"A Chinese Sage" is a poem written by Elizabeth Jennings and is part of a collection called Growing-Points, written in 1975.

Poetry Commentary

“A Chinese Sage” is a poem written by Elizabeth Jennings and is part of a collection called Growing-Points, written in 1975. It is written in a very unusual form that can be considered as free verse, using various different indentations and alignments for different lines. This is used by the author to put emphasis on the story in the poem. It consists entirely of 23 lines all in one stanza. It could be said that the poem is a mixture between didactic and narrative poetry. The poem reveals two significant characters: A wise Chinese Sage who likes to write poetry, and a dead simple, uneducated female peasant. Both of these individuals differ from each other in every way. The only way in which they can both relate to each other in any way is by adapting to each others level of intelligence on an emotional level. This turning point in the poem is also emphasised by the use of varying alignment and indentations and especially the use of more emotionally tuned words.

The Chinese Sage is very peculiarly introduced: The way he writes his poems is described. He is introduced in this way because it displays the main difference between him and the peasant woman. She is unable to relate to any form of art due to her background. Basically, this shows how absolutely incompatible the two of them are. Natural human instincts play a big role in this, since it is the natural instinct for love and relationship that overrules and cancels out all differences between them. He “crosses” out the words that she does not understand, releases himself from his philosophical and artistic self and adapts to her level of knowledge. The personification of how “his Magnanimity, more his humility, became his mentor guided him out of all obscurity” simply states that it was not his fantastic mind but instead the use of a suppressed, simple part of his mind led him to happiness and satisfaction. The metaphor “that she was a world he could only enter through her” implies that both characters differ so largely from each other that again, it is only possible for him to get through to her if he adapts to her level and acknowledges that not every individual can understand his terminology.

Both characters are also very clearly described by lists. The peasant woman is described by simple common nouns: “hay, beds, crude, meals, lust”. Immediately followed are several difficult to understand personifications that finalise the portrait of how he must change to the previous things and leave his wit, verse, and cleverness behind.

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The poem is cleverly constructed so that the rhythm is fairly constant but since there are fewer words in the first few lines than in the rest of the poem it builds up to a climax in the story and linked with the language used, a very obvious change can be recorded. After the turning point, the rhythm seems to be interrupted and not as steady as previously.

At the significant emotional turning point in the story the language and form considerably change. After this turning point, a confusing and perplexing atmosphere is created displaying a change in the Chinese Sage’s thoughts, since the language used towards the beginning of the poem is very direct and straight forward. Adding this to the shifting in alignments and indentations one could assume that feelings, emotions, and thoughts occurring in the story are directly linked with the poem as a piece of text.

Enjambment is used several times, most noticeably in lines which are aligned to the right. Caesuras have been placed to interrupt and to drastically slow down the pace and times.

In the first 5 lines, past-tense verbs are used and can be recognised as half-rhymes. Further on, a common ending of adjectives: “-ly” is also used for rhyming. Then, in lines 14 and 15, nouns with a common ending “-ty” are rhymed. In lines 19 to 23, past tense verbs are used again, and “Emperor” and “Philosopher”. Generally words in the first part of the poem can be identified as anapestic and iambic, whereas after the turning point, words, especially rhyming ones tend toward being more trochaic and dactylic, which has an increasing effect on the speed of the poem.

Finally, the poet asks a rhetorical question. “And, I ask, // was he // Most poet or most philosopher in this uncrowned wisdom, writing // In the reign of Charlemagne, Paring simplicities to a peace no // Emperor was ever enticed by or even dreamed of?” It describes the change that the sage has been going through as “uncrowned wisdom”. This can be interpreted simply as a loss of potential wisdom. He may be described as a philosopher as well as a poet, since he was concerned with more than just poetry in life, especially concerning the change in his thoughts. The question itself also illustrates how much the reader is left to independent interpretation and how the reader can relate to the story himself. The allusion to Charlemagne in this case is a comparison between the “sage without a crown” and a great emperor who had the opposite. “paring simplicities to a peace no Emperor was ever enticed by or even dreamed of?” indicates that a crowned man could never find harmony in a simple and natural life but in the personified state of an “uncrowned wisdom”, a man can still find this simple and tranquil way of life.

This final rhetorical question summarises the whole story into a deeper moral. This is why it could be said that the poem is didactic. However, the story of the sage and the peasant woman is a clear example of what Jennings wanted to convey. It simply made the meaning of the final rhetorical question easier to understand.

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