JMW Turner on How to See Magic in the “Real World”

The strange transformation of reality on seeing “Ulysses deriding Polyphemus”

There is a point in a child’s life when he is told that magic is not real and that he is old enough now to be realistic. There are no mermaids in the sea and no giants in the mountains. He is brought to more practical matters by well-meaning parents and teachers who wish to redirect him from fairy tales to school exams. True love, dragons, and demons, t…