The paper comprises the artistic approach, certain stylistic trends and poetic principles of E.A. Poe’s work put into practice by V. Nabokov in his novels and stories, – i. e. literary tradition, its retrospective influence and the new artistic horizon the latter achieved in his creative work. The influence is considered mainly in the scope of poetics. Like E.A. Poe, Nabokov enriches his plot with metaphoric descriptions, exploits the romantic theme of the Otherworld, combines fantastic and detective elements with psychological intensity of narration, including various riddles, cryptic and cipher words. But keeping to the literary tradition of E.A. Poe, Nabokov on his part introduced some elements of postmodern poetics, e. g. intertextuality, artistically developed while crea­ting the ironical-burlesque modus of narration.