The Greeks Had a Word For It

by Andrew Taylor

  In Australia, no one really knows where the term Pom comes from, though there have been several unconvincing explanations such as Pomegranate, describing the colour that the fair-skinned English went in the sun, or P.O.H.M.S., short for Prisoner of Her Majesty’s Service. The Scots have Sassenach, which means Saxon, not necessarily affectionately, and shows what long memories the Celts have.

  But nothing matches the scorn and derision of that vivid Afrikaaner image of the Englishman stretching desperately to keep a foot in both countries, with his pride and joy dangling disconsolately in the chilly waters of the South Atlantic.

  Elusive Emotions

  Aware

  (Japanese)

  A sense of the fragility of life

  YOU MIGHT, ON a walk in late summer, see a leaf gently float down to the ground from a high branch. Perhaps you may come downstairs one morning to see that the vase of flowers that last night looked so fresh and full of life has begun to lose its petals. Or you might watch the reds and golds of a beautiful sunset gradually fade away as the sun sinks in the sky.

  Any of those experiences might bring you a feeling that the Japanese would call aware (ah-WAH-reh) – a deep sense of beauty, coloured by the realization that what you are looking at is fragile and fleeting. It is this sense of the impermanence of beauty that lies at the heart of aware.

  For the Japanese, it is often expressed in the aesthetic concept of mono no aware, which translates roughly as ‘the pathos of things’. Nearly seven hundred years ago in Tsurezuregusa, or Essays in Idleness, the Japanese poet and hermit Yoshida Kenkō observed that if people lived for ever, then material things would lose their power to move us. ‘The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty,’ he said.6

  For the Japanese, one very common expression of aware is in the contemplation of the cherry blossom, which usually lasts only a few days before it begins to fall. In the parks and gardens of Tokyo, silent groups will gather in early April just to look at the array of blossom on the trees as the flowers slowly wilt and die. Coincidentally – and showing that emotions are universal, even though English may lack the precise words to express them – back in late nineteenth-century England, the shy, buttoned-up poet A. E. Housman also chose the cherry blossom to express his own sense of the fragility of beauty and of human life.

  In the poem ‘Loveliest of Trees’, at the age of twenty, with only fifty years remaining of his allotted span, he says:

  And since to look at things in bloom

  Fifty springs are little room,

  About the woodland I will go

  To see the cherry hung with snow.7

  The spring blossom has turned in his mind to the snow of winter – a chilly symbol of mortality. The mixture of appreciation, thoughtfulness and regret comes close to the heart of the meaning of aware.

  The cycle of the seasons, with growth, maturity and death exhibited in falling petals and dying leaves, is the traditional way to demonstrate aware, but it applies throughout life. A glimpse of a faded photograph on an old woman’s mantelpiece showing her as a young bride; the dry, curled pages of a precious childhood book; a crisp, shrivelled leaf about to crumble away into nothingness – all these could inspire the same wistful sense of inescapable mortality.

  There is sadness, but it is a calm, resigned sadness, and it is coupled with a humble acceptance of the beauty of existence. Perhaps the whole concept might seem maudlin at first glance, except that the concentration is not on death and the end of everything but on the fact of its existence. It is a bittersweet emotion but essentially a positive and life-affirming one.

  Cocok

  (Javanese)

  A perfect fit

  SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH, it seems, would like to be seen as a tolerant, non-judgemental, open-minded lot. We have the phrases and proverbs to prove it: ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison’, ‘Each to his own’, ‘You pays your money and you takes your choice’. We are not going to be dogmatic about what is best or worst, we are saying: people have their own preferences, and we respect them.

  But if the non-judgemental self-image were true – if we really were so unwilling to lay down the law and tell other people what they should think – surely we would have a single word to express the idea, rather than having to rely on a few hackneyed clichés? A word we could use, for example, if someone asked us if we knew a good restaurant, or if a book was worth reading, or whether a particular model of car was any good.

  As it is, we can say the restaurant, the book or the car are good, or bad, or somewhere in between, and we may think we’re being helpful. But the truth is that you may hate the sort of food that someone else enjoyed in the restaurant, you may be bored by the book that they found fascinating, and you may find the car that they drive and love a bit uncomfortable and old-fashioned. We each have our preferences.

  What we need is a word like the Javanese cocok (cho-CHOCH, with the final ch pronounced as in the Scottish loch).

  An inadequate translation into English might be ‘suitable’, although cocok can be either an adjective or a verb: a thing can be cocok or it can cocok. I could say that the restaurant, or the book, or the car would be cocok for you – that you would like them. But that is only scratching the surface of this fascinating and beautiful word. One leading anthropologist has suggested that cocok means to fit like a key in a lock, or to be exactly right, like the medicine that cures a disease. Javanese villagers might say that their greatest ambition for their children is that they should find a job which is cocok. If two people agree in such a way that the view of each one not only supports the other but brings to it subtleties and nuances that the other person had not thought of, then their opinions will be cocok.

