Keats’ Negative Capability and Maimonides

John Keats’ collection of Letters includes the 1817 “To George and Thomas Keats,” where he introduces his idea of negative capability. The passage reads:

“…I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & 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 & reason…” (Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume II, 968)

In British Literature After 1800, Laura Bloxham gave three variants on how one can interpret Keats’ negative capability: one, characterizing the author with distance or objectivity; two, removing the poem from any sort of standards, making the context of the poem within the poem itself; and three, holding uncertainties without the need for resolution.

I asked Laura (as those also within the class can attest) what negative capability would look like for a reader as opposed to an author. And, it seems that when applied to the reader, Keats and his negative capability is not all that different from of our pal Maimonides and his contentment within perplexity. Keats even uses the words “uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts” to describe the condition of the author (or reader)— how very Maimonides of him.

There could be reservations in linking Keats and Maimonides because while Keats explicitly references the author amidst uncertainty, Maimonides allocates uncertainty and mystery to only the reader. But would it be all that absurd for Maimonides to claim that authors of Biblical texts (who, although divinely inspired, were human) shared in a similar uncertain, mystified, even awe-filled state while trying to write?