Invisibility

In Telemachus Stephen recalls his mother laughing at lines she heard sung in a pantomime: "I am the boy / That can enjoy / Invisibility." A magical rose gives the main character this power and he delightedly imagines how he can use it, singing "Invisibility is just the thing for me." The mood of the song is light and comical, but invisibility is a power that Stephen has already associated, in A Portrait of the Artist, with the greatest kinds of literary art. There is good reason to think that he is the boy that can enjoy invisibility.

John Hunt 2011


The Shannon Colleens performing "I am the boy that can enjoy invisibility" in 2010 at Bewley's café in Dublin. Source: youtube.com.


Scene from a production of Turko the Terrible at London's Holborn Theatre, in an image from the 2 January 1869 issue of the Illustrated London News. Source: www.akg-images.com.