time the situation with Severny Vestnik had changed: outraged by Akim Volynsky's intrusive editorial methods, Merezhkovsky severed ties with the magazine, at least for a while. In the late 1891 he published his translation of Sophocles' Antigone in Vestnik Evropy, part of Goethe's Faustus (in Russkoye Obozrenye) and Euripides' Hyppolite (in Vestnik Evropy again). The latter came out in 1893, after the couple's second trip to Europe where their first encounter with Dmitry Filosofov occurred. Merezhkovsky's vivid impressions of Greece and the subsequent spurt of the new ideas provided the foundation for his second novel. The Symbolism manifests In 1892 Merezhkovsky's second volume of poetry entitled Symbols. Poems and Songs came out. The book, bearing E.A.Poe and Charles Baudelaire's influences but also tinged with the author's newly found religious ideas, became a younger readership's favourite. Of the elder writers only Yakov Polonsky supported it wholeheartedly. In October 1892 Merezhkovsky's lecture "The Causes of the Decline of the Contemporary Russian Literature and the New Trends in it" was first read in public, then came out in print. Brushing aside the 'decadent' tag, the author argued that all three "streaks of Modern art" — "Mystic essence, Symbolic language and Impressionism" — could be traced down to the works of Lev Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, Russian Modernism, therefore, being a continuation of the Russian literature's classic tradition. Coupled with Symbols, the lecture was widely accepted as Russian symbolism's early manifest. The general reaction to it was mostly negative. The author found himself between the two fires: liberals condemned his ideas as "the new obscurantism," members of posh literary salons treated his revelations with scorn. Only one small group of people greeted "The Causes" unanimously, and that was the staff of Severny Vestnik, which welcomed him back. In 1893–1894 Merezhkovsky published numerous books (the play The Storm is Over and the translation of Sophocles' Oedipus the King among them), but the money all this hard work brought were scant. Now writing his second novel, he had to accept whatever work was offered to him. In the late 1893 Merezhkovskys settled in Saint Petersburg again. Here they frequented the Shakespearean Circle, the Polonsky's Fridays and the Literary Fund gatherings. Then the pair started their own home salon with Filosofov and Akim Volynsky becoming habitués. All of a sudden Merezhkovsky found that his debut novel was to be published in Severny Vestnik after all. What he didn't