Vladimir Nabokov (Sirin) began his literary activity not with prose, but with poetry. In 1916, while still a student at the Tenishev School, with his own money, inherited from the suddenly deceased “Uncle Ruka” (Vasily Rukavishnikov), young Nabokov published a book of poems, which, as the writer later frankly admitted, “was immediately torn to pieces by those the few reviewers who noticed it." Among these predators was a teacher at the Tenishev School, Vasily Gippius. According to Nabokov’s memoirs, “V. V. Gippius <...> once brought a copy <...> of the collection to class and demolished it in detail with everyone, or almost everyone, laughing. <...> His much more famous, but less talented cousin Zinaida, meeting with my father at a meeting of the Literary Fund <...> told him: “Please tell your son that he will never be a writer.” “N. Melnikov. “Classic without retouching.”