The envious die not once but as oft as the envied win applause.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

In a spiritually sensitive culture then it might well be that age is something to be admired or envied.