ON THE RIGHT TO BE UNHAPPY
W. H. Auden expresses contempt for the happiness of a crowing rooster. Hearing ‘A cock pronouncing himself
though all his sons had been castrated and eaten,’ Auden says, ‘I was glad I could be unhappy.’ The rooster manages to be so gleeful in the morning because his brain is the size of a pea. With gleeful people walking through the streets of Johannesburg or stumbling merrily over the ruins of Belfast, I, like Auden, am glad that it is still possible to be unhappy.” William Willimon, in his “Homage to Clio” as quoted by Martin Marty in Context, May 15, 1986
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