Ты — богач, если ты не боишься трудностей и можешь сам заработать свой хлеб, где бы ты ни оказался. Ещё — если умеешь терпеть боль и не боишься смерти. Эти вещи тяжело поддаются исчислению в любой валюте. Они вообще не имеют цены, их нельзя купить, но они тебя кормят и греют, защищают и радуют.

Плохо, если при слове «богатство» в мозгах начинается калькуляция.

Кто-то говорит о себе, что он богат. Весь мир может говорить о нём как о богатом человеке. Но в глазах у него столько грусти, что его богатство кажется мне золотым ярмом на шее вьючного животного.

Другой сидит на циновке у порога своего дома и беззубым ртом улыбается каждому прохожему. Зайди, пригнувшись, в его хибару — и глазу не на чем остановиться. Можешь кинуть ему монету. Слава Богу, нет войны, и деньги ещё имеют цену. Но не думай, что подал милостыню нищему. Нищета — не такое простое понятие. Может быть, ты дал монету настоящему богачу. А иначе — почему он так весел? Почему улыбается беззубым ртом? Почему тебе самому хочется сесть рядом с ним и замереть на час, провожая взглядом прохожих?

330 Мертвые души бессмертных Чичиковых

Знаете ли вы Павла Ивановича? Какого, спросите? Ну, как же. Милейшего человека средних лет, приятного обращения, не то чтобы толстого, но и совсем не худого. Не очень высокого, но вовсе и не низкого. Неужели не вспомнили? Да Чичикова же. Чему вас только в школе учили?.. С тех пор как бричка с кучером Селифаном умчалась из города N, Павел Иванович не растворился, не канул в Лету, никуда не исчез. В русской жизни, как в зеркальной комнате, Чичиков стократно отразился в каждом из зеркал и стал почти вездесущим.

Nikolai Vasilyevich specially endowed Pavel Ivanovich with typical, vague, general features. The author caught the future with his creative intuition. He realized that the Sobakeviches and Manilovs needed to be preserved for future descendants. These types were already disappearing at that time and needed to be immortalized in detail and thoroughly. Gogol writes their figures, manners, voices and quirks with the same care with which the Egyptians of antiquity mummified the dead, placing each organ in a special clay konob, and only threw the brain out, because they did not know about its function. But the author writes the main character as an impressionist - with broad strokes, without going into details, but creating a vivid feeling: "I know this gentleman." Gogol felt that the future belonged to Chichikov, Chichikov was the master of the present and future epochs. While he is forced to smile, doing business, while he is still shuffling his leg. But this is for now. In the future, he will be transformed and posture. Today he is alone - and he is forced to flash against the background of small and large people. There will be a time when there will be many Chichikovs, and already the people, small and large, will scurry against their background. That is why the portrait of Pavel Ivanovich is not painted in detail, because he is to become a typical person, with common features. Which, in fact, has already happened.

Chichikov is a Russian capitalist of the period of the first accumulation of capital. His main feature is the ability to make money out of thin air. Let American Fords preach that the key to wealth is not golden, but wrenched. Chichikov is a Russian man, with a deep sense of national pride and a corresponding contempt for all "Germans". He has no time to invent and improve production. Long, and unreliable. Money must be taken wisely and immediately.

I write and think: isn't "Dead Souls" a handbook for the creators of voucher privatization, defaults, coupons, and barter schemes. In short, those who enriched themselves in certain times overnight or in a week, leaving the people with a figure of three fingers? If so, then I take my hat off. Poor goose pen or ballpoint pen workers will always have enough snobbery to look down on a poorly educated millionaire. And how is a millionaire with millions because he is well acquainted with the classics and reads them not for leisure, but for life?

Judas' passion for money was called the root of all evil by St. Paul. Money opens access to "all the bad things", and this is why it is valued. In the last chapter of the first volume of "Dead Souls", where the details of Chichikov's biography are first reported, it is not for nothing that it is said that our hero did not love money by itself. He was not a miserly knight, and he was not a knight at all. Life in poverty and daily trips to the basement, where gold shimmered in the glare of greasy cinders in chests, were not for him. He would rather put his signature under the phrase of Philip of Macedon, who said that an ass loaded with gold would open the gates of any fortress to him.

Money can be loved for its ability to turn into stone houses with fountains, into a diamond hairpin for a tie, into a richly laid table, into a woman's love, into social significance. You never know what gold coins and bank notes can turn into! Is it not possible to say that this is the philosopher's stone that the alchemists were looking for, the stone that gives access to all pleasures?!

So away with quixoticism, away with singing under the window and stupid fights. Away with romanticism, and long live sober practicality. You need to get money. It is to get, not to earn, because "earning" means working long and earning little. They say that you can't build in chorus by honest work, but life runs by, and you want so much.

"Both in you and in me there is a part of the soul of Judas," says Justin Popovich in one of his sermons during Holy Week. Gogol says about the same thing. He says that you don't need to be too strict. It is worth checking yourself - is there a particle of Pavel Ivanovich in me? And how do I value money more than anything sacred? And precisely for this reason I value that I hope to buy with them either forbidden sweets, or power, if not over the world, then over my native city, at least?