A collection of stories and poems previously published in various emigre publications was prepared by Nabokov in June 1929; went out of print in December of the same year. A quarter of a century later, in the book “Russian Literature in Exile,” Struve gave a concise but very accurate analysis of all of Nabokov’s lyrics, including poems from “The Return of Chorba.” “In <...> the carefully selected poems included in “The Return of Chorba” <...> there are almost no breakdowns of taste, the verse has become stricter and drier, a certain thematic proximity to Khodasevich has appeared (a poet whom the mature Nabokov rated especially highly among his contemporaries), reminiscences disappeared from Blok, which were clearly purely external, imitative, and the reader also lost the impression of kinship with Fet that Nabokov’s earlier poems gave (the similarity here was purely external, there was no Fet music in Nabokov’s poems, he was always a plastic poet, but not of a song type). <…> The poems of “The Return of Chorba” are for the most part excellent examples of Russian parnassism; they perfectly illustrate one of Nabokov’s distinctive qualities as a writer, which is reflected so clearly in his prose: the extraordinary sharpness of his vision of the world, combined with the ability to find the most adequate expression for visual impressions in words.”N. Melnikov. “Classic without retouching.”