Negative Capability
Working with Mystery
After reading the earliest draft of my current novel, a reader pointed out the negative capability in one of the characters, a seven-year old child. And the utter lack of it in the main character, his father. The phrase gave me the sensation of seeing glimpses of something through trees on a parallel path. Or something in the fog. Something I’ve encountered, but never stopped and addressed. Who goes there?
Almost two years later, and I’ve ended up thinking about these words in terms of character, story, writing, writing process, life, faith… I could go on. My “work” is my life, really; you know, as a writer and artist. A dropped comment can grow around us and into us, and cause the piece we are creating at that moment to deepen.
As I work on a story, I become a magnet for all the pieces that are needed… even as they come my way and cause me to think, ‘Really? This?’ It may not connect quickly or easily, but eventually I come to an understanding of why the shadowy thing stepped out, allowed itself to be seen. Or I don’t. But they’re still there, at the edges.
Do you find when you are writing, absorbed in the task of weaving your story, your poem, your words, that all that comes to you, while in that space, eventually connects in the oddest ways—even the most disparate pieces?
Even to open to this idea will connect us with John Keats idea of “negative capability.” Because this is Mystery. And creative work is birthed of mystery.
‘Irritable reaching!’
Negative capability is “not the exclusive preserve of poets, but can describe the pre-creative mood of any artist, scientist, or religious person.” (wiki link below)
That stopped me. ‘What an odd collection,’ came to mind. The more I thought about it, it rather broke my mind, then pieced back together, and it took longer than I’m comfortable admitting. Maybe because I’ve struggled with religious thought for years—specifically, the type of literal religious thinking that is worn like steel-toed boots, by people who wouldn't understand what I just said (who go in fear of metaphor). So maybe the phrasing should read “artist, scientist, and person of faith. Or “persons of creativity, curiosity, and faith.” Ah yes, they share much.
Keats wrote a letter to his brothers in which he mentioned his thinking on this, in which he expressed favouring a sense of wonder over the pursuit of logic/reason. He described negative capability as the capacity for “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
“Irritable reaching. ” What a phrase.
“In [Keats’] opinion, various subjects could be explored in a more abstract or objective way if authors were not so preoccupied with explaining how things work or uncovering truths.”
In my Week of Writing
Last week, immersed in attempting to complete my novel (and before I fell ill with strep throat or something…) I found myself at points of struggling to make sense of certain threads, of making clear the muddy.
I found myself, at points, explaining. I’m going too far, my alarm said. (Or maybe it was the “irritable reaching.”)
When you find yourself explaining, pause. By “explaining,” I’m talking about the deeper material—the what-makes-the-character-tick. Leave the “explanation” of how the window faces east, hence the morning sun.
(Ah…but if you say “morning sun,” the reader will know it’s east-facing. Explain such basics only if you need to. For the sake of the story. Not the reader. Maybe that’s a worthwhile distinction… yes, it follows, one from the other, reader from story. But leave it at “story” for your work; the reader can do their own work. Thinking ‘aloud’ here.)
Readers like to work—it gives them space to care.
Let’s look at the phrase
We’ve come to see the word “negative” as… negative. So part of understanding how Keats is using the word “negative” is to know the role of “positivism” in his time. (“A philosophical system that holds that every rationally justifiable assertion can be scientifically verified or is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and that therefore rejects metaphysics and theism.” Source: Oxford Languages)
Our time, too, values logic and reason over other ways to think and to experience.
You might ask: How did we get to this point of placing such value on logic and reason? Why? Have we lost anything with this? As human beings? As artists? Have we gained?
Keats’ use of “negative” works with the idea of resisting the urge to explain away what and when we do not understand.
“Rather than coming to an immediate conclusion about an event, idea or person, Keats advises resting in doubt and continuing to pay attention and probe in order to understand it more completely.”
“Keats believed that the world could never be fully understood, let alone controlled… pride and arrogance must be avoided at all costs.” source
Maybe that phrase, “resting in doubt,” does it. You might think of others—please share if you do.
Self doubt
I think this connects.
When I mentioned “self doubt” the other day, at the end of me week of intense writing, in comments other writers spoke to this: it is a part of writing, a significant piece, really.
If we have no doubt, we have no mystery either. We have only surety. And we know that when we have the misfortune to find surety in another, we find it boring… so why would we want it in ourselves? Perhaps mostly to hold on to… something. Instead of the high-wire act that life is in general.
We know this in ourselves and about ourselves. Why do we want different in our work? I almost wrote, “why would we want less in our stories?” and thought that might sound a bit freaky. But why would we? Because it does lessen.
Mystery is about awe and wonder. We want that in both life and in our work. I’m going to leave it up to you to find it in your life. But we can talk about discovering and creating it in y/our work
Negative Capability in our work
Consider the workings of “mystery” in your work. (It is already there, in some way/s, whether you’ve given it thought. In fact, you may have been thinking of it as the irksome part, the part you need to “do something about”—sort out, find answers, define, polish, toss…)
The re-consider. Fiction mirrors reality, bends it, plays. In play, it discovers. Sometimes fiction’s job is simply to reassure with this is how it is. This might bring acceptance. Acknowledging mystery can gift us this. Acceptance can lead to contentment. (I’m including a couple verses of the Tao here; the Tao is filled with words of mystery, acceptance, contentment.)
