Brief bio sketch

Lloyd Haft (1946- ) was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin USA and lived as a boy in Wisconsin, Louisiana and Kansas. In 1968 he graduated from Harvard College and went to Leiden, The Netherlands for graduate study in Chinese (M. A. 1973, Ph. D. 1981). From 1973 to 2004 he taught Chinese language and literature, mostly poetry, at Leiden. His sinological publications include Pien Chih-lin: A Study in Modern Chinese Poetry (1983/2011; published in Chinese translation as 发现卞之琳: 一位西方学者的探索之旅 in 2010) and A Guide to Chinese Literature (with Wilt Idema, 1997). His liberal modern Dutch reading of Laozi's Daode jing was published as Lau-tze's vele wegen by Synthese in September 2017. His newest books in English are translations: Herman Gorter: Selected Poems (Arimei Books, 2021), Zhou Mengdie: 41 Poems (Azoth Books, 2022), and Totally White Room (Poems by Gerrit Kouwenaar, Holland Park Press, 2023). He has translated extensively into English from the Dutch of Herman Gorter, Gerrit Kouwenaar, and Willem Hussem, and from the Chinese of various poets including Lo Fu, Yang Lingye, Bian Zhilin and Zhou Mengdie.



Since the 1980s he has also been active as a poet writing in Dutch and English. He was awarded the Jan Campert Prize for his 1993 bilingual volume Atlantis and the Ida Gerhardt Prize for his 2003 Dutch free-verse readings of the Psalms (republished by Uitgeverij Vesuvius in 2011). His newest books of poetry in Dutch are Intocht (Introit) and Beluisteringen (Soundings), published by Uitgeverij Van Warven in November 2023.



After early retirement in 2004, for a number of years Lloyd Haft spent much of his time in Taiwan with his wife Katie Su. In June 2019 he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of National Taiwan Normal University. In addition to writing and translating, his interests include Song-dynasty philosophy and tai chi. For many years he sang in the choir of a Roman Catholic church of the Eastern Rite in The Hague.



Thursday, February 9, 2012

A Letter on Tai Chi (太極拳書簡)


(Scraps from a Sinological Scrapbook 漢齋閒情異誌, fragment 18)

[The following piece, originally titled ‘An Open Letter to Slauerhoff at the Beginning of the Year of the Rat,’ was originally written in Dutch and published in De Gids 171:4 (April 2008), pp. 308-311. It is in the form of an open letter to the famous Dutch poet and fiction writer J. Slauerhoff (斯勞爾霍夫, 1898-1936). As a ship’s physician, Slauerhoff traveled extensively in the Far East, and many of his stories have Chinese settings. His poetry includes memorable adaptations from classical Chinese verse. Several of his works have appeared in Chinese translation.]

