Sehnsucht

SEHNSUCHT: THE CENTRAL TO ALL CREATIVITY

I came across the notion of Sehnsucht while writing my paper regarding Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. As I thought that the narrator Henry’s longing for nature serves as not just a form of nostalgia but something deeper than that—as opposed to his disgust toward the First World War. So, I googled “yearning for nature as mental support or release,” and the first thing that came out was “Longing for More” by Psychology Today. It is through reading the text written by Andy Tix that I discovered the term “Sehnsucht.” In his text, Tix gives a brief explanation of the word by claiming, “Sehnsucht” is a popular German word with no simple English translation (click here for pronunciation). C. S. Lewis often relied on this concept in his writings, defining it as “inconsolable longing” for “we know not what.” Instead of “wishful thinking,” Lewis suggested how Sehnsucht involves “thoughtful wishing.” In my words, Sehnsucht has to do with an intense desire for something beyond our human capacity to fulfill. It is a bittersweet feeling that seeks a slice of perfection at the same time that perfection remains elusive.

As I wanted to find out more about this concept, I went into ProQuest and searched for it, and among those results, I discovered an essay called “Writing the Long Desire: The Function of Sehnsucht in The Great Gatsby and Look Homeward, Angel” by D.G. Kehl. Since the paper is an interesting one, I would like to share what I learned through this paper by summarizing the paper’s important points. Regarding the definition of the term, it is stated that

More than simple longing or nostalgia, however, and lacking a sufficiently expressive English term, this quality can best be characterized by the German term Sehnsucht(a compound of the verb sehnen, “to long for,” and the noun sucht, “addiction), an intense addiction of and to longing. (309)

It is interesting to note that Sehnsucht plays a major role in modern American literature, including the works of Kate Chopin, Marge Piercy, Gail Godwin, Anne Tyler, Percy, Saul Bellow, Hemingway, Wolfe, and Faulkner (309). Scholar such as Mc Cullers ties this “curious emotion” to “homesickness” and “loneliness,” suggesting that Sehnsucht is considered to be endemic in American culture (Mc Cullers 235; qtd. in Kehl 310). One of the reasons why Sehnsucht seems to have a deep association with American culture is because of its history of immigration: “One such factor is the pluralism and cultural diversity created by immigration, often resulting in emotional incertitude, isolation, and homesickness for the old country” (Kehl 310). This loneliness is thus “a quest for identity,” that is, “a consciousness of self keenly and realistically aware of the relationship between oneself and one’s environment” (McCullers 294, Kehl 310).

Although Sehnsucht is especially associated with modern American culture and literature, it is certainly universal to all humankind. Its meaning is similar to one’s longing for messages in bottles: “He might say that he was homesick except that the island is his home and he has spent his life making himself at home there” (“The Message in the Bottle” 143). Similarly, Fitzgerald and Wolfe seem to share, in their lives and fictions, “a wistful longing to return in thought, if not in fact, to a former time or place, a pervasive yearning for something long ago and far away, which is, of course, one denotation of nostalgia (from Greek nostos, ‘return home,’ plus algos, ‘pain’), originally a medical term coined in 1688 from the German heimweh, “homesickness” (Kehl emphasis 311). What can be emphasized here is that the past is something that cannot “be repeated or relived” and “it cannot essentially be communicated” (314).

Other key terms suggesting Sehnsucht are: hunger/hungry, desire, stranger/strange/strangeness, loneliness/lonely, mystery, mysteriousness, passion/passionate, alone, departure/departing, lust, sad/sadness, longing/yearning/craving, exile, home, and wistful (Kehnl 314).

As to the characteristics of Sehnsucht, it is distinguished from just any longing by at least four distinct ways: first, “its great intensity” (315); second, “its inexplicability, its mysterious object” (315); third, the irony of an unfulfilled longing which “is itself its own fulfillment” (316); fourth, “its oxymoronic bittersweetness” (317). Regarding the second characteristic, C.S. Lewis claims, “there is a peculiar mystery about the object of this Desire,” and “every one of [the] supposed objects for the Desire is inadequate to it” (x-xi; qtd. in Kehnl 315). Some of the supposed “objects” can be childhood, past events, distant places, mystery and beauty, nature, exotic travels and adventure, romantic tales, a craving for knowledge, and the perfect beloved (315). As a result, this longing for something both unidentifiable and elusive is accompanied by a sense of “qualified unhappiness” (316). As to the fourth characteristic, Lewis notes,

“Though the sense of what is acute and even painful, yet the mere wanting is felt to be somehow a delight. Other desires are felt as pleasures only if satisfaction is expected in the near future: hunger is pleasant only while we know (or believe) that we are going to eat. But this desire, even when there is no hope of possible satisfaction, continues to be prized, and even to be preferred to anything else in the world, by those who have once felt it. This hunger is better than any other fullness; this poverty better than all other wealth.” (ix-x; qtd. in Kehl 317)

Hermann Hesse calls Sehnsucht “humanity’s innate, unavoidable longing,” part of the “mystery” of the human condition (qtd. in 317). This longing, however, is what makes art possible. As Theodore Dreiser claims, “we have great musicians, great painters, great writers, and actors” is that “they have the ability to express the world’s sorrows and longings…” (485; qtd. in 318). Sehnsucht is thus “both cause and effect of art”; it is the origin of all creative forms.

At last, a poem of Sehnsuchtby Anna Wickham is worth quoting:

Because of the body’s hunger are we born

And by continuing hunger are we fed;

Because of hunger is our work well done.

As so are songs well sung, and things well said.

(185; qtd. in Kehl 318)

References:

• Kehl, D. G. “Writing the Long Desire: The Function of Sehnsuchtin The Great Gatsbyand Look Homeward, Angel.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 21, no. 2, 2000/2001, pp. 309-319.

• Psychology Today:  Longing for More