 Gorter's first book, a 4,000 verse epic poem called "Mei" ("May"), sealed his reputation as a great writer upon its publication in 1889, and is regarded as the pinnacle of Dutch Impressionist literature.Gorter rapidly followed this up with a book of short lyric poetry simply called "Verzen" ("Verses") in 1890, which, after initial bad reviews, was equally hailed as a masterpiece.Initially Gorter was oriented towards the philosophy of Spinoza, whose major work "Ethica" he translated from Latin into Dutch (published in 1895) .