Tribal lore
Sir: Mr Coleman (Letters, 15 August) in his attack on my aesthetic judgment perhaps has not noticed the care with which I chose my adverb and adjective: 'absolutely first class Jewish artists or composers of music'. I don't deny the merits of people like Chagall, Mahler, Mendelssohn and Schoenberg; but they are not absolutely first class. I suppose the only first class artist of the standards I was using alive today is Picasso, and perhaps the only first class composer of music is Igor Stravinsky, neither of them Jewish.
The Jews surely have produced enough absolutely first class performers like Spinoza, like Einstein, like, possibly. Marx and Freud not to be so touchy when, for historical reasons which I could explain, they have not in fact produced, I believe, absolutely first class painters or composers.
Mr Coleman's indignant letter reminds me of a story told me by a great friend of mine, Darsie Gillie. In the last days of inde- pendent Austria, an anxious and proud Viennese Jewish acquaintance produced for his inspection a great chart of human achievements in the sciences and in the arts. Darsie Gillie was impressed, but he was also a little puzzled because there were hardly any Gentile names in this great chart, and with all his willingness to accept the excep- tional talents of the Jews, he did not think they were responsible for nearly all human achievements. So perhaps I shall not be accused of anti-semitism if I don't take as seriously as Mr Coleman does the merits of Chagall, Mahler, Mendelssohn and Schoen- berg.
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