Language is a clumsy inadequate tool, which is all the more reason to celebrate those who wield it well. In The Workings of the Subtle Heart — the “second greatest book ever written” according to Kurt Vonnegut — William Widmer riffs on a Japanese word that seems to have no English equivalent.
I am told that there is a Japanese word, sabishii, that is commonly translated as “melancholy” — but the Japanese word does not carry, exactly, the same connotation as the English word.
How can one translate the untranslatable?
Well, you might imagine yourself as Japanese (if you are not Japanese), a Japanese of a hundred years ago, who is standing on the promontory overlooking a bay, as twilight descends.
A few minutes ago, you might imagine, you just said goodbye to someone you love very much, a hard moment followed by that person boarding a sailing ship, which is just now raising its sails as it begins to make its way out of port.
The ship suddenly picks up speed and you can see the sails now in full billow.
And then you stand on a rise on the shore, watching the progress of the ship as it heads out to sea, watching as it slowly makes its way to the horizon; rapidly at first, and then resolving itself, slowly, to an ever smaller dot…
And then… sabishii is that very moment when you lose sight of the ship.
Do we have a word for that?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Rawda // Nov 7, 2008 at 1:07 pm
In Arabic, sabishii means “al-talashi”. And the beauty of this word is that it can explain the ship’s physical disappearance combined with the lover’s despair and helplessness.
2 mark // Nov 7, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Man, I have got to learn some more languages…
3 renee // Nov 16, 2008 at 8:53 pm
odd that you picked this word of all the words in all the languages you might have picked….
after reading a beautiful book together
” the wind cannot read”, my husband’s pet name for me is “sabby”, from sabishii……
the arabic word is astounding, in that it encompasses the japanese one !!
love, R
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