 In addition, the letters demonstrate Jacobsen's unswerving sense of style, his linguistic inventiveness, and give the reader insight into the background to the novel "Barbara" and the close relationship between Jacobsen and Heinesen, which a comparison of these letters with Heinesen's own writing suggests had a profound literary as well as personal significance.One is, in fact, at times left with a feeling that these letters contain clues to a literary affinity of a special kind between two friends who had many stylistic traits in common.The selection opens with the "Nytårsouverture" (New Year's Overture), marking the start of 1921 in a grand, dithyrambic prose poem divided into sections with musical markings