Sometimes it’s useful to think about the fuzzy edges of a thing. Do you know, in your work, when you are approaching that “line” of unknowing? Can you take a look, and decide how far in you can go, and when to step back? I’ve often started to cut a piece, and realized I’ve no business cutting it. Not because it’s beautiful and amazing and was created in an artisitic stupor and is evidence that I’m a great writer, so great I don’t even understand myself… ha! I’m laughing as I write that. It is SO not that.
This isn’t ego—quite the opposite. I’m talking about the downright humbling of realizing that somehow I’ve written words that I’m going to be learning from, if not now, some time down the line. That the story is bigger than me, as is the world it was created in. That I should acknowledge this, and be grateful. And write on.
Be unafraid to have mystery in your work. Be active in your awareness of its existence. I’m inclined to say be especially conscious of it in the end process of your work. It’s relatively easy to feel it in the births of a work—where do ideas come from from? Seemingly the air, at times. And then those moments of spark, when ideas come throughout—a chapter ending is gifted us while folding laundry. We see a gesture of a character that indicates some decision—we see it clearly as a film, and share it on paper. Then we get to the final phase and we want to polish, make smooth. We join pieces, we shape, we want it to make perfect sense. And at that point—irritable reaching for logic—in our very hands, the thing whoopee-cushions flat.
Life is filled with complexity. People you know—you believe you know well—surprise you in some way, positively or otherwise. Some disparate aspect of their personality or character emerges. It might even leave you stunned. You might be able to put pieces together, might be able to connect dots… and it might make “sense.” Or you might not.
Not only do you not need to know every last thing about a character, but your characters cannot know other characters.
Think too, about the “crazy” (mysterious) coincidences you’ve encountered in “real life”—bits of reality that, if you dropped them into a piece of fiction, you’d be second-guessing yourself. (Or if you read another’s work!) So might your miserable reviewers. Yet, I’m talking about things that HAPPEN.
“Mystery” is not about lazy writing. Quite the opposite. It takes as much energy—more energy—to do this well—to leave in and weave. I’m thinking that “weaving” in mystery is mostly conscious work—mostly conscious. And “leaving” in might be less so—even sub- and un-conscious. Let these lines blur. Just think: weaving and leaving. Know when to walk away. Before you find yourself explaining.
Why would fiction not mirror our human reality? Those books that we return to have great holes in them, black holes. They have moments that spin our heads. Even when pieces “fit,” a great story leaves us puzzling about the deepest things, and in the best ways.
I believe that when a story is written with space left for negative capability, it might leave the reader with insights that the writer never had. Maybe the writer will discover them later. But if the writer can write with this thought—a humbling one—tucked away somewhere, that openness will allow in the best: what the story needs more than what the writer needs.
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Do check out the wikipedia piece on this—it leaves you with a lot to consider. (“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.”)
And for listening, a little Dylan.
I’ll also share a couple pieces of the Tao, including the opening verse, (using the Jonathan Star translation). More mystery to mull.
Tao verse 1:
and verse 11
Let your reader sit with good questions. Just as you have in the creating. Leave them with some work, too. Let them poke their finger into the empty cup, and wonder what they might fill it with to parch their thirst.
As for the scientist, they are surely some of the biggest dreamers among us, always with more questions than answers.
I love this. It took me a long time with photographs to learn about the use of "negative space" (and even now I don't use it extensively). I know I am trying to let more mystery appear in my writing, letting go of concrete facts more often in order to share experience. The feeling experience can get lost in too many words.
And yes, honestly, every week exactly what I need comes to me somewhere. It might come from another writer (on a topic you'd never imagine), from a comment at work, from a random post, from a dream or from a friend. But it comes. Every time it reminds me the mystery is there, weaving behind the scenes.
As my father slid into the long loss of memory that came with his Alzheimer's, his last battle was to try to challenge the certainty of one group (and their attempt to impose that certainty on others). He wrote letters to the editor, spoke about this in his church (and was eventually excommunicated by them for this), railing against the danger to society when one party or group of people couldn't tolerant any ambiguity, were black and white thinkers. This is what I was reminded of with your use of the phrase of negative capability. And I realize that as a story teller-both in my profession as a historian and my current life as a writer--I turn to my father's words, trying to create both a narrative of past events and fictional characters who can accept the discomfort of not knowing, of even discovering that what they thought they knew might be wrong. As a mystery writer, I do try to give readers a sense of closure, that the wrongs have been righted, the confusion cleared up, but I can see that this gives me the leeway to also challenge the reader to accept--tolerate--the ambiguities of life. In my own life, I can see the damage I have done with my certainty, and the joy I can get if I just say, I don't know. As usual, thanks for the thought-provoking piece.