  In its purest sense, the word means that two things fit together so perfectly that each one gains meaning and value from the other: together, they are greater than the sum of their parts. It has its philosophical roots in Kejawen, a Javanese synthesis of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and animism, which sees the whole of creation as an intricate fitting together of its disparate parts – everything visible and invisible, past, present and future. That is the aim both of the individual soul and of creation itself; everything that is cocok is part of a greater, eternal metaphysical harmony.

  If that sounds a rather grandiose way to express a preference for one restaurant over another, a liking for a particular book, or the choice of one car above all others, then that’s probably because you haven’t bought into the concept. The Javanese themselves might use cocok to describe their food, their clothing, or even their government. And, after all, however good a restaurant meal may be, left alone it will simply congeal and go mouldy; eaten, it will become part of you, while you will have a satisfied, fulfilled feeling of well-being and grow strong and healthy.

  But perhaps if English speakers can’t accept the world view from which the word comes, then English doesn’t really need the word. Certainly, anyone who asks in English if a car is any good will look a bit strangely at you if you tell them it’s cocok; maybe the sense of oneness with the harmony of the eternal universe is a cultural step too far for us to take in our daily lives.

  Except …

  If you are lucky enough to have found the partner who is the one person in the world with whom you can envisage spending your life, one who understands you and feels like part of you, then you might one night murmur in his or her ear that they are truly cocok and explain what the word means. And then just wait for the result. It beats flowers or chocolates.

  Duende

  (Spanish)

  Visceral or spiritual feeling evoked by the arts

  WILLIAM WORDSWORTH OBSERVED that poetry had its roots in ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’8 – that a poet might experience the heights and depths of emotion, but he needed time and calm to transform them into poetry. His words have become inseparable from the English Romantic movement. But they remain only a pale and partial shadow of the Spanish concept of duende (duEND-eh), which is the soul or s
pirit at the heart of music, poetry or any artistic performance.

  In Spanish and Portuguese mythology, the word referred to a sprite or fairy that might play tricks on travellers astray in the forest, or sometimes to a more sinister red-robed skeletal figure who carried a scythe and presaged death. Those whom he visited could sometimes be inspired, in their fear and mental turmoil, to heights of creative brilliance. That quality of inspiration is at the heart of the word’s more modern meaning.

  According to the twentieth-century Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, other inspirations for creativity – the muses or the angels – come from outside the artist, but duende comes from deep within. It needs, Lorca said, ‘the trembling of the moment, and then a long silence’ – a little like Wordsworth’s thought, then. Duende, though, goes much further. For artists or performers, it may produce a moment of shattering brilliance, a complete absorption in their art, like the abandoned ecstasy of a Spanish dancer; and without it, the most technically perfect production will be lifeless, without soul. In his 1933 lecture, ‘Play and Theory of the Duende’,9 Lorca tells the story of an accomplished singer being told: ‘You have a voice, you understand style, but you’ll never ever succeed because you have no duende.’

  The ghostly scythe still lurks in the background. For Lorca, duende would only truly manifest itself when there was also an instinctive awareness of the possibility and inevitability of death. The artist could only live fully in the moment when he knew deep in his soul that it could be the last moment. Lorca linked duende with the passion of the Spanish bullring, but he believed that all Spanish art, particularly the performing arts of music and dancing, was inextricably linked with the contemplation, the fear and the glorification of death. Other artists, though, see duende as a quieter, more peaceable manifestation of unrepeatable and often inexplicable artistic brilliance. The Australian musician Nick Cave, for instance, says that it involves ‘an eerie and inexplicable sadness’, and refers to the music of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison and Neil Young.

  ‘All love songs must contain duende, for the love song is never truly happy,’ he said at a lecture in Vienna in 1999. ‘Within the fabric of the love song, within its melody, its lyric, one must sense an acknowledgement of its capacity for suffering.’10

  So musicians, singers, dancers and other creative artists may channel duende through their work. And for those who experience a work of art – the ones who watch the dancer or hear the music – duende will manifest itself as a sudden, potentially life-changing moment of insight, an instant in which time seems to have stopped. It is beyond analysis, beyond explanation, beyond criticism – art experienced in the deepest recesses of the soul.

  For many people, Wordsworth’s calm prescription still remains the best way to understand the spirit of poetry, the indescribable something that makes it different from prose. The concept of duende, however, considers a similar problem in the context of all artistic expression and approaches it from an infinitely more personal, intense and intimate point of view. However it’s described, if you’ve never experienced duende, you may never take its meaning fully on board. But if you have, then you will understand the word not just with your brain but in the very pit of your stomach.

  Hygge

  (Danish)

  Emotional warmth created by being with good friends and well-loved family

  YEARS AGO THERE was a television advertisement for drinking chocolate. It started outside on a chilly winter’s night. A lone figure, wrapped up against the cold, was walking briskly down the street, his feet beating a regular rhythm on the paving stones. He was on his way home and, as he got closer, and the night got colder, so the sound of his feet began to quicken, until eventually he was running as fast as he could.