J.,

For the past two weeks, since returning to Taiwan for the so-manieth time, I’ve been reading all sorts of things about your work. Normally I try to avoid that most pretentious and hyper-intellectual of all genres, ‘the literature on literature.’ But now I’m wading through some of it; a Dutch magazine has asked me to write something about you ‘from an East Asian point of view,’ and first I need to know what other points of view there already are.
Your work has not escaped the oversimplification and pigeonholing that make so much ‘literature on literature’ misleading. Later writers on you tend to repeat what the earlier writers had already stated. Again and again it is said that you had a ‘sloppy’ style; you paid too little attention to rhyme and meter; you published poems that still needed additional polishing.
Many or most critics agree that you wrote ‘sloppily,’ but they do not agree as to why. Some say the imperfection of your style was deliberate. You consciously left grammatical or metrical errors in to keep your work from seeming fuddy-duddy, stiff, lifeless. I call this the Believer’s Argument: the poet knew perfectly well what he was doing and where he was going wrong in the eyes of the squares and the wise and prudent. Opposed to this, there is another view that I will call the Skeptic’s Argument: the poet couldn’t help it; his mind was already slipping; his illness caused inadequate oxygen supply to the brain and he was a sick man.
        This debate reminds me of a recent experience of my own in ‘East Asia.’
For several years now, almost every day I have been practicing tai chi 太極拳, a Chinese system of bodily movement (I prefer not to call it a sport, though many Dutch bookstores stock tai chi books under ‘sports’ – to many of us in the West, the very word ‘sport’ has associations with grimly endured effort, with strenuousness and ‘grit.’). In the Chinese world, tai chi is typically practiced by ‘older’ or even very old people, because the movements are non-strenous. Slowly, attentively, the body weight is transferred from one leg to the other; the arms are moved through the air as if through the imaginary resistance of surrounding ‘water’; the hands are placed on imaginary ‘surfaces’ or ‘railings.’
To those who have never experienced it, it seems impossible that such seemingly easeful movements could lead to increased energy and improved circulation. But practitioners agree that the legendary old Teachers were right when they said the most advanced practice was like ‘doing nothing’: the more relaxed, the more effective and more beneficial.
In the Yang school of tai chi (for the world of tai chi, like so many other traditions of expertise, is long since divided into quibbling factions, typically named after a family in which the given style was first taught and handed down), a common saying is that you should ‘move your arms as if you had no arms.’
Nowadays on the internet you can find all manner of video clips of tai chi teachers in action. There are plenty of clips of modern ‘masters,’ whatever their degree of real knowledge or legitimacy, showing fragments of longer instructional films which it turns out you can order for a price...but also, for the patient browser, fascinating old black-and-white takes of the fabled teachers of a bygone age.
        This past winter in Taipei, I found a long black-and-white film of Xiong Yanghe (熊養和, published dates differ: 1886-1984 or 1889-1981), one of the first teachers from the Mainland who brought the Yang-style tradition (that is, his own version of it) to Taiwan. Xiong originally hailed from Jiangsu Province on the Mainland; later he became renowned as a tai chi teacher and author in and around Yilan 宜蘭, Taiwan. Whoever posted the film provided no information as to how old Teacher Xiong was at the time of filming. What would it have been, ninety? (In this area, anything is possible; there is an excellent clip of Wu Tunan 吳圖南 practicing at the age of 101.)
        The quality of the video was, by present-day standards, miserable: black-and-white but faded and yellowed, flickering, occasionally dropping out for a couple of seconds. But what I was seeing was a revelation to me. Xiong seemed to be ignoring what all the textbooks say. And the ‘deviations’ were mostly in the same direction: simplification. Parts of movements, or transitional movements between the traditional ‘postures,’ were shortened, simplified, or simply skipped.
        According to the books, in performing the posture called Whip to One Side 單鞭, the right hand changes from an open palm to a so-called Hook Hand 勾手, with the thumb and one or more curled fingers lightly touching each other. But in Teacher Xiong’s version of the posture, the right hand remained open, suspended in the air, seemingly just an extension of the open posture of the rest of the body.
        I saw this as an example of the coveted Yielding and Gentleness that the Yang-style teachers call hallmarks of high mastery. To grasp or grab as little as possible – such is the mental attitude, and the physical style, of one who supposedly ‘embodies the Tao’ 體道. Watching, I thought: he’s past the stage of listening to Prescriptions. This is the way Lao Tzu 老子must have lived...
        I grabbed the phone and called Teacher Mou , who lives in my neighborhood. Mou has been practicing the Yang style for decades and is a recognized authority who is often invited as a jury member and evaluator of tai chi events in Taiwan. He was not yet aware of this Xiong Yanghe video, and came to my house the same afternoon to watch it with me.
