PALO ALTO, California – AS the designer R. Buckminster Fuller liked to tell it, his powerful creative vision was born of a moment of deep despair at the age of 32. A self-described ne’er-do-well, twice ejected from Harvard University, a failure in business and a heavy drinker, he trudged to the Chicago lakefront one day in 1927 and contemplating suicide. But an inner voice interrupted, telling him that he had a mission to discover great truths, all for the good of humankind.
設計家伯克明斯特‧富勒總愛說，他的強大創造洞見誕生於32歲那年一個絕望至極的剎那。自稱一事無成的他，兩次被哈佛大學退學，經商失敗，飲酒無度，1927年某天腳步沈重走到芝加哥湖畔想自殺，內心卻有個聲音打岔，告訴他，他身負為人類福祉發現偉大真理的大任。

That was the pivot on which, he claimed, his life turned. The onetime loser entered a period of deep reflection, then emerged bursting with creativity as he developed the “Dymaxion” inventions: technologies that he said would transform housing, transportation, urban organization and, eventually, the human condition. From 1927 on, Fuller seemed utterly self-assured, even messianic, as he developed innovations like the geodesic dome, equal parts engineering élan and poetry.
他說，那是他人生轉向的樞紐。這位過去的失敗者進入一個深潛反思的階段，銷聲忘言，冒出頭來的時候，創意爆發，想出Dymaxion系列新發明：據他所說，那些科技將會改造住宅、運輸、都市組織，終而改變人類處境。1927年起，看似自信滿滿，甚至帶著救世主氣息的富勒，想出兼融工程氣勢和詩意的多面體圓頂之類創新作品。

Those pioneering creations will be on display this summer in “Buckminster Fuller: Starting With the Universe,” a sprawling show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York that testifies to the wide-ranging intellectual curiosity of Fuller (1895-1983).
那些具開創性的作品，今夏將在紐約惠特尼美國藝術博物館內涵廣泛的「富勒：天地之初」展覽中陳列，這些作品見證1895年生、1983年過世的富勒包羅廣遠的知性好奇心。

But recent research has shed new light on Fuller’s inner life. In particular, it now appears that the suicide story may have been yet another invention, a myth that served to cover up a formative period that was far more tumultuous and unstable, for far longer, than Fuller ever revealed.
但晚近一些研究使我們對富勒的內心世界有新的認識，尤其自殺故事現在看來可能是富勒的又一個發明，這個用心營造的迷思旨在掩飾一段養成歲月，那段歲月遠比富勒生前向我們透露的要更動盪、更不安定，也更持久。

That is one insights gleaned by researchers who are exploring his personal archives, deposited in 1999 at the Stanford University library by his family. Fuller collected nearly every scrap of paper that ever passed through his hands, including letters that raise questions about the suicide story.
這是探究富勒私人檔案的研究人員獲得的洞識，檔案1999年由富勒的家人交給史丹福大學圖書館典藏。富勒幾乎把他雙手碰過的每片紙張都保留下來，包括使後人懷疑自殺故事是否真實的多封信件。

“If you really look for the details of his life at the time, it’s easy to see that the suicide story was a creation,” said Barry Katz, a Stanford historian who wrote a study in the forthcoming book “Reassessing R. Buckminster Fuller,” co-editor by Hsiao-Yun Chu, a former assistant curator of the papers.
史丹福大學歷史學家貝瑞‧凱茲說：「如果你真的找一找他那段時期的生活細節，很容易就能看出自殺故事是他編的。」凱茲和曾任富勒檔案助理編審的朱曉雲（譯音）合編即將出版的新書《再評富勒》，書裡有他一篇論文。

In 1927 Fuller, living in Chicago, and his wife, Anne, in New York, exchanged almost daily letters and telegrams. Not one makes reference either to thoughts of death or to an epiphany.
1927年，住在芝加哥的富勒與人在紐約的妻子安幾乎每天相互通信或拍電報，裡面並無片言隻字提及尋短之念或頓悟。

Instead, Mr. Katz said, he found signs of depression and anxiety stretching from the time Fuller’s first daughter, Alexandra, died in 1922, through his financial failures and, finally, the collapse of a torrid extramarital romance in 1931. Still, the suicide story seemed to serve a purpose.
凱茲說，他發現，1922年富勒的大女兒亞利珊卓過世，接著富勒財務失利，最後是一場激烈的婚外情在1931年破裂，富勒的抑鬱與焦慮跡象貫穿整個過程。但自殺的故事似乎有某種用意。

