Dialectics of longing: on pain, beauty and familiar foreign bodies in Nick Cave’s love songs

Abstract

This paper examines the concept of longing in Nick Cave’s love songs. The notion of longing is an ambiguous term, and as such is presented here through perspectives of psychology, psychoanalysis and popular musicology, more precisely through sociology of music and cultural studies. Starting point of this analysis is Nick Cave’s lecture on love songs where he points out two related terms regarding the feeling of longing, Saudade and Duende, as words that portray the feeling of longing and sadness that exist in certain works of art. Apart from them, the German word Sehnsucht, defined as life longing, is also presented as a synonym for sadness. No life is possible without life that we do not live, as much as no profound experience of love is possible without pain and beauty – that is the main thesis of this paper that includes dialectics of longing.

Keywords

• longing
• love songs
• Nick Cave
• authenticity
• dialectics