In an 1817 letter to his brothers George and Thomas, John Keats describes a way of thinking that he calls "negative capability". According to Keats, this is “when man is capable of being in uncertainties, in mysteries, in 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. To consider “negative capability” by relying on rigid logic and precise definitions is to raise doubts. Keats describes Shakespeare and his friend Samuel Coleridge as among those gifted with such an ability, implying that when one is freed from the limiting grip of reason, one is granted access to imaginative thought; the source of inspiration from which all great poetry is born. This concept is made clearer by looking at Keats's 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. Inside there are lessons, stories and fragments of wisdom that represent the fruit of imaginative work which is a negative capacity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayBy writing an apostrophe for an imaginary artifact, Keats suggests that there is value in considering the imaginary and the theoretical. The rational observer of an ancient decorated urn would be ready to resign himself to the unknowability of the scene depicted on it, knowing that it is a mystery whose answer is lost in time, but for Keats this unknowability is not an obstacle, but an obstacle. invitation. Throughout the poem, he brings the urn to life through contemplation of its mystery, rather than letting the mystery form a frustrating and impenetrable boundary. In each of the first three lines of the poem, he assigns the urn a personified role: first as “bride of stillness,” second, as “adopted daughter 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 perform these three tasks. As a bride of stillness it inspires meditative contemplation, as an adopted child of slow time it deceives the forces of decay and death, and as a historian sylvan connects us with our past. The urn's role as the bride of stillness is best represented in the first four lines of the second verse: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter; therefore, ye soft flutes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, dearer, Play to the spirit little tunes without tone:" (11- 14) The idea of ​​an "unheard melody" playing on "pitchless spiritual ditties" is inscrutable, bordering on the supernatural, but Keats seems to imply that the the inanimate nature of such art leaves room for fantastic interpretation – that the negative capacity grants the observer the power to populate the absence of sound with sweeter, “unheard” melodies of the mind. It is the silent mystery of the urn that invites the many questions posed by the speaker throughout the ode: “What men or gods are these? Which girls do they hate? / What mad quest?" (8-9) As a "bride of quiet" the urn lends its mystery to an inspired interpretation. The role of the urn as an "adopted daughter of silence and slow time" is clear in the the speaker's observations regarding the suspension of time in the static pastoral scene The two lovers about to kiss are suspended in the moment just before satisfaction: "you never can.”