C.S. Lewis described the German word "Sehnsucht" as the "inconsolable longing" in the human heart for "we know not what...

C.S. Lewis described the German word "Sehnsucht" as the "inconsolable longing" in the human heart for "we know not what." As I understand it, nostalgia for something one's never experienced.

Can anyone recommend any writing that either evokes and/or analyzes this feeling?

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The writing for that game was so ridiculous, holy hell(a).

watch midnight in paris

.. easy on the hella

You're right, but I liked it anyway.

shaka brah

i'd describe "sehnsucht" as a song by rammstein

Kimi no na wa
Angel Beats

I can't really think of any books that nail this spot on. Perhaps the closest being Strugatski's Mir Poldnya books that feature a kind-of utopia that's neither completely without issues or a hidden dystopia - it actually seems like a really comfy place to live.

There's a some comics that do this very well though, most notably Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and Aqua/Aria.

What is that game?

>le using muh untranslatable german word as a springboard to launch into me existential insight meme

As a German I can say that this definition is fancy fanfiction.
Sehnsucht is almost exclusively used in context with the thing you're sehnsuchting and barely different from 'longing' or 'missing' someone or something.
Ich habe Sehnsucht nach ihr.
I'm longing for her./ I miss her.

Ich habe Sehnsucht.
I'm longing [for sth]. I've got a yearning. / etc.

>sista
>hella

Finnish poetry.

As a German on Veeky Forums you should know better. Sehnsucht isn't just missing something/ somebody or wanting or longing for something/somebody it's a hole Weltanschauung or field of meaning. Sehnsucht means also wanting to become a part of or even one and much more. It's even more than just the feeling of inconsolable longing talked about C.S. Lewis trying to grasp it. Pain or at least a diffuse or specific aching of the metaphysical "heart" is mostly part of the "feeling" or "state of mind",but not always. It's often something you never have experienced or at least not fully, but this isn't a sufficient or necessary factor. It's like striving "as such" or pure striving of often life transcending importans. Also it's more of a striving for a "constellation" you can't really translate it and many Germans use it hyperbolically. It's hard to grasp I think you get some sense by reading German Romantisism, philosophers like Schlegel, Fichte, Hegel and Schilling. And obviously Eichendorf, Novalis, Wagner, E.T.A. Hoffman and especially Hölderlin.

I'm putting it on my to-watch list

thanks. I haven't watched much anime-type stuff beyond Miyazaki, but I should. I think I'd find some of what I'm looking for.

>Strugatski's Mir Poldnya

Cool, is that the Roadside Picnic author? I'm having trouble finding the series you're describing, though... By the way, the game is Life is Strange.

Cool, any names or title in particular?

>Schelling

I read up on it. Where does this meaning come from?
I must confess I've only ever heard it used in banal contexts. It seems like philosophers imposed meaning onto a word they liked, or appropriated 'Sehnsucht' for a certain feeling or mood.

To give you an example of a word that I think does what Sehnsucht tries to do (and what I fail to get?) better: 'Weltschmerz'. I feel this is a uniquely German word expressing a state of mind, a feeling, a philosophy.

>MothbreathingHomo
>These songs give you nostalgia over things that never happened.
>2678 likes
>view all 200 replies
>nibba

youtube is a weird place.

>Where does this meaning come from
At least to my knowledge this isn't fullyunderstood, some claim it's from the word Siechtum (roughly suffering), which empisizes the suffering of the individual experiencing it, others think it could be the form anatomy Sehne (tendon), which expresses the tension the to find or go back into the "constellation". Or from the word sehen (see), which points out the visual component and there is the analogy of the eye as soul, which says it's a matter of the soul.
>I must confess I've only ever heard it used in banal contexts. It seems like philosophers imposed meaning onto a word they liked, or appropriated 'Sehnsucht' for a certain feeling or mood.
It's kind of a nuance of the language, which a certain amount of people were and are always blind to. But it think it's becoming worse especially with millennials and this is not to say that it wasn't already bad with boomers and genertion x people. Often I talk to people and later behind my back or sometimes openly claim some slightly well read friends of mine and I might be deliberately unsing words they don't understand. I should add that I already look at the particular background and try to speak appropriatly so we are talking about university graduates and students. So you shouldn't really be ashamed. That meaning was imposed is true to an extent, but I think they mostly brought to light a set of certain connotations and references that were already somewhat associated at least in certain subsets of the population. Having Sehnsucht is very specific for Germans (and related nations) and I think even people, who can't grasp a lot about the concept can experience it to some degree.
>To give you an example of a word that I think does what Sehnsucht tries to do (and what I fail to get?) better: 'Weltschmerz'. I feel this is a uniquely German word expressing a state of mind, a feeling, a philosophy.
You are certainly on to something there. But i would argue it's more complex. The connection between Weltschmerz and Sehnsucht is there, it's maybe a bit like the "night"/"shadow" side of the Romantisism, which expresses the fear, pain and danger and uncertainty etc. more, while the "day" sight expresses the hope, belonging, bravery and overcoming more. But neither Weltschmerz nor Sehnsucht are only positive or negative. I hope i was able to make it clear what I wanted to say.

