Page:Gleaning Of Tamil Literature.pdf/9



ll literature answers to something in life, some habitual form of expression. The stage imitates life, calling in the services of the eye and the ear; there is the narrative of the teller of tales or the minstrel; the song, the letter, the talk—all forms of human expression and communication have their antitypes in literature. The only thing necessary is that the thing or the thought should be vividly apprehended, enjoyed, felt to be beautiful, felt in the blood and felt along the heart and expressed with a certain gusto. We must remember that the nomenclature of literature, the attempt to classify the forms of literary expression, is a confusing and a bewildering thing unless it is used merely for convenience. The essence of it is that it is a large force flowing in any channel that it can, and the classification of art is a mere classification of channels. What lies behind all art is the principle of wonder and beauty; it may be the sense of fitness, of strangeness, of completeness, of effective effort.

In poetry which is a form of art the essence is throughout the same; it is personal sensation, 2