“It gave a trajectory to his career,” Mr. Katz said. “The story was constructed after the fact to show how he suddenly developed these new ideas. I think he came to believe the story himself.”
凱茲說：「自殺故事賦予他的生涯歷程一個軌跡。他在事後編構這個故事，藉此解釋他為何突然想出一堆新點子。我認為，後來他自己也信以為真。」

Fuller’s daughter, Allegra Fuller Snyder, a retired professor of dance at the University of California, Los Angeles, said she was not surprised to learn that the 1927 epiphany may not have been literally true. “It was a kind of parable of his interior thinking, really,” she said.
富勒的女兒、洛杉磯加州大學退休舞蹈教授艾蕾葛拉‧富勒‧史奈德說，獲知父親1927年的頓悟恐怕不是真的，她並不意外。她說：「說真的，那有點像是反映他內心想法的寓言故事。」

She recounted another occasion on which he had seemed to find inspiration at a dark moment. Fuller had tried to turn an idea for prefabricated housing into a business after World War II by teaming with the Beech Aircraft Company and other investors. But in 1946, after prototypes were built, the project collapsed.
她說，她父親彷彿也曾在另一個特別黑暗的時刻找到靈感。第二次世界大戰後，富勒想和比奇飛機公司等投資者合作，把預鑄住宅的概念變成一門生意，但1946年原始模型打造完工後，計畫失敗。

Ms. Snyder recalled her father coming home to their small apartment utterly despondent. She said she went to bed then got up in the morning only to find that he had been up all night working at a small wooden table.
史奈德想起，她父親回到他們在小公寓的家，看起來萬念俱灰。她說，她上床睡覺，第二天早上起來，發現父親徹夜未眠，在一個小木頭桌子前工作。

“I remember very well that he was talking about this new thing, the geodesic dome,” she said. “That’s what he said to me.”
她說：「我記得清清楚楚，他在談他的新發明，多面體圓頂。他跟我說的就是那個。」

For all his creative energy, Fuller’s legacy is slippery. By conventional measures he accomplished little. His soaring geodesic domes have been used – memorably for the United States pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal – but never for the large-scale projects he envisioned, like the dome he hoped would cover most of Manhattan.
儘管富勒充滿無窮的創造能量，卻沒能留給後人具體的建築作品。按傳統標準衡量，他成果甚少。有人採用他設計的多面體圓頂，好比1967年蒙特婁世界博覽會讓人難忘的美國館，但從來沒有人拿來用在富勒設想的那種大規模計畫上，例如他心中那個籠罩大半曼哈坦的圓頂。

Yet Fuller had great influence through his design principles and his lectures and writings. His book “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth” helped make him a symbol of the counterculture.
但是，透過他的設計原理、演講與文章，富勒影響深遠。他的書《地球號太空船操作手冊》使他成為反文化運動的表徵。

As Mr. Katz put it, “Fuller’s greatest invention was not a house or a car or a dome. It was himself.”
正如凱茲所說：「富勒最偉大的發明不是一棟房子、一輛車子或一座圓頂，而是他自己。」

關鍵字句

學者說，本文主角富勒是建築師（architect）、詩人（poet）與發明家（inventor），更是一位熱心傳講設計與科學知識的「公眾知識分子」（public intellectual）。

富勒家人交給史丹福大學圖書館保管的檔案文獻（archives），包括大批文件、模型與錄音。

學者發現，在外人面前自信十足（self-assured），彷彿以救世主自居（messianic）的富勒，曾在大張繪圖紙上書寫，坦承自己因為婚外情關係（extramarital romance）破裂而精神崩潰（nervous breakdown）。

那個很可能是憑空編造的自殺故事，似乎有個目的（The suicide story seemed to serve a purpose.），就是創造迷思（myth），藉以解釋他創造力的來源（the origin of his creativity）。

Epiphany 原指神顯靈（the appearance of a divine being），也可單指基督教信仰中的主顯節，現在常用於形容靈光乍現或突然領悟、開竅（a sudden moment of understanding / a sudden realization）。

Parable 是闡釋道德或宗教教訓的簡短故事（a brief story that illustrates amoral or religious lesson），亦即寓言。其意思接近fable。一般而言，Parable不像fable會把動物、無生命的自然現象當作跟人類一樣會說話的故事角色，不過這種分別有時也不太明顯。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/arts/music/15ster.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/14/arts/buck.php

2008-06-24/聯合報/G6版/UNITED DAILY NEWS 王先棠 原文請見6月24日紐時周報七版右上