The Well at Morning

Selected Poems and Graphic Artworks, 1925–1971

Bohuslav Reynek

Translated from the Czech by Justin Quinn

With essays by Martin C. Putna, Justin Quinn, and Jiří Šerých

Published by Charles University

Karolinum Press

www.karolinum.cz

ebooks@karolinum.cz

Cover by Jiří Voves

First English edition

Poems © 2017

Bohuslav Reynek – heirs

Suzanne Renaud – heirs

Illustrations © 2017

Bohuslav Reynek – heirs

Essays © 2017

Martin C. Putna

Justin Quinn

Jiří Šerých

Translation © 2017

Justin Quinn (Bohuslav Reynek, Martin C. Putna, Jiří Šerých)

David Wheatley (Suzanne Renaud)

Photos © 2017

Dagmar Hochová – heirs

This book was kindly supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.

ISBN 978-80-246-3425-8 (pb)

ISBN 978-80-246-3426-5 (ebk)

ISBN 978-80-246-3825-6 (ePub)

ISBN 978-80-246-4011-2 (Kindle)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bohuslav Reynek (1892–1971) was born in the village of Petrkov, in the Czech-Moravian Highlands. He translated widely from French and German literature and began writing poetry in the 1910s, publishing his first book in 1921. During this period he was part of the Roman Catholic apocalyptic sect run by Josef Florian, and while the fervor of these early years would wane, Reynek would remain a Christian to his death. He was also an artist, and his etchings and engravings are remarkable for the manner in which they combine religious themes with detailed observation of his immediate rural surroundings. In 1926 he married the French poet Suzanne Renaud, with whom he had two sons. From the late 1920s to the beginning of World War II, they divided the year between Czechoslovakia and her home town of Grenoble. After the Communist putsch of 1948, Reynek’s farmstead was taken from him, and he and his sons were reassigned to it as day laborers by the authorities. While always well-known as a translator, it was not until the 1960s that his importance as both a poet and artist become more widely recognized. This is the first appearance of Reynek’s work in English in book form.

CONTENTS

SELECTED POEMS

A Fool

Signs of Autumn

Hoar-Frost

Springtide

Ballad

The Morning. . .

Pilgrimage to La Salette

Dawn in Winter

Idyll, Morning

Mid-Winter Longing

Three Goats

Cockerels

Carpenters in the Wind

Hair

Spider

Fly

Gathering Potatoes

Yellow Bedstraw, a Blessing

Snow Across the Threshold

The Well at Morning

Hawkmoths at Evening

Light Breeze

Initials

Evening

Shadows

November

Goats in the Field

At Home

A Memory

Hay Rick in Winter

Advent in Stará Říše

Twilight

Job in Winter

A Dead Cat

But Still the Levins

Quince on the Table

Wet Snow

Swallow

At Home

Frost

Rue L. . .

Door

Through the Dark

Paths of Home

November

Windows on Streets

Goose in Mist

Saint Martin

Sticks in a Fence

Looking Forward

Christmas, 1970

The Angel of Distress

Swallows Flown

Match in a Puddle

GRAPHIC ART

(with commentaries by Jiří Šerých)

FOUR POEMS BY SUZANNE RENAUD

Harvest Moon

Tom Thumb

Wearish Old Tree

Day of the Dead, 1938

ESSAYS ON BOHUSLAV REYNEK

Bohuslav Reynek / From Catholic Counterculture and the Apocalypse to a Highland Farm

(Martin C. Putna)

Reynek’s Journeys

(Justin Quinn)

Bohuslav Reynek’s Graphic Art

(Jiří Šerých)

Czech Titles OF English Poems

List of Illustrations

Translator’s Acknowledgements

SELECTED POEMS

A FOOL

In my village, I’m the fool.

Sad dogs know me – sad white school

of sleepy dogs that drift away

into the distance. They don’t bay.

They keep me happy from afar –

cloudish dogs is what they are

that run about the sky’s massif.

And we’re all drunk on grief.

Where we wander we don’t know.

Ancient shepherd, as I go,

bless my soul with your great gifts

of moon and these long wakeful shifts,

heavy, gashed time and again

like a bleeding heart. Amen.

SIGNS OF AUTUMN

September’s here again, sweetening my blood

again like wine. Lament, a quiet flood,

grows in my heart: rosehips grow ever redder,

hundreds of hearts. And so my soul can better

rest when the labour of the harvest’s quit,

a hazy veil of fire comes down on it

like a sudarium of spider webs.

Dawn flames my face in silence, and night ebbs.

My mouth is parched for it – the wounds deep –

and begs: O Lord, this late summer will

my soul, a swallow blue, rise steep

in air and fly to new lands, dipping its bill

along the way to sip from seas of peace?

And with each word my blood is sweetened further.

HOAR-FROST

Weary autumn pastures. Down they sink,

and butterflies stiff with cold now drink

dawn’s dew.

Lifting their wings. They can no longer fly –

a nacreous green on flowers sealed-up and dry,

they flame.

I, too, am tired. A mushroom on the wayside

crimped white like folds of fabric on a bride –

I pick

and peel it. Hand is scented rich and sere.

My heart is heavier than it was last year,

with love.

I peel it. Scent. And then I see white flocks

in my soul’s eye, and tending this livestock

is autumn.

So clean and good and early, autumn stands,

fixing on its head with icy strands

a veil.

SPRINGTIDE

A chaffinch in a tree

of cherry sings merrily

spring’s introit.

Its blazing bobble dwells

in leaves, alive, and swells

in scarlet.

The flowers are flares of white.

The chaffinch has gone quiet

and turned sky-gazer.

My eyes close on the day:

an orb revolves in grey

and red and azure.

Russet, it radiates,

emerging from the straits

of pain’s blood-tide.

I want it, here amidst

these canopies of bliss,

ungratified.

BALLAD

On my outstretched palm a strange guest has landed.

A kind of dove? A crystal smoothly sanded?

Is it some milky quartz? Perhaps a lark

that has alighted, radiance in this dark?

An owl that gazes burns, soft plume on plume?

Bewilderment that streams from poppy bloom?

No. It is the fruit of the serpent’s tree.

Eve placed it on the palm, unhappily.

Fruit of my death, blessed by a cross, this host

is very hard and Satan fears it most.

THE MORNING. . .

The morning shows a dove in shade,

white as a new egg, passing fairness.

And then amidst the lengths of hair-grass

a hare that hides in the frosted glade,

master of scent, in misted wold.

These two have set the blood on fire...

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Table of Contents

Cover Page

Copyright Page

About the Author

Contents

Selected Poems

A Fool

Signs of Autumn

Hoar-Frost

Springtide

Ballad

The Morning. . .

Four Poems by Suzanne Renaud

Essays on Bohuslav Reynek