George spent a year thereafter shaping the volume to illustrate the inner unity of diversity. The poems created up to 1906, written during a time of reflection on his own work, are artfully and meaningfully arranged into seven books, which are laid out in concentric circles around the fourth cycle, the core of the collection: It contains the memorial for a young friend and poet who has passed away, elevated to myth and immortalized in the form of Maximin. The seventh ring, referred to by Karl Wolfskehl in a letter to George as "this comprehensive and expanding late harvest of your entire previous existence," is of central importance to the poet's art. Influenced also by the translation work on Dante's Commedia, the work transforms. It is no longer purely lyrical but takes on a different form.