On using the truth to speak lies, and lies to speak truths

Or: What do we owe the 'real' people and events that we turn into art?

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats

It was the Romantic poets and philosophers who thought that creating beautiful things was the way to discov…