        We sat down at the computer and I clicked on Teacher Xiong. There it was again, the great Yielding, not out of fear but out of confidence. Xiong was not even afraid – and this is a truly great level of achievement, possible only after long years – of his own self-critical eye.
        Teacher Mou watched for a minute or two and said: ‘Too bad. He’s too old for it. He can’t really do it any more.’
        Whip to One Side is one of the first postures in the standard series, and within two minutes there it came again, that old-and-thin but graciously open right hand.
        ‘See?’ said Mou. ‘His fingers are too old; he can’t form the Hook.’
I said nothing, but I was not immediately convinced by Mou’s application of the Skeptic’s Argument to Xiong’s simplification of the Hand. Perhaps I was, and am, still too awed by the Believer’s Argument, which has very deep roots in Chinese traditions as to what to do about aging.
Western students often see, and want to see, a great panacea and elixir in tai chi, qigong, and related disciplines. To them, all this is an unassailable tradition of non-Western (hence not yet subject to their own mature critical judgment) wisdom, for which they are willing to undergo radical changes in their diet, daily routines, and way of life. But there is one area of the traditional Prescriptions that Western students have trouble accepting. I am referring to the attitude of the Old Teachers toward sex.
Our Western folk wisdom on such matters, whether or not it is substantiated in actual practice, advises ‘doing it’ as often as possible, viewing sex as both an indispensable source of energy and a badge of continuing vitality. But there is a persistent vein of Chinese tradition which takes the opposite position. Many of the most famous Teachers, even today, regard the male orgasm, with its loss of semen or ‘vital essence,’ as a strength-diminishing burden to the organism. 
Students of the famous Zheng Manqing 鄭曼青 (1902-1975), who some decades ago was a sensationally famous tai chi teacher in America, and was also regarded in certain circles as a great healer and expert on Chinese medicine, were shocked to hear him say that men past the age of fifty should actually have no more need for sex.[1] To us post-Puritan post-Freudians, this is truly ‘an hard saying; who can hear it?’[2] But Zheng was merely reaffirming his native tradition, which says that ‘doing it,’ at least doing it through to the end, as little as possible is the best thing, and that someday when you are truly Advanced, you will no longer be bothered even by the thought of such things.
I do not doubt that for aging men it is more pleasant, more reassuring to believe their slackening sexual performance has to do with consciously following wise Prescriptions – than just helplessly to undergo it as a fated biological predicament. Similarly, I suppose an elderly practitioner of tai chi would rather believe he no longer ‘forms the Hook’ because his ripened insights into Gentleness give him the right to skip over it.
        Such, in any case, would be the Skeptic’s Argument. But the Believer can still fall back on an ever-vital tradition that says ‘I deliberately choose not to.’ In 1996, when he was 72 years old, Wei Shuren 魏樹人, a Beijing-born present-day teacher of the Yang style, published two richly illustrated volumes under the title An Exposition of the Real Yang Style Tai Chi 楊式太極拳述真.
        The first volume was a detailed treatment of the more than eighty postures of the traditional sequence of movements as explained by Wei Shuren. It began with a series of photos of Wei’s own teacher, Wang Yongquan 汪永泉 (1903-1987). On the illustration of Whip to One Side, Wang’s right hand is clearly open, not closed.
        In the second volume, Wei Shuren presented his own simplified set of movements, comprising only 22 postures. Among the many deleted traditional postures were all the occurrences of Deflect, Parry and Punch While Stepping Forward 進步搬攔捶. In Wei’s new simplified set, apparently they were satisfactorily summed up in a single posture called Deflect, Parry and Punch While Stepping Backward 卸步搬攔捶.
J., it’s been two weeks since I wrote the above. Since then I’ve been becalmed, not knowing how I should continue and conclude this letter. It seemed to be full of concrete details, but still to lack the overall aura of a unifying vision that would give it a message, a reason for being. What, in this case, would be my concluding vision? Are Teachers Xiong, Wang and Wei communicating helpful wisdom by consciously revealing their unorthodox ‘incomplete’ movements, or are they just slipping-but-congenial codgers taking the easy way out?
        I didn’t know the answer two weeks ago, and I don’t know now. Maybe the only thing I could do would be to inform the editors of the magazine that I could not submit the piece on time.
But then I thought: hey, wait a minute. Wouldn’t it be appropriate if a piece about ‘incomplete’ forms...itself remained incomplete? (Don’t be afraid here, J.: though I’ve been reading ‘the literature about literature,’ it still hasn’t affected me to the point where I might start adopting ‘iconicity’ as a literary technique. At least, if I can still control myself.)
        So, let’s postpone the ‘East Asian perspective’ till another occasion. Meanwhile, may the Year of the Rat bring more contributions to the deserved preservation of your name and fame!
        All best, L.

