The Hidden TreasureProject MUSE - Hidden Treasure: The Steinbeck-Rudloe Letters
Hidden Treasure: The Steinbeck-Rudloe Letters
pp. 108-118 |
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Hidden Treasure: The Steinbeck-Rudloe Letters
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Figure 1. A Jumble of Specimens from Ed "Doc" Ricketts' Lab.
[End Page 108] A half century ago, in the midst of a productive literary career, John Steinbeck published The Sea of Cortez, Cannery Row, and Sweet Thursday, a work of nonfiction and two novels centered on the life of a marine collector. Later in life, Steinbeck was good friends with a young man who lived in the Florida panhandle named Jack Rudloe, the founder and managing director of Gulf Marine Specimen Laboratory in Florida. His education and research facility is nestled off the thready highway that cuts through the sleepy fishing town of Panacea, located on the Sunshine State's Gulf Coast. Rudloe is an outspoken conservationist, marine naturalist, and gifted collector. Gulf Specimen has provided specimens to over thirteen hundred institutions across the nation for teaching and research purposes. Rudloe is also an avid writer. The author of nonfiction books, a novel, and numerous articles, he is a critically respected and well-received teacher and storyteller. Perhaps one of the vehicles that paved the way for Rudloe's personal success was the unlikely correspondence that he shared with Steinbeck. They exchanged over thirty letters (recently given to the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San José State University) and this relationship had a significant influence on modern day marine science, from natural products to ecology. That a young New York transplant, struggling to make a place for himself within a small oceanside community, was able to catch the attention of the 1962 Nobel laureate may seem odd. Rudloe was born in Brooklyn, New York, and lived there until his early teens, when his family moved to Lanark Village, a small [End Page 109] town on the Florida Panhandle whose population scratched out a living from oysters, crabs, fish and timber. In the late 1950's and early 1960's Rudloe, as a teenager, was looking for opportunities along the rural panhandle and realized that the Gulf of Mexico was a boundless resource: "[T]here was basically a market for marine life, I was interested in it, there was diversity there, and I was able to spark a small business, which was supplying animals to labs in schools and . . . the marine environment is a much richer area than anything terrestrial. So once you get out here there's a much greater diversity. And not only that, there was a much greater interest in marine life as opposed to spiders or frogs" (Personal Interview. Note: All direct quotations by Rudloe in this article are taken from this same interview). The social novelist was a former Stanford marine biology major, and Rudloe's stationery caught his attention. "I had a little letterhead with a picture of a hammer head shark and an eel on it or something like that," said Rudloe, "and it said Gulf Specimen Company at the time." Jack also focused on one of Steinbeck's personal treasures: The Log of the Sea of Cortez (1941). Along with Cannery Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1954), these works all focused on the life of a marine collector. In catching Steinbeck's attention with a letterhead that appealed to the author's fondness for marine science, and in focusing on a book the prize-winning writer himself held dear, Rudloe was able to breech the fortifications set up against "flatterers," those "people who want something," as Steinbeck put it in a letter to Rudloe. As Rudloe explained, the intertwining of writing, language, science, and study was set as the two began a correspondence that would span more than four years and would include three visits. According to Rudloe, "And that's where we began our correspondence. And at the time, I'm saying to myself, 'Well, can I really do this?' because there was no guidelines, and it was, it was just an idea. I picked up a few little orders here and there. I didn't know what the heck I was doing." In referring to both his marine collection activities and some early writing...
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艺术品收藏From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Parable of the Hidden Treasure by
(c. 1630).
The Parable of the Hidden Treasure is a well known , which appears in
, and illustrates the great value of the . It immediately precedes the , which has a similar theme. The parable has been depicted by artists such as .
of the hidden treasure is as follows:
"Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found, and hid. In his joy, he goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field."
— Matthew 13:44,
A depiction of this parable (left) paired with that of the pearl (right) on a
The setting here presupposes that someone has buried a treasure and later died. The current owner of the field is unaware of its existence. The finder, perhaps a farm labourer, is entitled to it, but is unable to conveniently extract it unless he buys the field. For a , such a discovery of treasure represented the "ultimate dream."
This parable is generally interpreted as illustrating the great value of the Kingdom of Heaven, and thus has a similar theme to the parable of the pearl. John Nolland comments that the good fortune reflected in the "finding" reflects a "special privilege," and a source of joy, but also reflects a challenge, just as the man in the parable gives up all that he has, in order to lay claim to the greater treasure he has found.
writes of this parable:
The first two of these parables are intended to instruct believers to prefer the Kingdom of heaven to the whole world, and therefore to deny themselves and all the desires of the flesh, that nothing may prevent them from obtaining so valuable a possession. We are greatly in ne for we are so captivated by the allurements of the world, that eternal life and in consequence of our carnality, the spiritual graces of God are far from being held by us in the estimation which they deserve.
The hidden nature of the treasure may indicate that the Kingdom of Heaven "is not yet revealed to everyone."
However, other interpretations of the parable exist, in which the treasure represents
Buried t a fortune is within his reach.
In St. Thomas Aquinas' Catena Aurea, he compiles the comments of some of the Church Fathers on this passage, who point out that like the treasure hidden in the field, the Gospel comes without cost, and is open to all - but to truly possess heavenly riches, one must be willing to give up the world to buy it. The Fathers also identify that the field in which the treasure is hidden is the discipline of Heavenly learning:
[...] this, when a man finds, he hides, in order tha for zeal and affections heavenward it is not enough the we protect from evil spirits, if we do not protect from human praises. For in this present life we are in the war which leads to our country, and evil spirits as robbers beset us in our journey. Those therefore who carry their treasure openly, they seek to plunder in the way. When I I do not mean that our neighbors should not see our works, but that in what we do, we should not seek praise from without. The kingdom of heaven is therefore compared to things of earth, that the mind may rise from things familiar to things unknown, and may learn to love the unknown by that which it knows is loved when known It follows, And for joy thereof he goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field. He it is that sells all he, has and buys the field, who, renouncing fleshly delights tramples upon all his worldly desires in his anxiety for the heavenly discipline.
A similar parable also appears in the
(Saying 109):
Jesus said, "The (Father's) kingdom is like a person who had a treasure hidden in his field but did not know it. And [when] he died he left it to his [son]. The son [did] not know about it either. He took over the field and sold it. The buyer went plowing, [discovered] the treasure, and began to lend money at interest to whomever he wished."
— Gospel of Thomas 109, Patterson/Meyer translation
This work's version of the parable of the Pearl appears earlier (Saying 76), rather than immediately following, as in Matthew. However, the mention of a treasure in Saying 76 may reflect a source for the Gospel of Thomas in which the parables were adjacent, so that the original pair of parables has been "broken apart, placed in separate contexts, and expanded in a manner characteristic of folklore." The multiple changes of ownership of the field are unique to the Gospel of Thomas, and reflect a different theme from the New Testament parable.
There have been several depictions of the New Testament parable in art, including works by , , , and .
Wikimedia Commons has media related to .
John Nolland, , Eerdmans, 2005,  , pp. 563–565.
Craig S. Keener, , Eerdmans, 1999,  , p. 391.
, , translated by William Pringle, Matthew 13:44-52.
W. D. Davies, William David Davies, and Dale C. Allison, , Continuum, 1997,  , pp. 435–437.
Herbert Lockyer, , Zondervan, 1988,  , pp. 197–200.
. Archived from
Gospel of Thomas:
Brad H. Young, , Hendrickson Publishers, 2008,  , pp. 202–206.