At the end of 1926 Nabokov wrote "University poem" - 882 verses, 63 stanzas of 14 lines. The main subject of the study in the poem is loneliness, whether it is the loneliness of an immigrant, a student or an old maid. "University poem" is also a tribute to Pushkin . In the poem, the same number of lines in the song and the same structure of the song as in Eugene Onegin, and its stanza diligently reverses the form that Pushkin invented for his stanza. The fourteenth line in the Pushkin scheme becomes the first for Sirin, the female rhyme turns into a male one, and the male one into a female one. Sirin shows young poets he has reviewed what can be done with verse: a general scheme, individual discoveries. Despite all her fragile charm and magnificent commentary on Pushkin, the University Poem still seems too restrained, it has too little Pushkin music and Pushkin passion. Although Pushkin was both fragile or cold, he seems to have always drunk life with a volley. "The University Poem," a marvelous porcelain service of thirty-six items, allows us only to cede life in small sweet sips. However, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, the great elder of emigrant literature, had a different opinion. Immediately after the publication of the poem, he wrote a letter to Sirin, in which he spoke extremely warmly about it. B. Boyd . "Vladimir Nabokov . The Russian Years