It was reported that Sergeyev "was fascinated by Russian translations of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" and read them avidly at school, rewrote a scene from "Boris Godunov", adding rhymes to Pushkin's blank verse, and was taken to task by the literature teacher for trying to outdo the great poet" and that when he wrote a short story at home, "his father threw into the fire, saying that prose writing was even more difficult than poetry and he was not ready for it yet."