We Saw Ducks Changing Gender Together

we saw ducks changing gender together

musicals as untranslatable words

Anastasia:

hiraeth (Welsh): longing for something lost; a deep grief for a time, place, or feeling that one cannot return to.

The Band’s Visit:

mamihlapinatapei (Yagan): a wordless look two people share, both parties hoping for something to start, but neither willing to initiate it.

Dear Evan Hansen:

litost (Czech): a despairing regret at something that should not have happened or that one should not have done; defined by Milan Kundera as “a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.”

Falsettos:

mokita (Kivila): a painful truth that is not at all a secret, but that everyone agrees not to mention out of compassion.

Hamilton:

jijivisha (Hindi): an indomitable spirit; the intense will to live.

The Last Five Years:

razbliuto (Russian): a sentimental feeling towards the person one once loved, but no longer do. A neologism from the 1960s.

Les Misérables:

hüzün (Turkish): an often communal, collective experience of spiritual anguish rooted in worldly suffering; defined by Orhan Pamuk as “a state of mind that is ultimately as life-affirming as it is negating.”

Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812

yūgen (Japanese): an deep experience of the natural world defined by Benito Ortolani as "a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe…and the sad beauty of human suffering.”

Newsies:

Fernweh (German): literally “farsickness”; feeling homesick for a place you may have never been.

Next to Normal:

won (Korean): bitter reluctance to let go of an illusion or thing past.

Tuck Everlasting:

aware (Japanese): an empathy towards the bittersweetness of transcendent and transient beauty.

Waitress:

wabi-sabi (Japanese): the lonely beauty of imperfection. According to Richard Powell, wabi-sabi acknowledges the simple realities that “nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”

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