The poem called "Vera" was his first real success. The extreme simplicity of the plot--the unfortunate love of a young professor and of a young weakly girl who dies of consumption in the very flower of youth--and the very faithful reproduction of the intellectual life of Russia in 1880, give to this work the importance of a document in some ways almost historic. This poem is like a last tribute paid by the author to the humanitarian and realistic tendencies of Russian literature. Afterward, yielding to the inclinations of his nature and his taste for classical antiquity, Merezhkovsky insensibly changed. While acquiring, both in prose and in verse, an incontestable mastery, he could now look only for a cold and haughty beauty which was sufficient unto itself. The beginning was hard, but then all came easier. After critical articles on the trend of modern literature, he published "The Reprobate," a bold dithyrambic on ancient Greek philosophy. The poetry that followed was clearly Epicurean and in complete contradiction to the altruistic tendencies of the neo-Christian period, which found an arch enemy in Nietzsche, whose philosophy evidently influenced Merezhkovsky. However, this evolution did not have a very favorable effect on his poetry; it bordered on an art the clarity of which approached dryness, while at the same time its lack of tenderness reduced its symbolism to an artificial lyricism or to lifeless allegories. * * * * * Merezhkovsky works with untiring constancy to glorify antiquity. He has made excellent translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and of "Daphne and Chloe," that idyl of Longus that charmed both Goethe and Catherine II. He chooses the characters of his new poems from Greek and Latin mythology, and from themes inspired by an ardent love of paganism. He has written three prose works of considerable value: "The Death of the Gods," "The Resurrection of the Gods,"[12] and "Peter and Alexis." The general idea of all of these is the struggle between Greek polytheism and Christianity, between Christ and Antichrist, to use the author's expression, or, as Dostoyevsky used to say, between the "man-God" and the "God-man." [12] Also called "The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, the Forerunner."