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The Germans have a concept that is not easily translated into English. In fact, there is no purely English word that connotes a feeling of joy or pleasure at someone else's misfortune. Ironically, it's such a common feeling that it is almost criminal that there is no English word for it.

The word is "Schadenfreude."

Deriving pleasure from another person's pain, or experiencing joy at another person's bad luck, even the more cynical general feeling of happiness that divine Providence has fallen heavily on another person's head is perhaps the most human of feelings. It's human because it shows the weakness of the flesh. How enduringly human it is to know that someone who once was uncivil toward you has now had their comeuppance. It may not be just, but it most certainly is human.

Alexander Pope, one of the most quoted of English poets, wrote "To err is human, to forgive divine." It is very near the opposite of schadenfreude, in which there is no forgiveness. Rather, forgiveness is turned on its head.

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One need not be a philosopher to know that forgiveness and schadenfreude are mutually exclusive. One cannot be happy that another has fallen on difficult times if one has forgiven that other. Nevertheless, we all do it. This is my confession.

I've kept it no secret. I was a National Guard officer. My president sent me to Iraq in 2005 for what I thought was a wrongheaded, unnecessary, and unjust quasi-military action. I was bitter. Upon my return, I wrote many poems. "Schadenfreude" is one of them.

To be honest, I can't be sure how this one came out. I believe I must have been reading Arthur Schopenhauer at the time, or maybe I stumbled upon the word and began to contemplate it. Either way, I began to feel unwinsomely joyful when the political tide of public opinion began to turn against the Bush Administration. To this day, I cannot stand the sheepish smirk of Dick Cheney. But the past is the past. Let it die.

I wrote the following poem during the first couple of years of my return. It has not been published other than in my collection of poems "Rumsfeld's Sandbox." I give it to you here, in all its human glory.

From the cover of "Rumsfeld's Sandbox."
Copyright Allen Taylor. All rights reserved.

Schadenfreude

It is the most exhilarating joy . . .
And not devilish at all.
Plagued by this world’s karmic clefts,
Lunging at angst like justice divined,
You claim verboten. Forbidden
By the gentrified elite, the kinder class,
It does define the spirit of the times.
Zeitgeist is ersatz for the common will,
The anima of the masses. Sturm and drang
Spring from sorrow. Forged on the anvil
Of a hurting heart, anticipation scours the soul,
Hammers the mind and kills so pure. Pleasure
From pain is the sweetest medicine,
And before you know what tide has swept you under,
Love and honor, like a disease, go kaput.