Joy of Spanish
You gotta have heart!
It’s springtime and that means love is bursting out all over, which is a good excuse for going into several expressions of the heart, del corazón.
If you have a hunch or a “feeling” about something, in Spanish we say we have a corazonada, which is a spontaneous impulse that moves us to do something risky or difficult, maybe even something slightly off-the-wall: Lo hice porque tuve una corazonada. (I did it because I got this gut feeling about it.) This could also be understood as a premonition: Tuve una corazonada y compré un billete terminada en 3, ¡y gané! (On a hunch I bought a lottery ticket ending in 3, and I won!)
A feeling from the heart rarely betrays us. Hence the saying el corazón no es traidor, which expresses the belief that our hearts really perceive the truth. That they do not lie. Another way of saying it would be mi corazón no me traiciona (my heart does not betray me).
And if someone tries very hard to cloak his fear while overcoming adversity or trying to get through a particularly difficult situation, we say he “turns his insides into a heart”, hace de tripas corazón. This colorful phrase is used all the time to express how we “rise to the occasion” in spite of the odds being against us. In our seemingly permanent crisis situation in Mexico, for example, we should all hacer de tripas corazón in order to get ahead, or — at least — to not be run over by the Mack truck of a rotten economy.
If certain people go around doing things without regard to other peoples’ feelings, we say that they don’t “touch their (own) hearts.” For example, if the boss needs to fire someone, he goes right ahead and does it without taking into account the employee’s family or financial situation: El jefe no se tienta el corazón para despedir a sus empleados. (“The boss doesn’t allow himself to be moved at all when he fires someone.”) Basically, the expression means that the person involved acts without compassion.
In English we have the saying “bleeding heart,” which alludes to someone who — unlike the boss from the last paragraph — gets upset over every little injustice committed anywhere on the globe, especially against minorities, the poor, those who have no one to defend them, widows, orphans, etc. “Bleeding heart liberal” is the complete epithet. I, for example, am a self-proclaimed bleeding heart liberal. In Spanish there is a similar term: to be blando de corazón, “soft hearted.” The opposite, of course, would be duro de corazón, or to have a “heard heart”: tiene duro el corazón. Hearts can also become hardened: se le endureció el corazón, as if to say that the person involved had a stone where his or her heart used to be. Or that he has no heart at all: no tiene corazón. Something like the quip from the movie Sabrina: “People say that you are the world’s only living heart donor.”
If we go around with our heart “in our hand,” it’s the equivalent of going around with our heart “on our sleeve” in English: to act and speak with complete honesty and sincerity. Also with affection. Me llegó con el corazón en la mano, therefore, would mean that this person came to me with no tricks up his or her sleeve; he or she spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth with absolute sincerity and total absence of malice.
If we have our heart in a fist, si tenemos el corazón en un puño, it means we’re in a state of anguish, affliction, or depression. Anda con el corazón en un puño, we might say about someone who’s wife, child, or parent (God forbid) is in the hospital with an incurable, degenerative disease. If your heart “shrinks,” si se te encoge el corazón, it means that you’re afraid, that you’ve cowered in the face of danger, which is a good time “to make your guts into a heart,” hacer de tripas corazón, as we saw at the beginning of this article. But if your heart doesn’t fit in your chest, si no te cabe el corazón en el pecho, it means that you’re very excited or uneasy about something, maybe even that you’re extremely proud or that you’re exceedingly magnanimous.
On the other hand, if you can’t bring yourself to do something that perhaps you should, if you go around “touching your heart” (si te tientas el corazón), it means that you have no heart to do it: no tienes corazón para hacerlo. Here, the English and Spanish coincide perfectly.
Hearts, of course, can always be broken. The verbs used in Spanish are usually partir and romper. ¡Me parte el corazón verlo tan triste! (It just breaks my heart to see him so sad!) And if one is todo corazón, he is “all heart,” as in English. But it could also be that he or she is very courageous. You could say as well that this person has a “heart of gold,” tiene un corazón de oro.
Finally, if you touch someone’s heart, si le tocas el corazón, you move him to do something good, which is what all bleeding-heart liberals are out to do. As the saying goes: haz el bien sin ver a quien. Do what’s right regardless of the beneficiary. But in order to do this, and to paraphrase a song from Damn Yankees!, you gotta have heart! This Spring, se lo deseo de todo corazón.
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