Editing Negative capability (section)

==Use by Keats==
[[John Keats]] used the phrase only briefly in a private letter to his brothers [[George Keats|George]] and Thomas on 22 December 1817, and it became known only after his correspondence was collected and published. Keats described a conversation he had been engaged in a few days previously:<ref>{{cite book|last=Li|first=Ou|title=Keats and Negative Capability|year=2009|publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group|page=ix}}</ref>

<blockquote>
I had not a dispute but a disquisition with [[Charles Wentworth Dilke|Dilke]], upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and 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 and 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. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.<ref>{{cite book | last = Keats | first = John | title = The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge Edition | publisher = Houghton, Mifflin and Company | year = 1899 | page=277| isbn = 978-1-146-96754-9 }}</ref>
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[[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] was, by 1817, a frequent target of criticism by the younger poets of Keats's generation, often ridiculed for his infatuation with German idealistic philosophy.  Against Coleridge's obsession with philosophical truth, Keats sets up the model of Shakespeare, whose poetry articulated various points of view and never advocated a particular vision of truth.{{cn|date=May 2024}}

Keats' ideas here, as was usually the case in his letters, were expressed tersely with no effort to fully expound what he meant, but passages from other letters enlarge on the same theme.{{cn|date=May 2024}} In a letter to [[John Hamilton Reynolds|J.H. Reynolds]] in February 1818, he wrote:

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We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.<ref>{{cite book | last = Keats | first = John | title = The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge Edition | publisher = Houghton, Mifflin and Company | year = 1899 | page=314| isbn = 978-1-146-96754-9 }}</ref>
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In another letter to Reynolds the following May, he contrived the metaphor of 'the chamber of maiden thought' and the notion of the 'burden of mystery', which together express much the same idea as that of negative capability:

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I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me—The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think—We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle—within us—we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight: However among the effects [which] this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart and nature of Man—of convincing ones nerves that the World is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness, and oppression—whereby This Chamber of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darken'd and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open—but all dark—all leading to dark passages—We see not the balance of good and evil.  We are in a Mist—We are now in that state—We feel the 'burden of the Mystery,' To this point was Wordsworth come, as far as I can conceive when he wrote 'Tintern Abbey' and it seems to me that his Genius is explorative of those dark Passages.  Now if we live, and go on thinking, we too shall explore them.  he is a Genius and superior to us, in so far as he can, more than we, make discoveries, and shed a light in them—Here I must think Wordsworth is deeper than Milton[.]<ref>{{cite book | last = Keats | first = John | title = The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge Edition | publisher = Houghton, Mifflin and Company | year = 1899 | page=326| isbn = 978-1-146-96754-9 }}</ref>
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Keats understood Coleridge as searching for a single, higher-order truth or solution to the mysteries of the natural world. He went on to find the same fault in Dilke and Wordsworth. All these poets, he claimed, lacked objectivity and universality in their view of the human condition and the natural world. In each case, Keats found a mind which was a narrow private path, not a "thoroughfare for all thoughts". Lacking for Keats were the central and indispensable qualities requisite for flexibility and openness to the world, or what he referred to as negative capability.<ref>Wigod, Jacob D. 1952. "Negative Capability and Wise Passiveness." PMLA 67 (4) (1 June): 384–386</ref>

This concept of negative capability is precisely a rejection of set philosophies and preconceived systems of nature.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 30209856|title = Negative Capability in Keats's Diction|journal = Keats-Shelley Journal|volume = 15|pages = 59–68|last1 = Starr|first1 = Nathan Comfort|year = 1966}}</ref> He demanded that the poet be receptive rather than searching for fact or reason, and to not seek absolute knowledge of every truth, mystery, or doubt.<ref name=":2">Goellnicht, Donald. "Negative Capability and Wise Passiveness" MA Thesis. (McMaster University, 1976), 5, 11–12. http://hdl.handle.net/11375/9563</ref>

Keat's concept of negative capability can be understood as an author's ability to enter fully and imaginatively into the characters, objects, and actions he represents.<ref>Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "negative capability". Encyclopedia Britannica, 21 Apr. 2017, https://www.britannica.com/art/negative-capability. Accessed 12 July 2022.</ref> In his essay “[[Tradition and the Individual Talent]],” T. S. Eliot wrote, “the progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” According to this line of interpretation, the author ''negates'' himself, in order to present a fully independent character, one with all the uncertainty and mutability of a real person. Brian Vickers comments, "By 'negative capability', Keats probably meant Shakespeare's ability to imagine himself in each dramatic scene, to efface himself, and to enter with complete sympathy into the passions and moods of his characters"<ref>''Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition. Coriolanus.'' Ed. David George. General Editor Brian Vickers. Thoemmes Continuum, 2004. p. 1</ref>