In an 1817 letter to his brothers George and Thomas, John Keats describes a way of thinking he calls “negative capability.” According to Keats, it is “when man is capable of being in uncertainty, mysteries, doubts without any irritable search for facts and reason.” (968) For centuries the meaning of this concept has been debated – a concept whose oxymoronic name seems to allude to its meaning. Considering “negative capacity” based on rigid logic and precise definitions is tantamount to perplexity. Keats describes Shakespeare and his friend Samuel Coleridge as being among those gifted with this ability, implying that when one is freed from the grip of reason, one has access to rich imaginative thought; the source of inspiration from which all great poetry is conceived. This concept is best illuminated when looking at Keats's own poetry, and perhaps nowhere more vividly than in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn." The ode presents itself as an ideal exercise of the concept and a showcase of its virtues. It contains lessons, stories and bits of wisdom that are the fruit of imaginative work that is negative capacity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayBy writing an apostrophe to a fictional artifact, Keats implies that it is useful to consider imagination and theory. The rational observer of an ancient decorated urn would be quick to resign himself to the unknowability of the scene depicted there, knowing that it is a mystery whose answer is lost in time, but for Keats , this unknowability is not an obstacle, but an invitation. Throughout the poem, he brings the urn to life by contemplating its mystery, rather than allowing the mystery to present itself as a frustrating and impenetrable boundary. In each of the first three lines of the poem, he assigns the urn a personified role: first as "wife of tranquility", second as "nurse child of silence and slow time" and third as "sylvan historian". » Immediately, the urn is completely removed from the world of objects, animated and given a voice to carry out these three tasks. As a bride of quietude she inspires meditative contemplation, as an adopted child of slow time she beguiles the forces of degradation and death, and as a sylvan historian she connects us to our past. Throughout the poem, Keats employs negative capacities to allow the imagery of the urn to consciously fulfill these three roles. The role of the urn as the consort of tranquility is best described in the first four lines of the second stanza: “The melodies heard are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter; therefore, you sweet trumpets, continue to play; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endearingly, to spiritual songs without tone: » (11-14) The idea of ​​an “unheard melody” played on “spiritual songs without tone” is impenetrable, at the limit on the supernatural, but Keats seems to imply that the inanimate nature of such art leaves room for fantastic interpretation – this negative capacity gives the observer the power to populate the absence of sound with softer "unheard" mental melodies. It is the silent mystery of the urn that prompts the many questions asked by the speaker throughout the ode: “What men or what gods are these? Which girls do you hate? / What crazy pursuit? (8-9) As the “bride of tranquility,” the urn lends its mystery to inspired interpretation. The role of the urn as a “nurse of silence and slow time” appears.”