In 1904-1911 he studied at Grammar School in Jihlava, Bohemia. There he learned both French and German. After a short time studying at Prague University, he left Prague for Petrkov. In 1926 he married the French poetSuzanne Renaud, whose work he would later translate into Czech. In 1914, he started his long-time and close cooperation with Josef Florian in the town of Stará Říše translating, illustrating and publishing his own poetry. He and Suzanne had two sons, Daniel and Jiří. In 1949 his farmstead was confiscated by the new Communist state, and the publishers that had heretofore published his work were closed down. He died in 1971 on his farmstead, and was buried nearby in Svatý Kříž in the family grave.
Poetry
His poems are meditative and inspired by the Czech landscape, rural life in the farmstead and deep Christian humanism. What is noteworthy is the delicate way in which religious themes are refracted through images of his immediate surroundings; the poems invest everyday objects and scenes with a spiritual luminescence, a bright edge, and this is done so delicately that at no point does it feel imposed. He employs, for the most part, traditional forms, with inventive rhymes. Reynek was a graphic artist and a translator of French and German. Among the poets he translated was the German expressionistGeorg Trakl, and it is clear that he learnt much from Trakl's techniques. After the Communist coup d'état of 1948, Reynek's farmstead was confiscated and devastated, his books were prohibited and those of public libraries liquidated because of Reynek's Christian faith. He died poor with his works banned but became a hero to young Czech poets of the 1960s and 1970s, the most prominent of which were Ivan Martin Jirous, Zbyněk Hejda and Ivan Diviš. His work was published in exile and after 1989 a critical edition of his poems was completed and edited by Torst Publishing House, Prague. The French author Sylvie Germain wrote Bohuslav Reynek à Petrkov, a meditation on his life and art.
Bohuslav Reynek, ', trans. Kelly Miller and Zdenka Brodská. Bohuslav Reynek, ' trans. Justin Quinn. Bohuslav Reynek, trans. Justin Quinn, New Yorker. Bohuslav Reynek, Le serpent sur la neige, trans. Xavier Galmiche. See the publishing house Romarin's .
