Keats' Idea of Negative Capability

Keats Notes

Keats' Idea of Negative Capability

In a letter to his brother, Keats recalls how he pondered what made genius creative minds- he uses Shakespeare as an example- so unique and able to create thoughtful works of masterpiece.

"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 man is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason"

Keats believed that the ability to open ones mind, to empathise wholly and be comfortable with seeing contradictions, made a great poet. Keast also says "A poet is the most unpoetical of anything else in existence, because he has no identity," reinforcing the idea that, for Negative Capacity, the poet must be willing to remain in a conflict of being, without the need to reach for a rational answer or revert back to his own original identity. He must have a certain passivity, giving him the ability to become someone else; to be receptive of the world out of context and not seek to catagorise experience, turning them into rational theories.