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ness is not all. But there is a condition of human aspiration in
which
that statement is absolutely good, just as there is a condition
of
human despair in which Nietzsche's terrible assertion is, also, true.
I speak of these obscure matters because I want to touch on
an aspect of William Shakespeare that has constantly mystified and
delighted me. It is the ease with which he walks a tightrope over
all accepted religious dogma. It would be as absurd to speak of his
Protestantism as of his Catholicism, and almost as absurd to speak
of his Christianity. Some lip service, of course, goes to the established
Church but, at any rate for me, this lip service has a peculiarly
ar–
tificial and unconvincing air. It is particularly in his religious-his
openly religious-passages that Shakespeare most admirably exercises
that faculty for which Keats so deeply respected him. I mean that
faculty Keats called the negative faculty. Let me read the sentence
in which Keats describes it: "At once it struck me what quality
went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and
which Shakespeare possessed so enormously-I mean Negative Capa–
bility, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mys–
teries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."
111is negative capability, I think, is really part of a greater, a larger
characteristic of Shakespeare in the particular and the poet proper
in general. There is, I believe, a state of a spiritual neutrality about
existence which, seen in operation, gives the impression of an effort–
less laboring, like the moon on a night of storm. This effortless labor–
ing in a supreme neutrality is by no means a withdrawal from human
affairs-it is rather a wandering up and down the no-man's-land
in between the machine guns and the opposition of all natural fac–
tions. It is this supreme neutrality that appears to deprive the poet
of his personal character and make of him a creature half subhuman
and half superhuman. It is this supreme neutrality that permits the
poet to delight in the apparent creation of evil, ugliness and despair.
This supreme neutrality
is
the opposite and antithesis of that with–
drawal from life achieved by the religious mystic. "Not until the
soul has divested itself of the love of created things can it aspire to
the divine union." I will paraphrase this exquisite pronouncement of
St. John of the Cross to make my meaning clear. "Not until the soul
has invested itself with the love of
all
created things can it aspire
to the poetic union." For the poet is a man who has elected to love
