Mascodagama’s
performance
Brian Boyd: "Van’s singular stage name
first evokes the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (c.1460-1524), the first
European to sail to southern and eastern Africa and to India. He is the hero of
the epic Os Lusiadas ("The Lusiads," 1572) by Portugal’s greatest poet,
Luís Vas de Camões (Camoens, c. 1524-1580). There Camões invents a Greek god,
Adamastor, as the Spirit of the Cape of Storms (now the Cape of Good Hope),
whose domain is the Indian Ocean and who represents the natural dangers Vasco da
Gama’s fleet had to face rounding the Cape."
In Mémoires d'outre-tombe (Book Twenty Four, chapter
14) Châteaubriand calls Napoleon exiled to St. Helena "the new
Adamastor:"
Each step made by the new Adamastor in the
Southern Hemisphere can be heard by the inhabitants of the Northern
one.
Unlike Châteaubriand, Napoleon (who, like Vasco da Gama, seems
to be unknown on Antiterra) is not mentioned in Ada. But he should
not be completely neglected. Kim Beauharnais is a kitchen boy and
photographer at Ardis; in her first conversation with Van Marina mentions
Queen [sic] Josephine (1.5). Josephine Beauharnais was Napoleon's first wife.
Kim Beauharnais was probably one of the arsonists who
set fire to the barn near Ardis Hall (1.19); Moscow burnt down
when Napoleon was in it.
Mascodagama dances on his hands to the tango tune "Pod
znoynym nebom Argentiny." It is the tango that Ostap Bender dances solo in
"The Twelve Calf." Ostap has the tattoo on his breast: Napoleon in a cocked hat
holding a beer mug. Napoleon's face becomes red when Ostap wrestles with
Koreyko.
Адамастор = Ада +
матрос
Наполеон + химера + е = хамелеон + пионер +
а
Корейко + я = Корея + йок
Адамастор -
Adamastor
Ада -
Ada
матрос - sailor
Наполеон - Napoleon
химера - chimera (cf. "Adochka, pretty and impure in her flimsy, and Vanichka in
gray-flannel suit, with slant-striped school tie, facing the kimera
(chimera, camera) side by side, at attention" 2.7)
хамелеон - chameleon (also, a story
by Chekhov)
пионер - pioneer; Pioneer
(Communist scout)
Корейко - A. I. Koreyko (a secret
Soviet millionaire in Ilf & Petrov's "The Golden Calf")
я - I (first person
pronoun)
Корея - Corea (cf. Mandelshtam:
Когда в далёкую Корею катился русский золотой)
йок - Tatar, no
Alexey Sklyarenko