Carved on the great Russian...
Illustration
Carved on the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's tombstone are the following words: "Verily, verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." (John 12:24) Also, the epigraph in his monumental novel Brothers Karamazov contains the same words. It is not too much to say that the key idea in this novel reflects the same theme. The murder of Fyodor Karamazov is the dearest expression of life's decay. But at the same time the murder opens up the possibility of new life. Dimitri's fall and suffering become a necessary precondition for his rebirth. The central theme has implications for minor characters in the story, too. Father Zossima comments on the same text in a sermon: "God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth and made his garden grow, and everything that could come up came up, but whatever grows is alive and lives only through the feeling of its contact with other mysterious worlds...." Seeds that die in the earth rise again one day to new life. -- Hasler
