The article examines the relation to the Muse and to the book of poems in the work of If,p the Romanian poet Alexandru Macedonski (1854-1920) both in the particular literary context of nineteenth century Romania and according to the general tendency of decadent poetics to return to a romantic project both to aggravate and revise it. Moving from the poetry of Macedonski and his Nights cycle (twelve poems written in Romanian in some twenty years) through to the epicolyrical prose of his visionary novel The Calvary of fire (written both in French and in Romanian and published in France), the article studies successively the relation between Macedonski and Musser, the intensification and radicalization of the romantic model, the rise of irony and sarcasm, the attempt of Macedonski to live in a different country and adopt a different language, lastly the unbridled apotheosis of vaticinating lyricism in the syncretic and synaesthetic vision of The Calvary of Fire (1906). The imagery, be language and what is known of the manuscript of The Calvary of Fire, a novel that has received little critical attention, allow for uncommon views of the Muse, the body of the language, and the book, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