--Lloyd Haft


[1] See Wolfe Lowenthal, There Are No Secrets: Professor Cheng Man-ch’ing and his Tai Chi Chuan, Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1991, pp. 101-105.
[2] Traditional (“King James”) version of John 6:60.


Thursday, February 2, 2012

太極拳的神話

太極拳的神話(漢齋閒情異誌第3篇)

不僅是西方人士夠天真的相信太極拳之類的養生功法是“萬靈丹”的神話,我覺得多半的中國人也相信,以為只要持之以恒練習,就會活到很老,也是永遠不會感冒。我在台灣的朋友都很正經的說我每天練太極,一定可以活到100歲。姑且不論我本人是否覺得活到100歲是好事,我知道根本沒有 “一定” 可言,我讀過一些有關資料,也知道太極拳最著名的老師們中如楊澄甫與董英傑這兩位先生,就連我這年齡都活不到。

太極拳,或者說,不只是攸關身體健康或長壽,心靈與智慧也是很重要的吧?!這個我也不太確定。(太極拳的用語裡面,意與神這兩個最主要字的說法,分歧到讓人絕望,就連說的是四肢還是心,都不明確清晰)。當然這方面很多作者提到太極拳與道教思想關係密切,包含只活到72歲的鄭曼青老師。我猜想,這些高深的哲理不外於Douglas Wile 在他一本精采的書 Lost T’ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch’ing Dynasty 中所提“氣功之皮毛外加於中國制式化武功上...”。換句話說,後天的愛好者,比起原來老師們,從書中多學習一點,就多詮釋一些原本太極拳面貌所沒有的相關理想與觀念。

當了解到這一點,也就打破了太極拳神話的另一部份,也即是說,早期的老師們都是一些聖人或哲學家,他們的生活方式很注重靜坐、精神修養,他們的工夫也是屬於“柔”智慧的一種表現。而實際上,正好相反,早期的老師們,大概都是很會拳打的江湖好漢,被後來的文人羨慕、研究,從而加入聖徒之列。

因為如此,也就不用再傷腦筋證明太極拳神話的另一個教條:太極拳只有一個支派才是正宗的傳承派別。在Douglas Wile 書中,有一個非常值得思考的建議:「只要我們考慮到那常存於文化中,同時也伸手可得的“柔”,那麼從不間斷的老師與弟子之傳承,或許並非必然」。換句話說,經常被捧為太極拳本質的這個“柔”, 一般而言,不過是中華文化的本質罷了,而卻在每個時代都會有一些老師,重覆或重建太極拳的本質,不管這些老師們是否獲得真正傳承的功力。

儘管如此,所謂“正宗傳承”的觀念,還是屬於太極拳的神話之一,用來將不正確的教授方式或觀念合理化。每一個研究太極拳的人遲早會發現,有關太極拳的文獻與有關占星術的文獻,有一個共同點,即具有陳腔濫調重複以往文獻論調的特質。這個後果之一,就是積非成是的翻譯也變成標準用語。不可否認的,太極拳招式的名稱,就連中文也很難懂,何況其他語文,就以英文的翻譯為例,我倒覺得可以提供些許建議。

老師們都勸著在學習時必須有的態度叫“虛領頂勁”,很多人解釋為“放鬆脖子以便能量能暢通至頭頂”,我猜想可以詮釋為“放鬆脖子,並感覺頭頂撐著極其輕微的東西。”又,有一個招式叫作“高探馬”,有些英文資料翻譯為“站在馬旁高舉手輕拍馬脖子”,我則認為,“騎著馬,探身望遠處”。

上面所述敘,還是次要的,因為在東方,無論如何終究會認定傳統對,而你所說的不對。傳統思想正因為歷時長久,世世代代被崇拜,已具有權威,無論你再如何舉證辯解,無法抵得過。實際上也正因為傳統思想非邏輯,所以沒有辦法用邏輯來反對,人民才那麼畏懼它,也就是說,你會徒勞無功。

再從另一種領域舉例,凡是說到中文文字的結構系統,傳統上說是“六書”,實際上,其中有一種類型難以辨明與另一種的差別性。但是沒有人敢說不是六書。假如實際上是五種而名稱上是六種,當我們被詢問時,只好回答像曾經流行過的某一首歌唱詞“就是這樣,就是這樣啦!”

但是,我確信只有少數的中國人同意我不在乎是否“正宗” 的看法。我們都知道某些台灣人先學了好幾年鄭曼青的太極拳,或是在他們社區學的另外一種太極拳,也多少得到身體或其他方面的好處與效果,但是突然間,自認為還是要前往中國大陸向自稱為太極拳大師的先生跪求學習,其聲稱“為了人類的健康而下山教學,不只是為了賺錢以及銷售DVD ,而所傳授的是不二法門的太極拳秘笈”。

為甚麼這些台灣人要這樣做呢?因為他們在尋“靜”。他們從小的教養都重視沉靜、鬆弛、安詳的價值,(我相信中國人之所以把這個觀念弄得如此理想化,就因為中國人實際的生活方式最缺乏的不外於此,而我所體驗的中國人是急躁的,多動的,全不懂得休息的)。太極拳偉大之處,其奧秘有如教堂聖餐中聖杯之意義,不外是“鬆”,鬆弛,可以說是行為、態度,可以是姿勢,甚至於是生活方式。

