In my former posting I promised to find Nabokov's comments on "Sehnsucht" or "Saudades":

 

On page 69 of VN's Don Quixote we read: “The wretched sense of poverty mingles with his general dejection and he finally goes to bed, moody and heavy-hearted.  Is it only Sancho´s absence and the burst threads of his stockings that induce this sadness, this Spanish soledad, this Portuguese saudades, this French angoisse, this German sensucht, this Russian toska?  We wonder – we wonder if it does not go deeper”.

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