Negative Capability: Finding Truth Through Art Anonymous College

In attempting to maneuver the changing modern world, early 20th century poets struggled to reconcile ‘old’ world views with the new normal. In a letter to his brothers, English Romantic poet Keats mediated this pervasive sense of inner conflict by proposing the notion of “Negative Capability”, where “a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. In this sense, Keats rejected a given set of rules and philosophies concerning natural order, scorning the search of knowledge in favor of a tranquil satisfaction with the unknown and of discovering truth through artistic beauty. This concept is embodied in Keats’ poem Ode on a Grecian Urn and in Yeats’ Lapis Lazuli, where both concur of the precedence of art over dwelling on the hardships associated with human experience. These works can thus act as representative examples of modern poetry, where poets conciliated their fears of the modern world in favor of using art to express the unknown and the beauty associated with it.

A seminal example of Negative Capability, Keats’ ekphrastic Ode on a Grecian Urn explores the romantic scenes represented on an ancient urn, which he finds preferable to the transience of life...