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MASCODAGAMA
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A.S: Note that thespionym has both English "spy" and Russian shpion ("spy") in it[...] GAMA + GALILEO = GAMALIEL + GOA = GAME + LOLITA + GORA - ROT = MAGELLAN + GOYA + I - NY
JM: Besides the inclusion of "spy", we find that in VN's creation there is also "thespian" :"A citizen of the ancient Greek city of Thespiae" and "An actor; this usage is derived from Thespis of Icaria, the legendary first actor" (Wiki)*.
GOA is an interesting reference in AS's anagrams related to "Mascodagama" and to Vasco da Gama**.
[Ada: "Per contra, she suggested to Van that verbal circuses, 'performing words,' 'poodle-doodles,' and so forth, might be redeemable by the quality of the brain work required for the creation of a great logogriph or inspired pun and should not preclude the help of a dictionary, gruff or complacent" (A,176). ]
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Addenda for dedicated readers of "ADA" ( from my personal collection of leftover reminders):
*Thespis who, in the 6th century BC, introduced masks and costumes in Greek theatre and pushed a handcart around Athens to improvise his one-man acts that dealt with the corruption of mankind. VN?s reference to a thespian handcart brings up Van?s half-sister Lucette whom he "carted around" ("ploughing" at Ada?s first birthday picnic in Ardis). Van was sometimes recognized behind his disguises and yet "pseudonymity" (such as "Voltemand") did not "tickle him in reverse - as it did when he danced on his hands (A,338)".
** Priscilla Meyer wrote about E.G.Ravenstein ( mentioned in Pale Fire): " He wrote on tropical Africa and translated A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama ( 1898). Vasco da Gama appears in Nabokov?s next novel, Ada (:) He is the hemispheric mirror of Christopher Columbus, having gone in the opposite direction. Ravenstein drew maps for many books (:) " Find What the Sailor Has Hidden,Vladimir Nabokov?s Pale Fire" (245) Wesleyan University Press,1988. The poet Luis Vaz de Camoes (1524-1580) was born in the same year in which the explorer Vasco da Gama died, and like him crossed oceans and fought battles. He lost one eye during an expedition against the Moors and reached Goa in 1553.Three years later he started to write "Os Lusiadas". He suffered shipwreck, but managed to save himself and keep his manuscript free from the engulfing waters of the Mecong. A classic epic of the Portuguese language, "The Lusiads" extolled Gama?s achievements, presented as a new Aeneas under the protection of Venus, and it exalted the glories of the Portuguese and Don Sebastian.
Magellan traveled westwards while Gama went eastwards.As Vivien Darkbloom observed in his appended notes to "Ada": "Counter-Fogg: Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne's globetrotter, travelled from West to East". Lisianski Urey was deputy commander of Kruzenshtern's expedition and discovered the island that carries his name in the Hawaiian Chain. It is also in Gavaille (Hawaii) where we find the Laysan island (paired to Lisianski island). Lisiansky himself translated into English his book "A Voyage round the World", published in 1814, with a picture of Goa. In ADA, "Demon, she said, had told her, last year at the funeral, that he was buying an island in the Gavailles" and he also referred to Hawaii (Demon?s Gavailles over which his plane exploded and Tobakoff suffered a shipwreck). B.Boyd observed that the words "a doubled ocean" could mean, among other things, "the Atlantic and the Pacific, as marking the east and west boundaries of the Americas and the west and east of Russia (18:01)", a meaning that might have been suggested by the Lisianski island reference in Ada.
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