Touche to Tolstoy
Tumin: A touch of poverty is good for the semination of new ideas?
Rosenberg: There's no question about that. How can you ask such a question? Affluence is heady, you know, and a very dubious condition to develop new ideas, or even to hold on to old ones.
Tumin: But you wouldn't be willing to say . . . ?
Rosenberg: Starvation is also bad.
Tumin: It's impossible to state the best conditions under which you would get the freest flowing of ideas?
Rosenberg: Yes, Tolstoy once said that government support of the arts is terrible, because an artist who is well off will never produce a work of art.
Tumin: Do you agree?
Rosenberg: No, because starvation is also bad. Tolstoy is the last guy in the world who should talk about a subject like that If he had any sense of good manners, he would know that that is not a subject for him to discuss.
Oct 12th