verse, ahead of the French Symbolist Gustave Kahn. Macedonski himself later voiced the claim, and referred to such a technique as "symphonic verse", "proteic verse", or, in honor of composer Richard Wagner, "Wagnerian verse". While editing Oltul, Macedonski also completed his first prose writings. These were the travel account Pompeia și Sorento ("Pompeia and Sorento", 1874) and a prison-themed story described by Vianu as "a tearjerker", titled Câinele din Văcărești ("The Dog in Văcărești", 1875). These were later complemented by other travel works, which critic Mihai Zamfir likens to the verbal experiments of Impressionist literature, pioneering in the Romanian prose poetry genre. The short comedy Gemenii was his debut work for the stage, but, according to Vianu, failed to show any merit other than a "logical construction" and a preview into Macedonski's use of sarcasm. These writings were followed in 1876 by a concise biography of Cârjaliul, an early 19th-century hajduk. In line with his first Levant-themed poems, Macedonski authored the 1877 story Așa se fac banii ("This Is How Money Is Made", later retold in French as Comment on devient riche et puissant, "How to Become Rich and Powerful"), a fable of fatalism and the Muslim world—it dealt with two brothers, one hard-working and one indolent, the latter of whom earns his money through a series of serendipitous events. Likewise, his verse comedy Iadeș! borrowed its theme from the widely circulated collection of Persian literature known as Sindipa. The setting was however modern, and, as noted by French-born critic Frédéric Damé, the plot also borrowed much from Émile Augier's Gabrielle and from other morality plays of the period. Part of the text was an ironic treatment of youth in liberal professions, an attitude which Macedonski fitted in his emerging anti-bourgeois discourse. With the first poems in his Nights cycle, Macedonski still showed his allegiance to Romanticism, and in particular to Alphonse de Lamartine, and the supposed inventor of this theme, Alfred de Musset. Noaptea de noiembrie opens with a violent condemnation of his adversaries, and sees Macedonski depicting his own funeral. The poem is commended by Călinescu, who notes that, in contrast to the "apparently trivial beginning", the main part, where Macedonski depicts himself in flight over the Danube, brings the Romanian writer close to the accomplishments of Dante Aligheri. The writer himself claimed that the piece evidenced "the uttermost breath of inspiration I have ever felt in my