Gogol liked to repeat that his images would not be alive if every reader did not feel that they were taken "from the same body that we are from." This property of Gogol's images - a certain recognizability, closeness to the soul of each of us - was already noted by the writer's contemporaries. "Aren't all of us after our youth, one way or another, leading one of the lives of Gogol's heroes? - Herzen reflected in his diary in July 1842. "One of us remains with Manilov's dull reverie, the other - rages a la Nosdreff, the third - Plyushkin...". "Each of us," Belinsky wrote in the article "Answer to the Moskvityanin", " no matter how good a person he may be, if he delves into himself with the impartiality with which he delves into others,- then it will certainly find in itself, to a greater or lesser extent, many of the elements of many of Gogol's heroes" (Belinsky V. G. Sobr. soch.: In 12 vols. Moscow, 1982. Vol. 8. p. 312; further - only volume and page). In Orthodox asceticism, there is a concept of the presence of any sin in a person; if he turns to his soul, he will see everything... and in the midst of everything, something predominant. It is generally accepted that the defining feature of Gogol's types is vulgarity. But what is vulgarity? In the old, original meaning, now lost, vulgar - ordinary, ordinary, unremarkable. At the beginning of the sixth chapter of Dead Souls, Gogol uses this word in exactly this sense. The author says that earlier, in the years of his youth, he happened to drive up to some new place and it presented itself to him with its " not vulgar appearance." According to the writer himself, the main feature of his talent was defined by Pushkin: "He always told me that no writer has ever had this gift to expose the vulgarity of life so vividly, to be able to outline the vulgarity of a vulgar person in such force that all the little things that escape the eyes would flash large in everyone's eyes" (Gogol N. V. Sobr. soch.: In 9 vols. Moscow, 1994 ... Read more