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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.