NEGATIVE CAPABILITY V/S EGOTISTICAL SUBLIME

Negative Capability

“Negative Capability” is a term introduced by John Keats in one of his letters which was
addressed to his brothers, George and Tom Keats. He came to introduce this concept in 1817
when he was discussing 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, 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."

Term: Although the term seems to be ambiguous regarding the definition it holds, scholars
came to a conclusion that Keats used the particular phrase because of the influence he had
with studies of medicine and chemistry. They believe that it refers to the negative pole of an
electric current which is passive and receptive. The negative pole receives the current from
the positive pole. In a similar way, the poetic mind receives impulses from the chaotic and
mysterious world and translates into art without trying to interpret it by explaining.

John Keats never brought this concept as something negative even though the term makes us
believe so. Keats does use words like ‘uncertainty’ but there is no restlessness in this
uncertainty which often accompanies the ‘irritable reaching after fact and reason'. The doubts
and uncertainties, for Keats, are situations that are open to creativity and imagination. Being
able to see things from another's point of view, and to apply an open, imaginative creativity,
are both critical as well as poetical methods to resolve conflicts creatively.

Definition: Negative Capability in simpler terms is the capacity of an artist to present poetic
or artistic beauty by embracing the chaos of uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, confusion and
paradox and this opposes the philosophical, intellectual, moral and aesthetic certainty. In Li
Ou’ work Keats and Negative Capability, the concept is defined as-

“To be negatively capable is to be open to the actual vastness and complexity of

experience, and one cannot possess this openness unless one can abandon the
comfortable enclosure of doctrinaire knowledge, safely guarding the self’s identity,
for a more truthful view of the world which is necessarily more disturbing or even
agonizing for the self.”

Keats and Shakespeare

Keats believed that Shakespeare was the master who possessed Negative Capability to the
extent because Shakespeare was able to create villainous characters like Iago as well as
virtuous ones like Imogen. Keats further believed that Shakespeare found pleasure in creating
both good and bad characters without any moral concerns. A Man of Achievement, like
Shakespeare, with negative capability, is said to possess no concrete self but rather
metamorphic identities like a chameleon.

A negatively capable poet is not a poet without any self. He has a self that is ready to
embrace all kinds of human experience whereby it evokes the paradoxical soul-making.
Paradoxical soul making needs the presence of pain and suffering in order to follow the path
of virtue that the soul can experience. In other words, negative capability transcends the
egotistical sublime of one’s own suffering.

Egotistical Sublime

Egotistical sublime is also a term coined by John Keats in a letter addressed to his friend
Richard Woodhouse in 1818. The concept is an antithesis of Negative Capability. In the
letter, Keats describes himself as-

“I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the Wordsworthian or egotistical

sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone.”

Keats also talks about the poetical character of a person possessing Negative Capability. He
says “it has no character; it enjoys light and shade”. It is said to live in a “gusto” or
enthusiastic enjoyment and thus, delights in conceiving an Iago as well as an Imogen. “What
shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon Poet”.

Negative Capability is concerned with poetic creativity which elevates poetry from earthly
moral concerns. These poets do not present the world through moral perspective instead they
present an unbounded world created in the poetic process. Keats believes that those who lack
negative capability will suffer from egotistical sublime. For him, Wordsworth is a poet, who
seems to present the world through his subjective point of view and believes that Wordsworth
does not possess the negative capability that Shakespeare possessed.

Keats further says that “a Poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has
no Identity – he is continually in for and filling some other Body”. This statement does make
the poet or artist seem like he is indecisive or that he is making blurry arguments. This is a
misinterpretation. What Keats actually means by this is the ability of the artist to cultivate
empathy. Artists do their best work when they learn to step outside themselves.

The key elements of negative capability include imaginativeness, experiential and artistic
intensity submission of the self, sympathetic identification, the dramatic quality of the poet,
disinterestedness, a neutral intellect tolerating diversity and contradiction, and a tragic vision
of human experience, all of which are intricately related to one another.

According to Keats, creative genius forces people to experience the world as an uncertain
place and thus it naturally results in many different perspectives. Only when an artist remains
open-minded can he create different characters and human experiences, from antagonists like
Milton’s Satan and Shakespeare’s Iago to romantics like Keats’ Isabella. Holding onto a
subjective view of the world will result in egotistical sublime and it will be
counterproductive.

Keats believed that an ideal artist will find equal pleasure in inhabiting characters that are
aligned with their own beliefs as well as those characters who seem to shake their beliefs and
thus seem antagonists. For this same reason, we find that Keats is against the instructive kind
of poetry and writing which we find in Wordsworth as well as Milton. Wordsworth is seen
telling readers how to read his poetry and he uses poetry as a means of constant lecturing.
Milton, on the other hand, seems to sermonise on the balance of good and evil in his epic
Paradise Lost.

Negative Capability and Keats

We see 'Negative Capability' in operation in Keats as he contemplates a bird on a gravel path,

and he told Richard Woodhouse in a letter addressed to him, that he could even conceive of a
billiard ball taking a sense of delight in 'its own roundness, smoothness, volubility and the
rapidity of its motion'. He also says that in a room full of people he can feel his own self-
being annihilated by the identities of everyone else that seems to press on him. Keats' concept
of Negative Capability is seen in his poems too. In Ode to Nightingale, we find him
transforming himself into the impersonal and immortal beauty of Nature’s cycles (the simple
flowers, the wave’s rainbow).

Negative Capability and other writers

John Keats or Shakespeare was not the only writers identified as having the negative
capability. Other writers have also adhered to this concept even though they don't use the
phrase "Negative Capability" as such. Coleridge speaks of 'a sort of transfusion and
transmission of my consciousness to identify myself with the object'. Byron says, in a letter to
Thomas Moore that he embodies himself 'with the character' while he is drawing it. Browning
claims that he can enter other beings using his imagination. Arthur Clough's main character in
Amours de Voyage says “I can be and become anything that I meet with or look at”.
T.S.Elliot in Tradition and the Individual Talent writes that 'the progress of the artist is a
continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.' Mrs Ramsey, in Virginia
Woolf's To the Lighthouse, looks intently 'until she became the things she looked at'.
Margaret Atwood writes in Second Words of the writer's desire to be teleported into
somebody else's mind but retaining one's own perceptions and memories.

In conclusion, Negative Capability can be seen as an artistic exercise whereby the artist can
learn to understand the different aspects of a character who is remote from his own beliefs.
The measure of a true artist is always his or her ability to embrace both negative capability
and personal convictions at once—without letting one inhibit the depth of the other.