I had a look at those paragraphs. There's certainly some relevant and poignant descriptions, but the dichotomy is slightly different. He's talking about idealists or moralists vs realists. I'm talking about sophists, hacks, or sell-outs vs realists or philosophers. There's overlap there, but the emphasis struck me as somewhat different.

The key difference, I think, is that I'd say realists can still propose ideals or plans of action based on a realistic assessment of the existential facts, whereas Gogol seemed to be saying that realists should be nihilists who don't broach the subject of how to improve matters. As soon as you talk about ideals, your head is in the clouds and you're dealing only with myths and fairy tales, according to my reading of Gogol. I'd disagree with that. But that just means he was proposing a slightly different dichotomy.