As a possibly related phenomenon, I'd like to bring up Lovecraft's "adventurous expectancy".

Cool, I think that's absolutely related to what I'm looking for.

>"What has haunted my dreams for nearly forty years is a strange sense of adventurous expectancy connected with landscape and architecture and sky-effects.... I wish I could get the idea on paper -- the sense of marvel and liberation hiding in obscure dimensions and problematically reachable at rare instants through vistas of ancient streets, across leagues of strange hill country, or up endless flights of marble steps culminating in tiers of balustraded terraces. Odd stuff -- and needing a greater poet than I for effective aesthetic utilisation" (Selected Letters, III, 100).

For me, literally everything. I am so restless in my current life. I just want to leave. I don't know where, somewhere. Maybe it's another city, or another country, or hell maybe another time. Still, there's that nagging feeling inside that what I need is to be another person. Nothing I ever do will have any sort of gravity to it.

Straight up, glo-fi/chillwave is this feeling rendered musically. We're just saturated in it, currently. It forms the horizon of our historical consciousness. Would that it were not so.

Thanks. Great point I already read it somewhere, but didn't really made this connection (maybe my English isn't good enough).
>What has haunted my dreams for nearly forty years is a strange sense of adventurous expectancy connected with landscape and architecture and sky-effects.... I wish I could get the idea on paper -- the sense of marvel and liberation hiding in obscure dimensions and problematically reachable at rare instants through vistas of ancient streets, across leagues of strange hill country, or up endless flights of marble steps culminating in tiers of balustraded terraces. Odd stuff -- and needing a greater poet than I for effective aesthetic utilisation (Selected Letters, III, 100).
From the word "adventurous expectancy" I would never have thought about this connection, but reading, what he wanted to say really goes pretty close to the concept of Sehnsucht, especially to the blaue Blume (blue flower), seeing the physical object alluding to the meaning beyond itself, by the sole fact of it's "beauty", "purity" and "constellation" that pulls you "away".

those fucking weird spurdo but just legs .webms holy fuck do those do it for me

I discovered John Maus recently through this MillionDollarExtreme/World Peace video and really love what I've heard of his.

gif related?

Gives me goosebumps: youtube.com/watch?v=Brdx7kmxx2I

(the youtube vid has the John Maus song)

Yeah like this:

Are you actually German? Whether you are or not, I won't dismiss your argument either way. Clearly you've given the word more thought than I have.

But some pointers(really just have a look at wikipedia): the most obvious and likely root is "sich nach etwas sehnen"- to long for sth.

I did not intend to connect Weltschmerz to Sehnsucht. It was more of a meta comparison to highlight my issue with the philosophical concept(?) of Sehnsucht which I haven't encountered before.

I was about to recommend two books of Krasznahorkai I've read then I remembered they have no translations.
Maybe in German

These are some cool takes on the matter:
teemingbrain.com/tag/sehnsucht/
teemingbrain.com/2006/10/30/autumn-longing-hp-lovecraft/

i was half shitposting, but "red thread of fate" stuff should be right up your alley. Kimi no na wa actually goes into what you're looking for in depth, but if I had to recommend an anime for real it would be Shoujo Kakumei Utena (though anything from Ikuhara would suffice). It's probably the worlds only masterwork in television format.