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- hey are verily “life's phonemes” that bring out the deeper reality behind the surface appearances. The cardinal marks pf such great literature are a living freshness, a purifying exaltedness, a stir of universality of the capacity to appeal to the “common reader”. and also an intimation of Truth’s profundities.
Born of nature and nurture, of experimental and experiental knowledge, of book-learning and intuitive understanding, litreature concerns itself with the mystic balau:e er p3ise of Truth and with the elusive realm of Ends and Means; and while it explores, and trafficks in, the hidden unknown of the iceberg, while its quarry is the invisible god as wełł as the invisible devil, ultimately great titerature aspires (or should aspire) towards a condition of whojeness and whoiesomencss, Afi fife, aii iiterature, ail spiritual experience is a more or less sustained progress from superficial and disperate understanding to knowledgë by identity and integrai realisation. The poet sees more, and farther, aná moře completely anđ finaliy, than others. Hence poetry is the light of the deeper truth, it is sheer reveiatory power. Through the five senses one progresses. in the underständing of the universe made up of the five primordisi elements; earth, water, fire, wind, sky. It is, however, when the human soul (the microcosm) leaps through the sesses and establishes an equation with the " universe (the macrocosm), it is only then that real understanding by identity dawns atlast and integral realisation becomes possible. Hence the poet's supreme gift of vision is the revelation of the indwelling unity behind the phantasmagorial diversity of phenomenal life. In his brilliant final chapter, Dr. Sanjeevi derives ‘ilakkiyam' and ‘ilakkanam’ from ‘ilakku" or ‘what reveals', and shows how in the highest flights of poetry, the oneness behind the multiplicity
