Alexey: it’s quite a natural and common metonymy. We say, e.g., “He has a head on his shoulders,” and “he has a head for mathematics.” You continue to have a head for diverting word-plays! I can add that “pouf/poof/pooftah” are discouraged terms for male homosexuals, but am reluctant to make any connections with Ivan Ilyich’s  after-life orientation! Also, that Ivan spelt backwards is a 19th century Irish canal digger. Canal points to Lacan, whose mirror-stage resonates with Nabokov’s fruitful symmetries.
SKB

On 11/02/2010 12:38, "Alexey Sklyarenko" <skylark05@MAIL.RU> wrote:

In Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf" the word голова is used idiomatically, in the sense "good brains:"

– Бриан! – говорили они с жаром. – Вот это голова! Он со своим проектом пан-Европы...

Briand!* - they [old men in the pique waistcoats] said with animation - He has good brains indeed! With his project of pan-Europe... (Chapter XIV: "The First Rendezvous")

The setting of "The Golden Calf" is Chernomorsk. The villain in Pushkin's "Ruslan and Lyudmila" is an evil dwarf Chernomor. He has a brother, Golova (the still alive gigantic head that was chopped off by Chernomor).

Château + Briand = Châteaubriand; Golova (head) + Veen = Golovin. Ivan Ilyich dies in Tolstoy's story, but he lives on as a pouf ("ivanilich, a kind of sighing old hassock upholstered in leather:" 1.37) and as Van Veen (whose first name needs but the initial I to become Ivan and whose family name looks as if it were the Englished last syllable of Ivan Ilyich's surname) in Ada.

*Aristide Briand, 1862-1932, a French statesman

Alexey Sklyarenko
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