Prague, 2 Dec. 1941
My Dear Friend,
Thank you for your kind letter. I’m sorry it took me so long to reply: I teach four classes a day, plus tutoring, (which comes with duties of its own), and I correct papers, often over a hundred a week. I feel quite overwhelmed. Add to that, literary and scholarly work, for which I steal some time, and days turn into nights. I feel that I won’t be able to keep this up beyond the end of the year. I am unable to meet with anyone and now that Halas is no longer in Prague, I live quite a solitary existence. Despite my best intentions, my schedule simply does not allow for me to reply to letters, not even on Sundays, so will most likely remain a boor despite your kind warning, especially since I will not have in the foreseeable future a cohort of assistants and typists, who would ease my burden and allow me to resemble the gentlemen whom (illegible). My only consolation is that in no way would I want to resemble said gentlemen, who have been held up to me as examples of worthy of following.
As for this article, I will happily accommodate you. But if I remember correctly,

it concerns two things: a study for your anthology, which you wrote to me about earlier, and now an article for Panorama. There seems to be some urgency to the article, while the study should be completed sometime next year, say by the spring. Please let me know if I have understood this correctly! I would work on them during the Christmas holidays, in Náchod, where I have your books, since I wouldn’t want to deprive you of further copies that, as experience has surprisingly shown, you save on people like me.
Be so kind as to share the details with me! Wishing you much success. Devotedly yours,
Václav Černý