and his acceptance of the fact that people saw in him an eccentric. The central figure is a banker, Dorval, who identifies himself with Napoleon Bonaparte to the point where he sees episodes in his biography as mirrors of early 19th-century battles. Unlike patients with dissociative identity disorder, Dorval does not actually imagine his life has become Napoleon's, but rather joins with him on an intellectual level. Witnesses of this disorder are divided into family, who seek to have Dorval committed, and close friends, who come to see his take on life as a manifestation of genius. The spectator is led to believe that the latter interpretation is the correct one. At a larger level, Vianu indicates, the play is also Macedonski's critique of capitalism, and, using Parisian argot, makes allusive references to famous people of the day. Particularly during the 1890s, Macedonski was a follower of Edgar Allan Poe and of Gothic fiction in general, producing a Romanian version of Poe's Metzengerstein story, urging his own disciples to translate other such pieces, and adopting "Gothic" themes in his original prose. Indebted to Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, Macedonski also wrote a number of science fiction stories, including the 1913 Oceania-Pacific-Dreadnought, which depicts civilization on the verge of a crisis. The gigantic commercial ship is maintained by a banker's union, and designed to grant travelers access to every pleasure imaginable; this causes the working-class inhabited cities on the continent to fall into a state of neglect and permanent violence, the climax of the story occurring with the bankers' decision to destroy their creation. Oceania-Pacific-Dreadnought is noted for anticipating television, the ship being equipped with electrically operated "large and clear mirrors" that display "images from various parts of the Earth". Macedonski was by then interested in the development of cinema, and authored a silent film screenplay based on Comment on devient riche et puissant. Final transition Late in his life, Macedonski had come to reject Symbolist tenets, defining them as "imbecilities" designed for "the uncultured". Ultima verba, the very last poems to be written by him, show him coming to terms with himself, and are treasured for their serene or intensely joyous vision of life and human accomplishment. The rondels written at this stage, known collectively as Poema rondelurilor, are one of the first instances where the technique is used locally. Like those written previously by Literatoruls Pavelescu and Alexandru