  He stopped outside a front door that loomed in front of him, cold and unpromising; he turned the handle, pushed it open and walked inside. And everything changed. Sitting around were his family, with happy, welcoming faces, all luxuriating in the glow of a warming log fire. And there, waiting for him, was a steaming mug of hot chocolate. He wrapped both hands around it with a broad and satisfied smile, and the background music swelled.

  It was an advertisement for hot chocolate, which you might think is just a sickly sweet drink that rots your teeth and makes you fat. But it could just as well have been an advertisement for hygge.

  Hygge (HEU-guh) is a Danish word that helps the Danes get through their long, dark winters. It’s sometimes translated, inadequately, as cosiness or well-being, but it is specifically about the reassuring emotional warmth, comfort and security that come from being with good friends or well-loved family. The glow of a roaring log burner is often a part of it, but dinner around a restaurant table, with the conversation and laughter swinging easily back and forth, could be hygge. So could flickering candlelight, with a glass of wine and a favourite companion, or a favourite seat in a bar or cafe. When the weather doesn’t make you warm, hygge does, wrapping your love and your friendships around you like a fur coat.

  But it’s an emotional warmth that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the temperature. Making a snowman with your children – however old they are – is hygge. And it doesn’t even have to be winter – a Danish summer street festival could be a very hygge place to be, with the right company, or a picnic in the open air, or a late-night barbecue. It’s all about comradeship and an awareness of the deep and sustaining happiness and sense of security that it brings.

  The concept is central to the Danes’ image of themselves: to be called a hyggelig fyr, or a fellow who is fun to be with, or who inspires a feeling of hygge, is about as high a compliment as you can hope for. And to be the opposite – uhyggeligt – is to be creepy and scary in a Gothic horror movie kind of way, not just a bit grumpy and unsociable. The idea of hygge gets you through the winter, they say, but it’s more than that – it gets you through life.

  The traditional English stereotype is all about firm handshakes and a stiff upper lip rather than anything so emotional as hygge. But an Englishman might protest that it’s easy to misinterpret what seems to be a brusque and buttoned-up handshake. Ruffling your child’s hair as he’s about to set off for his first day at school, gripping the hand of your son as he boards a plane for a long journey, or squeezing your daughter’s arm before you walk down the aisle with her – these could all be very hygge moments indeed. We certainly experience it. And now we have a word for it.

  Litost

  (Czech)

  Torment caused by an acute awareness of your own misery and the wider suffering of humanity in general

  THE CZECH REPUBLIC sits at the vulnerable, much-fought-over centre of Europe. Through the last century, the history of the region was largely one of invasion, occupation, tyranny and bloodshed. Under the Nazis in 1939, vast swathes of Czech territory were incorporated into Hitler’s ‘Greater Germany’ – part of the price Britain and its allies were prepared to pay for Neville Chamberlain’s tragic boast of ‘peace for our time’. The occupation that followed was bloody and brutal, and so was the liberation. They were followed at the end of the Second World War by a second dismemberment, this time by the Soviet Union, and then forty years of Communist repression, with the brief flowering of the Prague Spring ruthlessly crushed by tanks in 1968.

  It’s little wonder, with a history like that, that the Czechs should have come up with a word like litost (LEE-tossed).

  It is, according to the Czech writer Milan Kundera, ‘a state of torment caused by the sudden sight of one’s own misery’. In his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,11 he notes that the long first syllable sounds ‘like the wail of an abandoned dog’. Love may be a cure for litost, but when the first passionate flush of idealized desire is past, love can also be a source of it. The emotion is, he says mischievously, a torment that is particularly felt by the young, since anyone with any experience of life will know how commonplace and tedious his own self-regarding misery is.

  But that’s only part of
the story. As a novelist, Kundera focuses on the individual – on the student in his novel wallowing in his own unhappiness, for instance. Litost, however, can also be a more wide-ranging feeling, a concentration on our misery rather than my misery. It could be a sudden emotional awareness of the unfitness of things – a realization of the indiscriminate way that death was meted out in the Yugoslav civil wars, of the tsunami-like disaster of the Holocaust crashing down on Europe, or of the succession of miseries that have afflicted the region where the Czechs live. It doesn’t have to be as inward-looking as Kundera suggests. But he’s correct to point out that it’s generally a negative or unproductive emotion that is often followed by the desire for revenge. The rape of Czechoslovakia by the Nazis was followed by the murder of innocent German-speaking civilians at the end of the war.

  According to Kundera, litost may be dissipated in extreme circumstances by suicide, by violence against the person who has inspired it, or even by provoking them to kill you. For most of us, then, it’s definitely not an emotion to be encouraged, since violence, injury and self-destruction are not generally viewed as desirable outcomes.

  There is nothing to joke about in the misery of depression, which can strike suddenly, unpredictably and brutally. But litost seems somehow self-regarding and posturing, almost like the existential angst of a teenager. Even when litost is more wide-ranging, focusing on shared misery, it is still all about the effect of that misery on me. Thinking of those who die in conflicts, or the victims of the Holocaust, and agonizing over how unhappy they make you feel, seems to lose sight of the point.