The word "illumine" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use the word "illumine" to mean "to shed light on something" or "to enlighten," as in the following example sentence: The professor's words illuminated the complex subject for the students.
But does the new always illumine the old and make it more interesting?
It can warm, illumine and ignite new flames in an almost endless chain of transmission.
Isocrates did promote elementary mathematics as a kind of mental training or mental gymnastics and did allow for a smattering of philosophy to illumine broad questions of human life.
St. Augustine of Hippo (354 430) claimed that human knowledge would be impossible if God did not "illumine" the human mind and thereby allow it to see, grasp, or understand ideas.
Corneille used language not so much to illumine character as to heighten the clash between concepts, hence the "sentences" in his poetry which are memorable even outside their dramatic context.
Quandaries of love and work illumine Farmer (1976; filmed as Carried Away, 1996), but take on increasingly dark and obsessive overtones in Legends of the Fall (1979), Warlock (1981), and Sundog (1984).
In the 80s it became Stringfellows, a black box illumined by explosions of strobe lighting.
Mr Quignard writes much as Rembrandt or De la Tour painted; his narrative illumines only the bare essential, moments of intense emotion.
In arbitration hearings during the Pennsylvania anthracite coal strike (1902 03), Darrow represented the striking miners and in cross-examination illumined not only the arduous working conditions in the mines but also the degree to which child labour was used.
ʿAlī and the successive imams, who are believed by Shīʿism to be the sole possessors of secret insights into the Qurʾān given them by Muḥammad, under Neoplatonic influences of the 9th 10th centuries ad became viewed as men illumined by the Primeval Light, God, and as divinely appointed and preserved from sin.
Esther Waters (1894), his best novel, deals with the plight of a servant girl who has a baby out of wedlock; it is a story of hardship and humiliation illumined by the novelist's compassion.
