the path to his house would be worn to sand. (Kim 1990: 222). Yi uses the term han in the second line, which has been translated: "This wife's resentment is great." "Resentment" implies anger and frustration, certainly part of han, but the line fails to express the sorrow and resignation of the original. Another translator chose "I am sad" for the same line and still another, "my longing deepens." (Lee 1998: 85). This poem demonstrates the importance of context and usage. In the complete poem, insert each of the three previous translations at the end of the second line and the problem becomes clear:
Are you well these days?
Moonlight brushing the curtain pains my heart.
If dreams leave footprints
the pebbles at your door are almost worn to sand. "
"If we lived in paradise, there would be no tears, no separation, no hunger, no waiting, no suffering, no oppression, no war, no death. We would no longer need either hope or despair. We would lose those hopes so dear to us all. We Koreans call these hopes Han. It is not an easy word to understand. It has generally been understood as a sort of resentment. But I think it means both sadness and hope at the same time. You can think of Han as the core of life, the pathway leading from birth to death. Literature, it seems to me, is an act of Han and a representation of it.
'Han is a characteristic feeling of the Korean people. But it has come to be seen as a decadent feeling, because of the 36-year Japanese occupation. It is understood simply as sorrow, or resignation, or a sigh. Some have compared it to the Japanese word ourami, meaning hate or vengeance, but that s quite absurd. This nonsense is the result perhaps of the identity of the Chinese character or it may be a kind of left-over from the Japanese occupation. The Japanese word ourami evokes images of the sword and the seeds of militarism, and is a characteristic feeling of the Japanese, for whom vengeance is a virtue. Therefore the Japanese word ourami is completely different from the Korean word Han. As I have already said, Han is an expression of the complex feeling which embraces both sadness and hope. The sadness stems from the effort by which we accept the original contradiction facing all living things, and hope comes from the will to overcome the contradiction."
Sunday 26 June 2011
a longer history of emotions?
Monday 21 February 2011
the anatomy of melancholy
We have learned much about the brain and about mental illness and where that has helped individuals it emphatically needs to be applauded. One cannot help but wonder though if our flawed notion of happiness as a default state creates a fear of unhapiness as a malady requiring remedy. Mary Kenny, the author of the piece, may well be right.
Saturday 16 October 2010
Saudade
These come from here.
Toska
Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
Mamihlapinatapei
Yagan (indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego) – “the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start” (Altalang.com)
Litost
Czech – Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, remarked that “As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.” The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.
Kyoikumama
Japanese – “A mother who relentlessly pushes her children toward academic achievement” What mix of emotions is this?
Tartle (didn't know this one!)
Scottish – The act of hestitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name.
Ilunga
Tshiluba (Southwest Congo) – A word famous for its untranslatability, most professional translators pinpoint it as the stature of a person “who is ready to forgive and forget any first abuse, tolerate it the second time, but never forgive nor tolerate on the third offense.”
Torschlusspanik
German – Translated literally, this word means “gate-closing panic,” but its contextual meaning refers to “the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages.”Wabi-Sabi
Japanese – Much has been written on this Japanese concept, but in a sentence, one might be able to understand it as “a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.”Dépaysement
French – The feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country.Tingo
Pascuense (Easter Island) – Hopefully this isn’t a word you’d need often: “the act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them.”Hyggelig
Danish – Its “literal” translation into English gives connotations of a warm, friendly, cozy demeanor, but it’s unlikely that these words truly capture the essence of a hyggelig; it’s likely something that must be experienced to be known. I think of good friends, cold beer, and a warm fire.L’appel du vide
French – “The call of the void” is this French expression’s literal translation, but more significantly it’s used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.Ya’aburnee
Arabic – Both morbid and beautiful at once, this incantatory word means “You bury me,” a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them.Duende
Spanish – While originally used to describe a mythical, spritelike entity that possesses humans and creates the feeling of awe of one’s surroundings in nature, its meaning has transitioned into referring to “the mysterious power that a work of art has to deeply move a person.” There’s actually a nightclub in the town of La Linea de la Concepcion, where I teach, named after this word.Saudade
Portuguese – One of the most beautiful of all words, translatable or not, this word “refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.” Fado music, a type of mournful singing, relates to saudade.I love the fact that the Brazillians apparently have an annual day of suadade, January 30. Can we imagine a day of love, or a day of yearning?
Friday 17 September 2010
The anatomy of melancholy
Why do we love a certain kind of sadness so much that we crave it so in our music, in our books, in so much of our society? This is something that we westerners are not alone in.
The erudite anthropologist and online Guardian columnist Wendy Fonarow writes of a classic piece of ethnography, The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers by Edward L. Schieffelin:
"Now a more overt manifestation of the value of melancholia can be found amongst the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea. In the Gisaro ceremony, recounted in The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers, visiting dancers and chorus perform songs designed to bring their hosts to tears. The chorus sings of the places on their host's land and eventually about the places where loved ones have died.
Upon the experience of intense sadness, the hosts become enraged and descend upon the dancers, grabbing lit torches to burn them to avenge the suffering and pain the hosts have been made to feel. As Schieffelin puts it, "It is the very beauty and sadness that he (the dancer) projects that cause people to burn him." Sadness, here, is not an inward experience of depression, it is the encounter of grief, nostalgia, and sorrow in a public spectacle that requires violent retribution."
This reminds me of those examples of love and other emotions that we ourselves used to play out external influences and not internal feelings. When love was a sweet sickness like a malady to be cured. When anger came upon one, rather than feeling it inside. Is there a benefit to internalising or externalising our emotions? Are externalised emotions more or less sophisticated? Does internalising them lead to excessive egotism and shape the emotions themselves? what do the examples of different emotional cultures and histories tell us there?
Friday 25 June 2010
infanticide
"Archaeological records suggest infants were not considered to be "full" human beings until about the age of two, said Dr Eyers [of Chiltern Archaeology].
Children any younger than that age were not buried in cemeteries. As a result, infant burials tended to be at domestic sites in the Roman era."
There is a brutal and tragic logic to this, painful as it is to comprehend. Indeed in many subsistence societies through history, infanticide is considered a necessary practice where deformities occur - a small community may not be able to provide adequate care without destroying the group itself.
Is the horror in modern emotions rooted in luxury and development rather than any sense of eternal morality? I would not go back to such dark practices but it takes a dispassionate eye to learn from the past.