Is it normal to feel "sehnsucht?"

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Anyone who tells you that that last word can be pronounced with a human tongue is lying. Crazy Germans.

This is going to be hard to explain, but if you feel this same thing then you'll probably get what I'm on about. C.S. Lewis claimed that the feeling was universal, and I wanted to see how true that was.

So, you're looking at a landscape or reading a book or something and you get this powerful nostalgia for a place or a lifestyle which probably doesn't exist. For me, it's pictures of Norway, and the sort of old-timey diction and sentence structure best exemplified by Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein." Also, American folk music, such as early Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie.

One could easily speculate about all sorts of things as being the cause of this, about reincarnation or, in Lewis' case, God/heaven. As an agnostic, I'm thinking some psychological oddity would be sufficient explanation.

I'll probably seem crazy if it's just me, but that's okay!
So, Internet, is sensucht normal?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sehnsucht

Voting Results
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Based on 47 votes (37 yes)
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Comments ( 7 )
  • metallover1991
    12 years ago

    "Sehnsucht" is a good Rammstein album.

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  • sparrowfeed
    14 years ago

    it is nice to go to the river sometimes and watch the sunset. it fills your soul in a way only described by the poets.

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  • Laurynas
    14 years ago

    Yup, i had this feeling too.I always had this wierd feeling, i remember once it was late afternoon when it was sunny all day and bit by bit the sky was turning red, i was sitting on the sofa drinking tea when i suddenly felt like i remembered some far-off place far away over the hills, i just wanted to get up. I couldnt bear sitting where i was and i felt like i just had to get out of the house and run to that place. And just like PoisonFlowers said "Every time I look over there, I wonder what's over those hills", the same need to know whats far over the horizon happened to me. It felt like all the fun and and business (im using business loosely here as a word)was happening over the horizon, and over here where i was standing it was dull and boring and nothing was happening

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  • PoisonFlowers
    14 years ago

    When I was younger, It was so much stronger. I didn't know how to talk about it with other people, but whenever anything referred to It, it'd always strike me as something very significant.

    It's nice to know that others feel this and talk about it too. Sehnsucht.

    Actually, as a kid, almost every waking moment was spent with that feeling in mind. I lived with the hope of someday getting out of this place and going to wherever it was that I was meant to be or something like that. Then, as it became vaguer, this might sound stupid, but I felt like I was dying inside. I still remember what my friend who, at the time, wanted to be an explorer said to me (aged 10) "Every time I look over there, I wonder what's over those hills."

    Who knows what it is. Some people talk of nostalgia, of sehnsucht, of "holes in their souls," of searching for something, a purpose. I think it's all the same thing. Maybe it's to do with the way most of us live our lives nowadays.

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  • TrunksHitachi
    8 years ago

    Sehnsucht. Pronunciation: sə'nsyujt.

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  • Britton
    12 years ago

    Sehnsucht isn't difficult to pronounced...I'm not fluent but pretty sure its pronounced "Sen-suked"....

    But yes, I get that feeling too....only...I HAVE lived that life before....Wasatch Mountains in Utah....I miss being in SLC :(

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  • sparrowfeed
    14 years ago

    "There's a feeling I get when I look to the West."

    What is it other than seeing something beautiful and being aesthetically pleased by it?

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