During the years from the outburst of World War I to the aftermath of the Civil War, the poetry of Maximilian Voloshin underwent a stark metamorphosis, shifting from topographical and love poetry to poetry written as a response to important social and political events, simultaneously going from Hellenistic and Theosophical themes to themes of Russian history and biblical prophecies. In the poetry collection Anno mundi ardentis (1916) Voloshin tackled the upheaval of war by introducing the apocalypse as a model of interpretation, leading him to redefine the idea of the poet. This paper illustrates how this critical juncture set the tone for the further development of Voloshin's poetic approach.