The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

“The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.” Thus spoke Jean Cocteau, and his words echo like an oracle’s riddle across the centuries. What is this paradox, this shimmering contradiction that seems at once impossible and eternal? The poet, in shaping visions, bends the ordinary into forms unseen; in telling us what is not, he unveils what is. For what is a lie if not the weaving of images that never walked upon the earth? And what is truth if not the revelation of the soul’s deepest current, spoken in words too large for mere fact? The poet’s lies are masks, but behind every mask gleams the radiant face of something eternal.

The ancients knew this well. When Homer sang of gods descending from Olympus, did his listeners believe Zeus truly strode the battlefield in armor? No—they believed something greater: that divine forces shape human destiny, that unseen hands stir the course of war. The lie of the story contained the truth of the human heart. This is why myth endures when chronicles turn to dust. For the tale embroidered by the poet transcends the brittle bones of fact, and becomes instead the living marrow of meaning.

Consider the words of Cocteau not as a rebuke, but as a torch. He shows us that the poet’s lie is not deception, but transfiguration. When Shakespeare gave us Hamlet’s cry, “To be or not to be,” no prince of Denmark ever spoke such lines, yet the world trembles with recognition, for in that lament beats the pulse of every mortal’s doubt. The lie of the stage utters the truth of existence. Thus the poet deceives us only to awaken us; he paints shadows only to teach us the shape of light.

History, too, bends to this law. Recall the tale of Joan of Arc. Some said she heard voices that no one else could hear, and her enemies called her a fraud, a deluded child, a liar. Yet her words, her visions, stirred a nation to rise, and her presence turned despair into hope. Whether the voices were angels or echoes of her own fervent heart matters little—for the truth she carried transformed the destiny of France. The lie to some became the blazing truth to all.

Thus we must understand: the poet is not bound to the dull stones of reality, but to the fire that burns behind them. He takes clay and breathes into it a spirit. He carves illusions, and through them, we glimpse eternity. Cocteau’s paradox is not a condemnation, but a hymn. It teaches us that the truth of art is deeper than the surface of facts, and that the soul finds its reflection not in the mirror of the literal, but in the dream of the symbolic.

And what lesson lies here for us, children of this age? It is that we, too, must learn to see beyond the surface. We must not mistake the lie for falsehood, nor the truth for mere fact. Facts shift, but truths endure. Let us open our hearts to the voices of the poets, the storytellers, the dreamers, for they remind us of what we already know but have forgotten. Their lies are our compass. Their truth is our guide.

Therefore, walk through life as both dreamer and witness. When you speak, let your words carry more than information—let them carry meaning. When you listen, do not only weigh the facts, but search for the eternal fire glowing beneath them. And when you act, let it be not only in pursuit of what is seen, but in devotion to what is true. Build your life as the poet builds his verse: with courage to imagine, with wisdom to discern, and with faith that behind the veil of seeming, the radiant truth is waiting to be revealed.