DEVELOPMENT OF LITERATURE IN TAMIL
All 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
