"Toska
- noun /’tō-skə/
- Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.
No
single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most
painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any
specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing
with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes,
yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something
specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui,
boredom."
Vladimir Nabokov, cited in A Field Guide to Melancholy by Jacky Bowring
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