Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt

James Joyce, the daring craftsman of language and breaker of boundaries, once declared: “Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.” In this vision, he unveils the secret of poetry’s power: that it refuses to be imprisoned either by rigid convention or by the so-called “real” world. Even when it seems most strange, most dreamlike, most distant from daily life, poetry is always rebelling—against false surfaces, against hollow imitation, against the lifeless mask of reality as it is handed to us. Poetry seeks not to copy the world, but to pierce through it.

The origin of this thought lies in Joyce’s own rebellion against literary tradition. In his age, much writing was bound by strict form, by polished artifice that aimed to appear perfect, proper, and respectable. Joyce, like the Romantics before him, understood that true poetry could not flourish under such shackles. Even when clothed in fantasy, poetry is the revolt of the soul against convention, the insistence that truth lives not in artifice but in raw, unfiltered vision. Thus, when poetry seems most unreal, it is in fact most alive—its strangeness a protest against the falsehood of ordinary appearances.

The ancients knew this as well. Think of the myths of Homer: gods walking among men, warriors speaking to shades of the dead, monsters rising from the seas. To the unthinking, these may seem “fantastic,” mere invention. Yet they were in truth revolts against a shallow view of life. They revealed deeper realities: the fragility of human pride, the wrath of fate, the mystery of the unseen world. In this sense, Homer was not fleeing actuality, but rebelling against its narrowness, expanding the horizon of what men believed possible.

Consider also William Blake, who saw angels in the trees and eternity in a grain of sand. His visions were mocked as madness, yet they were a protest against the artifice of reason that reduced the world to mere matter. By clothing his truth in fire-winged imagery, he revolted against the prison of actuality and revealed a world burning with spirit. Joyce stands in this same lineage: he saw that poetry does not serve the world as it is, but as it longs to be, as it is in essence, beneath the veil of appearances.

History itself proves the point. When nations suffer under tyranny, their poets often turn to fantasy, allegory, or myth to resist. Under Soviet oppression, Russian poets such as Anna Akhmatova cloaked their grief in imagery that transcended the brutal actuality around them. What looked like dream was in truth rebellion, for their verse preserved freedom in the face of chains. The fantastic becomes not escape, but the soul’s uprising against imposed reality.

The lesson for us is clear: do not mistake the strange for the false, nor the imaginative for the irrelevant. The dream, the vision, the symbol—these are not escapes from truth, but protests against the narrow cages in which truth is too often confined. When poetry revolts against actuality, it is not rejecting the world, but demanding a deeper world, one closer to the soul’s longing. Artifice seeks to deceive with surfaces; poetry tears the veil away.

Practical wisdom follows. When you encounter poetry, do not dismiss it because it seems strange or unreal. Ask what it is rebelling against, what cage it is breaking, what truth it reveals beneath appearances. And in your own life, live poetically—do not be content with surfaces or conventions. Seek deeper meaning in all you see. When reality feels harsh and immovable, dare to imagine otherwise, for that imagination is itself a form of resistance, a way to carve freedom out of stone.

So let Joyce’s words be remembered: “Poetry… is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.” The true poet is not a decorator of surfaces, but a rebel of the spirit, tearing down falsehoods to reveal hidden worlds. May we, too, become such rebels—not running from reality, but reaching through it, beyond it, into the mystery where truth and beauty dwell.