Individuals gain varied enlightenment from literature. At times it is a lesson or a truth; perhaps it's a broadened understanding or a new idea. Me, I tend to walk away with the complex phenomena that appear deeper than they can possibly be explained; the paradoxes and conundrums that have multiple meanings and layers of importance. I walk away with that which I cannot fully grasp or begin to comprehend.
It seems rather impractical, I'll admit, for the "enlightenment" as I called it to be nothing of the sort; it serves only to breed quiet obsession and hopeless confusion--except for those few times when it doesn't. There are, however rarely they may occur, moments when the clouds align and the sun peeks through, burning it's answers into my skin. The understanding that comes is, like a sun burn, slow in the making. The "moment of epiphany" never happens in such stark relief, but rather, as years go by and knowledge accumulates, the puzzle simply begins to take form, the sun slips gently from its hiding place, comprehension waxes, and a new age dawns, though when it has truly dawned, no one knows, for it is still inexplicably and unceasingly linked to the previous one. It is all interwoven, the name of the colors just as important as John Locke's philosophy in the giant mesh work that is "enlightenment."