"To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature."--Ernst Fischer

Are beliefs like this the reason why artists are, metaphorically, starving?
There's such arrogance in this quote that I can't help but admire.  It's so well-said, but so wrong-headed. I mean, really, talk about painting with a broad brush! Let me count Ernst's erroneous assumptions:

1. The "slumber of prosperity" implies that a well-off person is too comfortable to be conscious and therefore can't possibly see life as it truly is. 
2. If that's the case, it's best to be poor because only the poor understand suffering well enough to provide those "dreams of terror" that is the "moral duty of literature".  

It sounds like pretty shrill, unreadable, one-note literature to me, guaranteed to keep the author as poor as he must want to be.