The handful of letters Bohuslav Reynek wrote in 1921 to Bohumila Pojerová, publisher Jan V. Pojer’s sister, have remained in private family hands until now. That year, Bohuslav was twenty-nine, Bohumila nineteen. In addition to recalling encounters, readings and small events reflecting the budding friendship between two young people whose respective families had destined for one another, these brief letters shed light on the future great artist’s personality. Sincerity, lucidity, honesty and keen judgement — strong qualities that, despite the vicissitudes of his time, unfailingly forged Reynek’s destiny as a man and his mission as an artist — could already be seen in his concise, sharp, finely chiselled sentences. A few years later the young poet took flight and married poet Suzanne Renaud in Grenoble. He translated her work, which came out in Czechoslovakia but remained unknown in France until Romarin published the complete critical edition of her poems (I. 1995, II. 1999). My aim in publishing these few letters is to recall bygone times, the snows of yesteryear perhaps, and to introduce Bohuslav Reynek, the man in all his integrity and honesty before life, before his neighbour and before God. I am doing this in order to ensure that his portrait, sketched against the background of a reserved friendship, cannot be forgotten and irreparably damaged. (Dagmar Halasová, postface).