Objects

A group of people at a John Deere farming equipment factory in Iowa. The man standing by the big wheel is Julian Stryjkowski.

The photo was taken during Stryjkowski’s stay in the USA at the turn of the 1970s. He arrived there on a scholarship from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. The seat of the John Deere company and its namesake’s property are located in Moline, Illinois (https://www.google.pl/search?q=john+deere+moline+il&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&ei=5_aqV96VBM2v8wfS_IW4DA#q=john+deere+moline+il&rflfq=1&rlha=0&rllag=41507944,-90524870,586&tbm=lcl&tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:4).

In the text titled ‘Mój majufes w Iowa’ [My mayufes in Iowa] (published in Tygodnik Powszechny 1986, no. 51/52, p. 4), Stryjkowski reminisced:

‘We would go on trips to the bank of the Mississippi, to De Moines [sic!; actually Moline], we paid visits to farmers and to businessmen. Paul Engel, himself a poet, knew very well what a writer needs. But no other trip has stayed in my memory quite as vividly as the visit to the producer of farming equipment, the billionaire Dee[re]. When we were in his mansion, I went through the most profound experience of my stay in America: my dance.’

In Ocalony na Wschodzie [Saved in the East] (book interview by Piotr Szewc, pp. 268–269), Stryjkowski mentions that ‘a billionaire, the prominent farming equipment producer John D[eere], invited our literary seminar to a party on a farm by the Mississippi River’ (this and the previous quote both included remarks on the fellow scholarship holders).

Stryjkowski put to paper his literary reflections from travelling and living in the Unites States in the form of a short story collection titled Na wierzbach… Nasze skrzypce [In the Willows… Our Fiddle].

Ireneusz Piekarski, Przemysław Kaniecki