Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Note on translations and transcriptions
- 1 Ordinary writings, extraordinary authors
- 2 Archives for an alternative history
- 3 ‘Excuse my bad writing’
- 4 Literary temptations
- 5 France
- 6 France
- 7 Family, village and motherland in the writing of Italian soldiers, 1915–1918
- 8 Italian identities ‘from below’ and ordinary writings from the Trentino
- 9 Love, death and writing on the Italian front, 1915–1918
- 10 Spain
- 11 Family strategy and individual identities in the letters of Spanish emigrants
- 12 Order and disorder in the ‘memory books’
- 13 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
10 - Spain
Emergency literacy and the nostalgia of exile, 1820s–1920s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Note on translations and transcriptions
- 1 Ordinary writings, extraordinary authors
- 2 Archives for an alternative history
- 3 ‘Excuse my bad writing’
- 4 Literary temptations
- 5 France
- 6 France
- 7 Family, village and motherland in the writing of Italian soldiers, 1915–1918
- 8 Italian identities ‘from below’ and ordinary writings from the Trentino
- 9 Love, death and writing on the Italian front, 1915–1918
- 10 Spain
- 11 Family strategy and individual identities in the letters of Spanish emigrants
- 12 Order and disorder in the ‘memory books’
- 13 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Saudade, literacy and identity
The Portuguese and Brazilians have a word for it, and they insist that it is untranslatable – saudade. It denotes longing, nostalgia, pain and loss, all the emotions felt by transoceanic emigrants when they wrote home to the world they had left behind. Manolo Fernández de Castro wrote from Havana to his cousin Fulgencia in Gijón that although
I find it charming here (me encuentro encantado) and we have everything and the girls are pretty, friendly and attractive one always remembers one’s dear little country (su tierrina) and when much time has passed you have a great desire to go and see the family.
The pain of separation was equally excruciating for family members left behind, resigned though they may have been to the absence of their young sons. In 1907, Jesús Valdés Bango received this message in Havana from his ageing father in Pravia (Asturias):
My dear son Jesús: if you felt great sadness at leaving for those distant lands as I think you said in your first letter from Santander, imagine how all of us felt about this unhappy (desdichada) separation, and most especially myself, because on account of my age and aches and pains I harbour no hope of seeing you again.
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- Information
- The Writing Culture of Ordinary People in Europe, c.1860–1920 , pp. 170 - 200Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012