Alexey Sklyarenko: Boyd...: "Stalin, a Georgian, admired Georgian folklore and here seems to be imagining the sweet raspberry taste of each execution and puffing out his chest as if it proves himself once again a Georgian hero." Although Stalin's nickname was Koba (after the hero of Kazbeghi's novel "The Patricide"), Dzhugashvili (whose assumed name comes from stal', "steel") desired to be not a Georgian, but Russian hero. Btw., Koba + t = Tobak. True, malina is Russian for "raspberry". But it can also mean "[to be] in clover"... Now, in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Canto Three, XXXIX, 7-14), in the scene travestied in Ada (1.2), girl servants picking berries are singing in chorus, so as their sly mouths wouldn't not eat in secret the seignioral berry. They also mention raspberries in their song...

JM: Ah, Stalin's nickname was Koba! Things begin to make sense to me (the importance of  Cabot/Tobak instead of Lowell).

 

Carolyn Kunin commented on this matter in 2003 (but Lowell was left out, since the doggerel she remembered was applied to the Lodges).

Here is Carolyn Kunin's old posting ( Wed, 2 Jul 2003 10:29:17 -0700), related to the Cabot doggerel.. Its subject is: "Carolyn Kunin notes on Alexey Sklyarenko's tobakami/sobakami  essaylet in THE NABOKOVIAN #50 ," with D.B.Johnson 's EDNOTE. 
"I had never noticed that the "TOBAK(s)" and "dogs" were palindromes of the original CABOTs and GOD in the famous bit of doggerel that VN uses as the basis for his lines.  As well, the TOBAK(s)  echo the Russian word for dog SOBAKa. My thanks to Carolyn."

 

CK's original note (Wednesday, June 11, 2003 12:36 PM) : "Among the  tasty tid-bits in the latest Nabokovian are three notes from Alexey Sklyarenko, who continues to find more allusions to Russian literature in Ada. He intriguingly argues that some passages of dialogue in Ada show traces of translation from original Russian, particularly in the conversation between Van and Greg Erminin (Part III, chapter 3). However he has missed an allusion to  an admittedly obscure bit of doggerel. In Ada  "The Veens speak only to Tobaks/  And Tobaks speak only to dogs."  Although it may rhyme better in Russian (Tobakami/sobakami) the original is actually:   Here's to good old Boston, the land of the Bean and the Cod, /  Where Cabots speak only to Lodges, and the Lodges speak only to God. Also note the characteristically Nabokovian reversals of Cabot/Tobak and God/dog.

 

 

btw: C.Kunin also observed on Eberthella in the past, and linked it to Thomas Hardy's novel, " The Hand of Ethelberta"