Available Online at http://www.recentscientific.com International Journal of CODEN: IJRSFP (USA) Recent Scientific International Journal of Recent Scientific Research Research Vol. 11, Issue, 10 (B), pp. 39825-39834, October 2020 ISSN: 0976-3031 DOI: 10.24327/IJRSR Research Article KEATS’S DEFINITION OF NEGATIVE CAPABILITY Dr. Poonam Sinha Ph.D. (English) PG Diploma Mass Communication, IIMC, New Delhi DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24327/ijrsr.2020.1110.5572 ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Exploring and studying John Keats’ theory – art is equally beautiful without imposing personal Article History: elements into it, in a way, getting oneself into the character one portrays, other than making oneself Received 6th July, 2020 a character- is to learn about the creative passivity as a receptivity towards knowable mystery. Received in revised form 15th Indeed, Keats is the most mystical of the Romantic poets in terms of valuing positively the self- August,, 2020 affirming emptiness necessary to Gnostic insight Accepted 12th September, 2020 Published online 28th October, 2020 Article History This Article is a part of the Research entitled, “Keatsean Negative Capability as a Theoretical Tool for Modern Poetry in English. A Critical Study of T.S. Eliot’s Poerty.” Key Words: Conflict, Egotistical sublime, Negative Capability, Passivity, Psychoanalytic Copyright © Dr. Poonam Sinha, 2020, this is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. INTRODUCTION remaining content with half knowledge.” Elsewhere, speaking of the “poetical character” in general, Keats observes that “it John Keats is one of the young romantic poets who has shown has no character—it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be the excellence in English poetry, which few poets have it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated—it possessed. Negative Capability is one of the striking features of has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What Keats’s poetry, his phrase for a power of sympathy and a shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon Poet.” freedom from self-consciousness. It occurs in a letter of 22 1 A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because December 1818 that tends to be a special (or at least a he has no identity—he is continually in, for, and filling some heightened) characteristic of artists. For him, negative other body. The poet is like a chameleon. He assumes like the capability was a capability “When a man is capable of being in chameleon various colours. He has no identity. He is uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching continually filling some other body. He enjoys with equal relish out after fact and reason.” There is a quality that goes “to form pain and pleasure. The poet accepts the whole of life. He a Man of Achievement especially in literature and which identifies himself with the object he is treating. The poet Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative merges himself in the very subject. The two become one and Capability, that is when man is capable of being in the result is the sweet wholesomeness. uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” This description can be compared to a In order that one is able to create true poetry, one has to be able definition of conflict: ‘An emotional state characterized by to remain in what may be states of conflict indecision, restlessness, uncertainty and tension resulting from without ‘irritably’ reaching after facts or reasons. By not incompatible inner needs or drives of comparable intensity.’2 imposing one’s self upon the doubts and uncertainties which make up a conflict, Keats would rather make us believe that we These two definitions are very similar; the meaning of conflict were open to the Imagination. The word ‘doubt’ originates sounds very negative and hopeless. However, Keats’s creative from the Latin, ‘dubitare’ and comes from ‘two’ as in two concept seems positive and full of potential by leaving minds. In most conflicts, two people (i.e. two minds) oppose out ‘restlessness’ by avoiding an ‘irritable reaching after fact each other. Yet instead of fighting the other, Keats finds the and reason.’ The quality has to do as well with a capability “of situation to be one that is open for creativity. *Corresponding author: Dr. Poonam Sinha Ph.D. (English) PG Diploma Mass Communication, IIMC, New Delhi International Journal of Recent Scientific Research Vol. 11, Issue, 10 (B), pp. 39825-39834, October 2020 Shakespeare had no character of his own. He always identified In this sense, Negative Capability is a sublime expression of himself with his characters. He was Hamlet, Macbeth, Iago, supreme empathy. And empathy is the capacity for Portia, Desdemona, Falstaff, and yet he was none of them. He participating in, experiencing and understanding another’s was Shakespeare. feelings or ideas. It’s a creative tool to help us understand each other, understand different points of views or different cultures Keats was the true disciple of Shakespeare. He was capable of so that we might be able to express them. Being able to see entering wholly into the very being of his creations. His friends things from another’s point of view, and to apply an open, remarked how he could understand events far outside himself imaginative creativity, are both critical, poetical methods to as if he had become the bird. Another time he spoke about a resolve conflicts involved in creativity. fall of rain in such a way that he seemed, somehow magically, to know just how a plant must feel with the rain on it. Keats found a clue for many of these speculations in the writings of Hazlitt—particularly the essays, “On Gusto” and According to Keats, the state of negative capability requires an “On Imitation” and the lecture “On Shakespeare and Milton.” ability to experience sensation passively and observe astutely, The character of the artist therein is said to be so absorbed in both qualities necessary to taking on any disciplinary role. the act of creation that it subsists only inside the act. In the Keats’s earlier letters long for an uninhibited life of sensation: process of imagining, all the self-regarding data of ordinary life “However it may be, O for a life of sensation rather than of seem to vanish. Thus, the artist’s curious attentiveness to other thoughts! It is a ‘Vision in the form of Youth,’ a shadow of persons and things, like that of the chameleon or the reality to come,”3 he writes to his friend, Benjamin Bailey. ventriloquist, may outwardly resemble the selflessness of one Although Keats cannot actually live subject to the whims of who has no character. The work of art, in turn, elicits our sensation, without any “irritable reaching after truth,” he longs attention in a way that requires the giving up of ordinary selfish for such a state: the state of negative capability. As Alan and social concerns. It leaves in suspense our usual interest in Richardson has argued, the word “sensation” had correlates in moral judgement for the sake of a new interest in beauty and Keats’s medical training, where it implied a connection—not truth. necessarily an emotional one—between the brain and the “organs of the senses.” Connecting sensory input to the brain, Keats found this quality at its fullest in Shakespeare. He was an sensation is that which allows the poet, like the students in the admirer of Shakespeare, and his reading of the Bard is anatomy theatre, to observe life impartially. In a letter to Mary insightful and intriguing, illustrating the genius of Ann Jeffrey, for example, Keats considers the possibility of Shakespeare’s creativity. Keats describes this genius signing up to work on a merchant ship. To her implied as ‘Negative Capability’. It was primarily under the influence objection that such an occupation would not befit a poet, he of Shakespeare’s negative capability that Keats came to adopt writes: this form of verse for the later period of his literary career. He wanted to attain that perfection in negative capability, which “You are a little in the wrong concerning its destroying the Shakespeare had achieved in his dramas, but Keats found that energies of Mind: on the contrary it would be the finest thing in instead of drama, the ode form of verse was best suited to his the world to strengthen them—To be thrown among people purposes. Negative Capability is aimed at a rich comprehension who care not for you, with whom you have no sympathies, of experience, largeness and compassion; not the egotistic self- forces the Mind upon its own resources, and leaves it free to assertion, but the negation of self which characterized make its speculations of the differences of human character and Shakespeare. It is a capacity for objectivity in the midst of to class them with the calmness of a Botanist.”4 terrible personal suffering, and the capacity to come to terms Without the distractions of sympathy, the mind can work more with this misery, not through fact and reason, but through an scientifically, assessing the “differences of human character” understanding of its true nature. necessary for the writing of good poetry, “with the calmness of In yet another letter addressed to Bailey, Keats throws some a Botanist,” instead of having sympathy for—feeling the light on the nature of Negative Capability—“Men of genius are emotions of—his shipmates. Keats’s scientific metaphor points great as certain ethereal chemicals operating on the mass of to his professionalism, his willingness to detach himself from neutral intellect….they have not any individuality, any people who “care for [him]” better to understand human nature.