MEREJKOVSKY (or MEREZHKOVSKIY), DMITRI SERGYEEVICH (1865– )  , Russian novelist and critic, was born at St Petersburg in 1865 . His trilogy of historical romances, collectively entitled Christ and Antichrist, has been translated into many European languages, notably English and French . It comprises Smert Bogov (Eng. trans . " The Death of the Gods," London, 1901), the central figure in which is Julian the Apostate; Voskresenie Bogi (" The Forerunner," London, 1902), which describes the life and times of Leonardo da Vinci; and Antikhrist: Petr i Aleksyey (" Peter and Alexis," London, 1905), which is based on the tragic story of the relations between Peter the Great and his son . The influence of Sienkiewicz can be traced in many of Merejkovsky's writings, which includecritical studies of Pliny the Younger, Calderon, Montaigne, Ibsen, Tolstoy (Tolstoy as Man and Artist, London, 1902), and of Gorki and other Russian writers . Merejkovsky married Zinaida Nikolaevna, known in Russia for her poems, essays and short stories written under the pseudonym of Zinaida Hippius (or Gippius); her collected poems (1889-19o3) were published in Moscow in 1904 .