May 13, 2019
What Is Negative Capability
In today’s post I will talk about Negative Capability. In particular, I’ll try to answer the question, What is negative capability? There’s a reason I’ve used bold font. There’s also a reason I said that I’ll try to answer the question.
Honestly, few things in a literary context have troubled me more than negative capability. Can I give you a definition? Sure. That’s very easy. Let’s take the one offered by John Keats himself, who coined the term.
[S]everal things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason – Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge.
The Letters of John Keats, ed. H E Rollins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Giving a simple definition is relatively easy. Understanding the repercussions, is an entirely different story. Let’s try to unpack this.
Negative Capability: The Basic Definitions
If you want a simpler definition, here’s one in fewer words than Keats’s: Negative Capability is an author’s pursue of aesthetic beauty and abstract meaning, rather than philosophical certainty and specific meaning.
Want an even simpler definition of negative capability? It’s when you write beautiful things and you don’t care if they make sense.
I’ve tangentially talked about this before. The very opposite of negative capability is when the author concocts impossible plots and over-explains things to make sure the audience “gets it”.
Take any random genre-fiction novel out there. With few exceptions, you’ll discover a distinct lack of what Keats describes. Unless you are a poor reader yourself, you’ll notice how hopelessly obsessed most authors of such books are with tying up loose ends, being utterly unable to entertain the prospect of being (and leaving the reader feeling) uncertain.
Repercussions, Literary and otherwise
So far so good. We’ve talked about definitions which, as I said, is the easiest thing in the world. But understanding and seeing the repercussions is another matter altogether.
As I told you earlier, few things have troubled me more in a literary context than negative capability. Students and peers over the years have expressed similar sentiments. (Parenthetically, the other concept everyone seems to struggle with is Hegelian dialectics).
The reason I’ve struggled with… well, the right word must be “accommodating” negative capability is my own self-contradictory existence as, on the one hand, a literature scholar and, on the other, a fiction author.
Self-Contradiction: A… Meta-negative Capability
A scholar seeks the truth. For a literature scholar, of course, the matter is a bit more fluid – truth often depends on how well you argue for it, rather than how accurately you can demonstrate it.
Still, the scholarly side of mine resists the concept. It would resist any call to embrace what is unknown and mysterious to remain as such. At the very least, this scholarly side would instinctively try to squeeze into the gaps to take a closer look. For Keats, as I understand him (a subjective view, to be sure), this should not be a goal – certainly not the main one.
On the other hand, my artistic side – as a literary-fiction author – not only fully understands what Keats suggests, but considers it self-evident.
Indeed, anyone remotely familiar with my work would testify to my unorthodox literary strategies, focusing precisely on aesthetic, rather than philosophical meaning. I often leave things unexplored, plots unresolved, mysteries unexplained. I use a lot of symbolism, which sometimes confuses people.
This apparently inevitable self-contradiction almost comes off as a metaphor for the whole concept; a synecdochical case of… meta-negative capability.
Conclusions (no, not really)
There are no conclusions. There are no true replies. Deep down, there is only deliberation beauty. That’s what Keats tells us. In a way, he tells us there is only one thing to know, and that is that we don’t know anything.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because another smart guy said something similar a long time before Keats:
ἃ μὴ οἶδα οὐδὲ οἴομαι εἰδέναι
(what I do not know I do not think I know either)
Plato, Apology
However, any catchy similarities besides, I think that’s not entirely what Keats suggests. Rather, I think, Keats suggests that i) aesthetic beauty is more meaningful than strictly acquired philosophical truth; (by consequence) ii) any truth worth acquiring occurs through the pursue of and drive inspired by aesthetic beauty.
Ultimately, I detect a certain kind of idealistic unreachability in this approach. But, just maybe, that’s the whole point.
2 Comments
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A friend, after reading this post, offered a comment on aesthetic beauty, suggesting that I should define it and explain how it “works”. His observation is apt and his request a fair one. However, I’m afraid it’s not one I can properly answer. I have no concrete way of defining aesthetic beauty.
Ironically enough, this might indeed be the very point: that aesthetic beauty cannot be defined objectively, but that doesn’t make it any less affective or real. In my doctoral dissertation—where, among other topics, I analyze ambiguity and the sublime—I deployed the term omnijectivity (originally coined by the late researcher and science-fiction author Michael Talbot), to describe a state between subjectivity and objectivity. These concepts (the sublime, aesthetic beauty, ontological ambiguity) are not interchangeable, but they are overlapping to various extents.
Ultimately, the big question is how (and perhaps why) aesthetic beauty “works” and can contribute to human happiness. This goes far beyond the scope of a blog post, but laconically putting it, I think the key is to be found in the dialectical pull between the fruits of aesthetic beauty and what my friend referred to as “our technological civilization our lives depend on”.
It is beyond the shadow of a doubt that without the “philosophical truth” we would still live in the caves, hunting for deer (or… mammoths). The crux of the matter though is, to which extent philosophical truth alone can resonate with the deeper meanings of being human.
There is this harrowing scene in Shelley’s Frankenstein (arguably the most eminent example of a discourse related to philosophical truth versus aesthetic beauty), where the creature says: “Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was”.
I have no concrete answers. Still, I might not be the most qualified person to talk about meaning and the human experience—I’m a nihilist, after all!
You made me chuckle – and remember my favorite Faulkner quote: ‘The “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.’
Life is meandering. Life is full of boring parts and painful parts and distressing parts and politics. If it were not for the deliberate choice of beauty by artists, Life would be unbearable.
I know I have provided beauty for at least some of my readers because they have told me so. It is a daunting responsibility. But reaching other humans gives me pleasure, too. And keeps me writing. I have no hopes of reaching all – no book or writer can do that – but I’ll take some. In exchange for many hours of my life.
I happen to be an optimist.