Keats Negative Capability

 

Keats’ theory of “negative capability” concerns a particular state of poetic receptivity that makes literary creation possible. The purpose of this is to fuse emotional intensity with the object to become symbolic of the emotions. Negative Capability asks us to allow the atmosphere of Keats’ poems to surround us without picking out individual meanings and inconsistencies. Whatever the complicated relations between Truth and Beauty and their respective definitions, what matters to Keats are moments of intense, feeling that combine ‘thought’ and ‘emotions’ in appreciating beauty. This explains why much of Keats’ poetry is devoted to catching and holding, moments of beauty. Keats addresses this desire directly in Ode on a Grecian Urn ( lines 15-20) where he writes,
 

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

 

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

 

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

 

Though winning near the goal- yet, do not grieve;

 

She cannot fade, tho thou hast not thy bliss,

 

Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair.

 
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Throughout this poem and many other poems, Keats captures moments, like that of the ‘fair youth’ stooping to kiss his lover and holding them to prevent change and decay, reveling in that moment of perfection.
In many of Keats’ poems, this need to hold a perfect instant leads to an excited tone, almost excessive use of superlatives, and an atmosphere of crushing, voluptuous intensity as Keats demonstrates the depth of his appreciation for the beautiful and in the act of appreciation for the beautiful and in the front of gratitude creates poems as exquisite as that which is admiring. Keats’ Negative Capability is the ability to bask in the beautiful without questioning either it or his methods of description. In other words to take beauty simply as it is. It concentrates on capturing the intensity of emotions and communicating these feelings via the imagination. As a result, the beauty and the truth that are present there are a union of the perceived object and the poet’s emotions.
Writing to his brothers on the 21st of December 1817, John Keats the romantic poet introduced the concept of negative capability as he discussed Shakespeare’s creativity. “At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously”, he wrote. “ I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
According to the Romantic English poet John Keats ( 1795- 1821), artists of fixed opinions suffered from “egotistical sublime”, obsessing over singular truths to the point that they were unable to produce characters and storylines that convincingly diverged from their personal worldviews. He argued that the secret to being an artist was to cultivate a mindset he called “negative capability”.
Creative genius, according to Keats, requires people to experience the world as an uncertain place that naturally gives rise to a wide array of perspectives. Only when artists are able to stay open-minded can they write a wide range of characters and human experiences, from antagonists like Milton’s Satan and the world, which is creatively counterproductive. 
True poetical character, Keats believed, “ has no self it is everything and nothing- it has no character and enjoys light and shade; it lives gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated- it has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon Poet.” The ideal artist, it seems, is equally enthralled to inhabit the mind of a character who aligns with their personal beliefs and one who is antagonistic to them. For this reason, he made fun of poets who used poetry as a means of constant lecturing and haranguing, including William Wordsworth (Keats's friend), who told readers how to read his poetry, and John Milton ( author of Paradise Lost), who sermonized on the balance of good and evil. Such instructive writing, Keats believed, inhibited the writers’ capacity for nuance.
We need only look at his self-written epitaph to get an idea of how the young poet saw himself. He died at the age of 25, his gravestone bearing the words Here lies one whose name was writ in water. His name “writ in water” gives the impression that he believed his words would fade and evaporate. It is understandable, given his poor health and the deterioration of his mental state, that his epitaph reads in such a way, however, we can see these uncertainties and doubts even in his earlier poetry. His sonnet “When I have fears that I may cease to be”. It shows perfectly both Keats’ ambition and his fears should he not survive to reach his goals. Keats knew exactly what he wanted to achieve, just not how to get there. Especially towards the end of his life, after watching his mother and brother die of consumption, the same disease which would eventually claim his own life, Keats became more and more disillusioned with his original concept of Negative Capability. He did not give up on it completely, however, he changed and twisted it in order to create a goal that he considered to be reachable. In a letter written to Richard Woodhouse in October 1818, Keats talks about the “Chamelion poet”, or one who possesses such “egotistical sublime” that he is “ without self, without character”. Keats wrote that ‘what shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the Chamelion poet”. To be negatively capable, a person must be able to completely disregard the need for rational explanations, in the same way, that the “Chamelion poet” disregards logic.
Keats's poems are full of contradictions in meaning ( ‘a drowsy numbness pains’) and emotion ( ‘both together, sane and mad’) and he accepts a double nature as a creative insight. In Ode to a Nightingale, it is the apparent contradictions that allow Keats to create the sensual and hedonistic feeling of numbness that allows the reader to experience the half-swooning emotion Keats is trying to capture. Keats would have us experience the emotion of the language and pass over the half-truths in silence, to live a life of sensations rather than of Thoughts! ( letter to Benjamin Bailey [ Saturday 22 November 1817]).
 Negative Capability, then, is an artistic exercise: learning to entertain all sides of a question as a dramatist, poet, or creative thinker. Thus, perhaps the measure of a true artist and intellectual is the ability to embrace both negative capability and personal convictions at once- without letting one inhibit the dept of the order.