你可以藉由各種不同的方式將自己放鬆(當然我現在是假設世界上的確有人,哪怕是少數幾人,至少偶而一次,居然可以搞到“鬆”。難道真正鬆的存在,也是太極拳神話中的一部分嗎?)據說,可以用正確的動作或者呼吸法,或者時時刻刻維持捨己從人,與人無怨悔或無衝突來達到放鬆....,然而,恐怕這些我“應該”做的正確想法與行為徒增壓力而非減輕負擔。我寧可把作為乖孩子必讀的清單省略,來強調一件既能包括也能替代其他的最關鍵的事:做一些你自己相信是有益的事,就可以帶來一種非常非常輕鬆與安心的感覺。我相信太極拳(或是靜坐、書法、氣功之類)的效果,不只看功法對不對,或者是否得到老師的讚賞,而重要的是,對自己做的事情有沒有好感,也就是說,周遭的文化或論壇告訴你太極拳等等是可以達到輕鬆效果,而只要你相信,那麼就可以有效果。

說到這裡,讓我再增加兩個註解。其一,我倒是很相信練太極拳有好的效果,在我本人的生活上得到的印證,讓我不得不相信,雖然我也要承認此刻我寫這些字時還是有點感冒。其二,我自己是純正的西方人,我的專業也是在教育界,我不認同東方人總認為老師的話全是對的想法,雖然我知道,對很多人而言,聽老師的話而做,是比較安心而輕鬆的,這沒有甚麼不好。

我在此想強調的是,關鍵在於態度而非形式,這並不是我第一個提出的。中國古代偉大的哲學家之一孟子在公孫丑章第一篇提出“浩然之氣”,著名文人林語堂將此詮釋為人類最浩瀚之氣,最具仁義勇氣。據孟子所說,這種力量可以超越肉體,不是物質上而是精神層次,關係到你對所過的生活,存在著自我認同與好感。

無論如何,誰都同意,(我本身亦然),太極拳重要的不在詮釋,也不是研究傳承方式的好壞,而是要”練”,每天原則上都需要鍛練。我作為西方人,覺得很有勁(也是非”中國”)的是有一次讀到沈壽先生”太極拳文集”裡的一段話,提及若偶而有一天不能練習也並不至於有災難,反而一個星期不做一、二天也會有好處的。這個跟傳統”拳無隔日功”的說法很不一樣,跟”一曝十寒”的教訓也大不相同。

一般而言為甚麼中國人認為一次的練習都不能忽略,我覺得有兩種原因。一來,在他們的生活文化中都注重毅力,覺得毅力是一件美德,一旦選定了一條道路,後來不管對或錯,執意繼續進行則表示很有品格(而不是說彈性不夠,反省不足),這種態度很明顯為“勤能補拙”之類的行為觀念所支持。(很多時候我們大學裡要當不夠天賦,卻被鼓勵不要放棄這類型學生的導師,總是帶來極大的困境。)

二來,你完全循規蹈矩的作風可為鄰居朋友所認同。假如我無論晴雨風雪、生病與否,保證每日如一的練習,人家就對我感覺親切,評價良好,相對的,也就容易規範出如何對待我的標準與言行,並容易了解我的行為動機。一旦他們覺得認得出我的行徑,則給予他們一種平靜的感覺(假如他們真正與太極拳老師討論過練習這事情,就不一定認為無條件的毅力是好事,我所經歷過的老師們不見得認為生病時還要繼續練)。

無條件的保持勤勉是一件好事的觀念又出現在太極拳神話裏,這不見得是老師教導的,基本上是一般人的看法,認為既然練太極拳好處多,當然再多也不嫌少。假如每天練30分鐘就有好的效果,那每天練300分鐘的效果應該是好10倍吧!西方人多半會覺得每天練300分鐘太極拳的人未免有些異常,最好不要向他請教養生觀念,而在東方,不消說,多數人就會稱讚這是毅力與恆心的好榜樣。

不久之前,我在台北的報紙上看到一條新聞,談到一個男生在火車站以擦皮鞋為生,就連自己結婚的那天,婚禮一結束就趕回車站繼續幹活而不讓他的顧客“失望”,以稱讚的語氣說他是多麼勤快。我想,他真幸運,還好新娘不是西方人。

--漢樂逸英文原著、中譯,蘇桂枝潤稿