Tolkien and Negative Capability

[Mnemosyne]

DISCLAIMER: After a quick precursory thread search on the word "ambiguous" I couldn't find anything specifically having to deal with this topic; however, I know that people have touched on it briefly here and there in other threads. So I'm going out on a limb here and trying to give it a thread of its own, if it hasn't been given one in the past (I'm sure if so, one of the venerable wights on this site will graciously link this one into irrelevance).



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The other night I was reading (translate: "had to read, but in a very good sort of way") one of Keats' letters, where he discussed the work of great poets as one of "Negative Capability"--that was, the ability to revel in the mysterious and present questions without this compelling urge to arrive at an answer:

Originally Posted by John Keats, in a letter to George and Thomas Keats

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 posessed 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--Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

And this immediately struck me on several levels, because of course I thought of this:

Originally Posted by Tolkien, In the House of Tom Bombadil

"Fair lady!" said Frodo again after a while. "Tell me, if my asking does not seem foolish, who is Tom Bombadil?"

"He is," said Goldberry, staying her swift movements and smiling.

Frodo looked at her questioningly. "He is, as you have seen him," she said in answer to his look. "He is the Master of wood, water, and hill."

And this:

Originally Posted by Tolkien, Letter #163 to W.H. Auden

These rhymes and names will crop up; but they do not always explain themselves. I have yet to discover anything about the cats of Queen Beruthiel.

And the fact that Tolkien intentionally wrote two contradictory accounts of the Elessar stone, and pretty much any statement from Tolkien saying that there is no outright Message to be read into his works.

What I find most interesting about this, I think, is that things like Queen Beruthiel ended up getting their own explanation, and even matters such as scientific accuracy in Middle-earth, some form of the Incarnation, and other things that suggest that Tolkien was "incapable of remaining content with half knowledge" as it were, crept into Middle-earth over time.

And yet he never explained Bombadil to us.

The other thing I find so fascinating about this is that we often look at Tolkien as drawing inspiration from things very early and very late, but not necessarily from such people as the Romantic poets. And granted, there's no reason to think that people didn't revel in the unknown before the Romantic Era; but I don't think I've ever seen the idea presented half so well and I think articulations like that increase the demand for the unknown as it's presented in Faerie.

So on the one hand we have Tolkien the Fairy-story-writer, who is content that things don't always make sense; and on the other hand we have Tolkien the Sub-creator, who needs things to make sense for the world he made to be viable.

How was this tension resolved, if ever? Did the balance shift one way or another over time? Did publication and the establishment of a "canon" have any effect on the matter?

And where do you prefer to stand as a reader? Do you prefer the ambiguities, or the explanations?